Intel® Video Processing Library (Intel® VPL)

Intel® Video Processing Library (Intel® VPL) provides access to hardware accelerated video decode, encode, and processing capabilities on Intel® GPUs to support AI visual inference, media delivery, cloud gaming, and virtual desktop infrastructure use cases.

See the specification for additional information.

This repository contains the following components:

• Copies of the Intel® VPL API header files. The version of the API is listed in the mfxdefs.h file.
• Intel® VPL Dispatcher
• Examples demonstrating API usage

[!IMPORTANT]

Intel® VPL Tools are no longer in this repository. They have all been moved to https://github.com/intel/libvpl-tools

To use Intel® VPL for video processing you need to install at least one implementation. Here is a list:

• Intel® VPL GPU Runtime for use on Intel® Iris® Xe graphics and newer
• Intel® Media SDK for use on legacy Intel® graphics

Architecture

graph TD;
    dispatcher["Intel® VPL Dispatcher"]-->oneVPL-intel-gpu;
    dispatcher-->msdk["Intel® MediaSDK"];

As shown in this diagram, the Intel® VPL Dispatcher forwards function calls from the application to use the selected runtime.

Dispatcher behavior when targeting Intel® GPUs

Runtime loaded by Intel® VPL Dispatcher and their Microsoft* DirectX* support:

| GPU | Media SDK | Intel® VPL | Microsoft* DirectX* Support | |--------------------------------------------|------------------|------------------|-----------------------------| | Earlier platforms, back to BDW (Broadwell) |:heavy_check_mark:| | DX9/DX11 | | ICL (Ice Lake) |:heavy_check_mark:| | DX9/DX11 | | JSL (Jasper Lake) |:heavy_check_mark:| | DX9/DX11 | | EHL (Elkhart Lake) |:heavy_check_mark:| | DX9/DX11 | | SG1 |:heavy_check_mark:| | DX9/DX11 | | TGL (Tiger Lake) |:heavy_check_mark:|:heavy_check_mark:| DX9/DX11* | | DG1 (Intel® Iris® Xe MAX graphics) |:heavy_check_mark:|:heavy_check_mark:| DX11* | | RKL (Rocket Lake) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | ADL-S (Alder Lake S) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | ADL-P (Alder Lake P) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | ADL-N (Alder Lake N) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | DG2 (Intel® Arc™ A-Series Graphics) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | ATSM (Intel® Data Center GPU Flex Series) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | RPL-S (Raptor Lake S) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | RPL-P (Raptor Lake P) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | MTL (Meteor Lake) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | ARL-S (Arrow Lake S) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | ARL-H (Arrow Lake H) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | LNL (Lunar Lake) | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 | | Future platforms... | |:heavy_check_mark:| DX11 |

For TGL and DG1, if both Intel® VPL and Intel® Media SDK runtime are installed then the Intel® VPL Dispatcher will prefer Intel® VPL runtime unless the application requests D3D9 by setting the filter property "mfxImplDescription.AccelerationMode" to MFX_ACCEL_MODE_VIA_D3D9.

Installing Intel® VPL

Installation options

Intel® VPL may be installed:

• from source code. See install and use instructions at INSTALL.md.
• from Linux packages. See Intel® software for general purpose GPU capabilities

Using Intel® VPL

Configure your shell environment

If you did not install to standard system locations, you need to set up the environment, so tools like CMake and pkg-config can find the library and headers.

For Linux:

source <vpl-install-location>/etc/vpl/vars.sh

For Windows:

<vpl-install-location>\etc\vpl\vars.bat

Link to Intel® VPL with CMake

Add the following code to your CMakeLists, assuming TARGET is defined as the component that wants to use Intel® VPL:

if(WIN32 AND CMAKE_SIZEOF_VOID_P EQUAL 4)
 set(CMAKE_LIBRARY_ARCHITECTURE x86)
endif()
find_package(VPL REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(${TARGET} VPL::dispatcher)

Link to Intel® VPL from Bash with pkg-config

The following command line illustrates how to link a simple program to Intel® VPL using pkg-config.

gcc program.cpp `pkg-config --cflags --libs vpl`

How to Contribute

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Security

See the Intel® Security Center for information on how to report a potential security issue or vulnerability.

Backward Compatibility

No code changes may be introduced that would regress support for any currently supported hardware. All contributions must ensure continued compatibility and functionality across all supported hardware platforms. Failure to maintain hardware compatibility may result in the rejection or reversion of the contribution.

Any deliberate modifications or removal of hardware support will be transparently communicated in the release notes.

API options are solely considered as a stable interface. Any debug parameters, environmental variables, and internal data structures, are not considered as an interface and may be changed or removed at any time.