The "alternate interfaces" I was thinking of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Video_Motion_Compensation

These all allow offloading to the GPU to some degree, and I wonder if
SRSS could be coded to use some of those since there are already players
that know how to utilize those protocols.

William

On Mon, 2010-02-22 at 16:56 -0500, William Yang wrote:
> Ah okay, I read your e-mail as a whole as saying "there is at least 1
> player that supports it".  I would think there is some alternate
> interface that could be plugged in to XvEnc or perhaps via gstreamer
> though since I think most graphics cards in PCs know how to do some
> video decoding.  Nevertheless, Flash on UNIX doesn't use XVEnc or even
> XVideo (there was an Adobe blog post awhile back as to why they didn't
> use XVideo).
> 
> The "Sun Ray people" could help fix the problem by exposing the XVEnc
> API, though I suspect that's not really in the hands of the engineers.
> As it is currently a closed API, the only people that could
> theoretically start using that interface on UNIX would be employees at
> Sun who had access to both the API spec and worked on developing a
> player as well.  Either that or someone else will need to reverse
> engineer the protocol.
> 
> William Yang
> 
> On Mon, 2010-02-22 at 16:58 +0100, Ivar Janmaat wrote:
> > Hello William,
> > 
> > That is why I stated "(if the player supports it)"
> > I don't see how the Sun Ray people can fix this since it seems to be a 
> > player problem instead of a Sun Ray problem.
> > The only way is that (Open) Solaris developers will adjust all players 
> > in the OS to work with Xvideo en Xvenc.
> > 
> > Kind regards,
> > 
> > Ivar
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > William Yang schreef:
> > > As far as I know, that isn't exactly true.  Yes XVideo and XVEnc are
> > > available, but there are no UNIX apps that use the XVEnc API at this 
> > > point.
> > > Windows multimedia redirection is just using XVEnc to send video to be
> > > decoded on the DTU.  UNIX apps are using either XVideo or normal display
> > > updating, not XVEnc.  Flash on UNIX isn't even using XVideo but because 
> > > the
> > > Sun Ray protocol itself is already pretty efficient, you may get pretty
> > > decent results anyways.  But if you compare the bandwidth usage of Flash 
> > > on
> > > UNIX and Flash on Windows with MMR, you'll notice the former is much 
> > > higher
> > > because it isn't decoding on the DTU, it's just sending frames.  In that
> > > way, the Sun Ray firmware doesn't have to be updated for Flash 10, as long
> > > as the browser plugin works, the Sun Ray will be able to show it too.
> > >
> > > William Yang
> > >
> > >   
> > >> -----Original Message-----
> > >> From: [email protected] [mailto:sunray-users-
> > >> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Ivar Janmaat
> > >> Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 10:59 AM
> > >> To: SunRay-Users mailing list
> > >> Subject: Re: [SunRay-Users] Multimedia on Solaris or Linux?
> > >>
> > >> Hello Ken,
> > >>
> > >> As I understand it:
> > >> Sun Ray 2 hardware has more processing power than the Sun Ray 1 based
> > >> hardware.
> > >> The Sun Ray 4.2 Server software and firmware utilize these extra
> > >> resources to accelerate some multimedia formats.
> > >> This is done with X11 and X11 extensions: Xvideo and Xvenc.
> > >> Especially the multimedia extension Xvenc (used for video streams) can
> > >> only be used on Sun Ray 2.
> > >> Since the Unix environment uses X11 and these extensions natively. all
> > >> these acceleration functions are already available in Unix. (If the
> > >> player supports it)
> > >>
> > >> The Windows multimedia redirection was needed because rdp lacks the
> > >> ability to provide synchronized audio and video.
> > >> So the SUN multimedia redirection software in Windows puts the video and
> > >> audio in rdp channels which are mapped by uttsc to the available X11
> > >> extensions already available in (Open) Solaris and Linux.
> > >>
> > >> So there is support for Multimedia enhancement in Unix already.
> > >> However Sun marketing focused only on the new Windows features and did
> > >> not mention the work which was done in Unix to make these features work
> > >> for Windows. ;-)
> > >>
> > >> So with SRSS 4.2 on Opensolaris build 127 I have the same flash
> > >> performance as I have from Windows with the MMR software installed.
> > >> Well...In real life it it even better under Unix since flash 10 content
> > >> works.
> > >> The MMR software in Windows does not support Flash 10 content yet and
> > >> this give sometimes unexpected results on websites with Flash 10 contect.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Ivar
> > >>
> > >>     
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > SunRay-Users mailing list
> > [email protected]
> > http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users

_______________________________________________
SunRay-Users mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users

Reply via email to