Media SDK 20.2.0

This release of Intel® Media SDK is part of open source release of media stack. Component revisions included into package:

• Media SDK and Samples: https://github.com/Intel-Media-SDK/MediaSDK/releases/tag/intel-mediasdk-20.2.0
• Driver: https://github.com/intel/media-driver/releases/tag/intel-media-20.2.0
• Gmmlib: https://github.com/intel/gmmlib/releases/tag/intel-gmmlib-20.2.2
• libva: https://github.com/intel/libva/releases/tag/2.8.0
• libva-utils: https://github.com/intel/libva-utils/releases/tag/2.8.0

Release validated with:

• OpenCL runtime: https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/releases/tag/20.25.17111

Documentation
Documentation for this release published in release branch.

What's new Media SDK 20.2.0:

• API 1.33

  • Added Scaling Interpolation Method control (not supported on Linux currently).

• AVC encode

  • Enabled MaxSliceSize feature in low-power (VDENC) mode.

• HEVC encode

  • Enabled Screen Content Coding (SCC) profile on supported platforms (Tigerlake+).
  • Improved IntraRefresh behavior in presense of multiple references.
  • Optimize Reference Picture Set selection.

• HEVC decode

  • Improved resilence and corner case handling.

• Tools

  • Upstreamed Media SDK Tracer tool, with renewed hassle-free support for LD_PRELOAD setup.

• Misc

  • Actualized TGL device ID whitelist.
  • Build system does not enforce specific instruction set (#2047).
  • Corrected minimum libva API version in dependency check.
  • Improved message filtering for VTune.

• Samples

  • Fixed sample_encode setting BufferSizeInKB to 8 seconds instead of 1 in case of variable bitrate modes.
  • Enabled lookahead plugin in sample_encode for AVC and HEVC encoders.
  • Preliminary support for AV1 decoder in sample_decode and sample_multi_transcode.
  • Added Video Conference Mode bitrate control support to sample_encode and sample_multi_transcode.

• Software requirements

  • Libdrm 2.4.84 or later
  • Kernel 4.14 or later (5.6 recommended, consult kernel support matrix wiki page for details)

• Known issues

  • Kernel 5.0 have known issue with endurance on Skylake see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=110285 for details.
  • Media Stack 20.2 with Linux kernel 5.0 may cause higher CPU usage and instability in endurance testing. Issue root caused to media driver see intel/media-driver#671 for details.

Windows support
Samples and dispatcher supported by Windows Intel(r) graphics driver since TBD (API 1.32 supported by Windows Intel(r) graphics driver since 26.20.100.8141).

• Limited support on certain platforms:
  • MPEG-2 encode is not supported on Apollo Lake
  • H.264 Flexible Encode Infrastructure only supported on Broadwell and Skylake
  • Multi Frame Encode (MFE), HEVC Flexible Encode Infrastructure only supported on Skylake
  • VP9 decoder is supported starting from Kabylake platform
  • VP9 encoder is supported starting from Icelake platform
  • Support for Tigerlake, Elkhartlake and Jasperlake platforms is preliminary and may not be fully functional
  • SW fallback is unsupported for all components but MJPEG