Intel Media SDK on Xeon Scalable processors

[Quiers__Francis]

Hello, can the Intel Media SDK run on processors from the Xeon Scalable family, specifically on Xeon Gold 6140? And if yes, would it run on Ubuntu (16.04 or 18.04)? Many thanks

[Mark_L_Intel1]

Hi Francis,

Media SDK is the software toolkit to access Intel Hardware video codec in the integrated GPU(also called Quick Sync Video in spec), so to use it or not, you should check if the processor has the QSV features.

I check Xeon Gold 6140, it doesn't have the integrated GPU, so Media SDK should not be used.

But if you don't need hardware acceleration, you can check our software solution:

https://01.org/svt

In general, you could use following filter to check QSV support on Xeon processors:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/search/featurefilter.html?productType=873&0_QuickSyncVideo=True&1_Filter-Family=595

Mark

[Quiers__Francis]

Many thanks Mark for your answer and the links.

I was not aware of SVT. I had a quick look, and it seems that it supports H.265, VP9 and AV1, but not H.264 (which is the codec I am interested in at the moment), is that correct?

In that case, perhaps I should still consider the Media SDK, but the software-only option that it seems to support (if I understand the API correctly).

[Mark_L_Intel1]

Hi Francis,

Yes, SVT doesn't support H.264 yet.

For Media SDK software codec, we only support it on Windows release. We used to include the software codec in Linux release but not for now.

For Linux, we only have pre-built binary package quarterly in GitHub, like this one.

Mark

[Sheth__Dhrumil]

Hi Francis,

If you don't need hw accelaration, then why you don't use ffmpeg library? 

[Mark_L_Intel1]

This is for sure, the public libraries like libx264 should work, please let me know your reason if you prefer Intel software solutions.

Mark

[Quiers__Francis]

Thanks Mark. I am specifically interested in the Intel Media SDK precisely because I would like to evaluate how it compares with other open-source encoders such as x264 (both in terms of density and quality).

Thank you for your answers, that gives me pointers for my work.

[Mark_L_Intel1]

Hi Francis,

When I mentioned SVT, I didn't sync very well.

Now I know Intel have a pure software solution for Xeon scalable processors. This one has SVT included, so you can check Open Visual Cloud at following page:

https://01.org/openvisualcloud

https://github.com/openvisualcloud

This is a complete solution with all required codecs and it is docker based release, if you don't want to build yourself you can find the docker hub in the dockerfile page to use the docker image directly.

The also have a lot of samples based on different scenarios, the sample can be built based on the docker image. I hope you can find the one you need and try. You can post issue at GitHub and they should have a good response for you.

Let me know what you thought.

Mark