Is there any possibility for a future version of Media SDK to drop the dependency on DXVA? With upcoming Sandy Bridge, we would like to add support for it. However, tying it to the creation of a Direct3D device is cumbersome or even impossible in cases that matter to us.
For example, if the Direct3D device is already created and locked within the process (say in a renderer black box), then it cannot be passed nor shared with the Media SDK for its DXVA context creation.
Also, if a decoding/transcoding application is run as a Service under Vista/7, it cannot access Direct3D due to ring0 isolation.
Ideally we would have a separate driver API that matches the Media SDK functionality and can share graphic resources with the Direct3D runtime. Is that possible with your architecture? I suppose it would involve splitting the Intel DXVA driver in a back-end & front-end so a second Intel-specific front-end can be added.