MediaSDK server for linux evaluation

[Oleg_F_]

Hi,

I'm trying to evaluate Intel MediaSDK for linux 2014R2 and I have several questions:

- I use Dell optiplex 7020 machine with Intel i7-4970 CPU. As advised in "Getting Started" document I perform lspci command and I see the following: "VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 ...". Is it normal? I don't see any "Haswell" related description as it described in this document. I have i7 CPU and not Xeon, so I'm a little bit confused

- If I insert a graphic card (ASUS NVIDIA 210) this string does not appear any more in lspci, instead I can see there this NVIDIA video controller. In this case MediaSDK installation does not run and prints error that it can not find the device. If I remove the graphic card, the installation finished correctly. Does it mean that I can not use CPU's accelerators for decode/encode if I have another graphic card installed?

- I try to run sample_decode example as it described in the samples document and I get the following errors:  "Rerutn on error: error code -10  .../pipline_decode   418 Rerutn on error: error code -10  .../pipline_decode   238  Rerutn on error: error code -10  .../sample_decode   341". What's the reason for it and how can I fix it

Thanks,

Oleg Fomenko

[Sravanthi_K_Intel]

Hi Oleg,

MSDK for Linux works only on hardware and does not use software implementation. So, you are seeing failures when running with other vendor graphics and relying on SW for execution.

Regarding your system, without NVIdia card, what is the configuration? Is your system connected to any monitor, or you are trying to run it headless? And when you connect NVidia card, is your primary display connected to that? That can help us identify the issue easily. (You can also send us the full output of the lshw command. sudo lshw -html > specs.html )

For (3), the information we requested above will be useful to understand what is going wrong here. Also, are you running the application is root mode or user mode?

[Oleg_F_]

Hi,

It seems that I resolved the external graphic card problem - this was BIOS configuration issue, it was configured to disable onboard video card if external one is installed. I changed it and now I can see both accelerators in lspci output.

I also found that my onboard accelerator is recognized as different model on ubuntu 12.04 and, for example, new debian 7:

On ubuntu: VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200

On debian:VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06) - which makes more sense than ubuntu output.

I guess this is because ubuntu 12.04 is relatively old distro. Is that right?

I also succeeded to run the sample_decode executable.

Some more questions:

- In the documentation I saw that there are 2 ways to obtain VA API handle for the device - using DRM and using X11. What's the difference and what is preferable way to do so?

- If I look at the supported configuration (ubuntu 12.04) I can see several parts related to MSDK: linux generic kernel 3.8.0-23, libdrm, i915 driver, MFX library. Have I missed something? I know that you don't officially support other configurations, but theoretically, which versions of these components already include required intel patches? I guess that any generic kernel newer that this version will do the work. What about libdrm that MSDK installation requires to replace? What about i915 driver? (I'm not sure if it is part of installation at all)

Thanks in advance,

Oleg

[Sravanthi_K_Intel]

DRM is preferred over X11. You can take a look at this article on how to work with DRM - https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/using-drmserver-with-media-sdk-for-linux-servers-applications