nVidia introduced the Video Processing Engine or VPE with the GeForce 4 MX. It is a feature of nVidia's GeForce graphics processor line that offers dedicated hardware to offload parts of the MPEG2 decoding and encoding. The GeForce Go FX 5700 rolled out the VPE 3.0. The VPE later developed into nVidia's
PureVideo
PureVideo is Nvidia's hardware SIP core that performs video decoding. PureVideo is integrated into some of the Nvidia GPUs, and it supports hardware decoding of multiple video codec standards: MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264, HEVC, and AV1. PureVideo occupie ...
.
VPE 1
*hardware
MPEG2
MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, ...
decoding,
*inverse quantization (IQ)
*inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT)
*motion compensation
*colour space conversion (CSC) functions
*hardware subpicture alpha blending
*Adaptive De-interlacing
*5 Horizontal x 3 Vertical Taps Scaling & Filtering
*Independent Hardware Color Enhancements and Digital Vibrance Control
*Component out supporting 720i and 1080i
*master sync generator to control the sync levels
*interlacer to output 480i and 1080i interlaced modes and a TV encoder, which operates in digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) mode with
Tri Level Sync
Tri-level sync is an analogue video synchronization pulse primarily used for the locking of high-definition video signals ( genlock).
It is preferred in HD environments over black and burst, as timing jitter is reduced due to the nature of it ...
. VPE supports the first two of these element and all that is required to ship a graphics board capable of YPrPb output is a TV encoder that supports tri-level sync, and to replace the 4-Pin S-Video connector with a 9 pin.
*geforce 4 420/440 go
VPE 2
*GeForce FX Go 5650, 5600, 5200, and 5100 models
*Video Mixing Renderer (vmr)
*MPEG-2 decode engine
*adaptive deinterlacing
*dedicated independent gamma correction
*MPEG-2 encode assist
*Digital Vibrance Control
VPE 3.0
*Component High Definition component out
*MPEG-2 video decode engine suitable for DVD playback, HDTV decode, and decoding streaming video up to 1920x1080
*Adaptive de-interlacing
*Independent and dedicated gamma correcting
*enhanced scaling, filtering, sharpening
*MPEG-2 encode
*Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) allows integration of video with other 2d and 3d windows
*Digital Vibrance Control 3
*Inverse Quantization
*Inverse Discrete Cosine Transformation
*Motion Compensation
*Colorspace Conversion
*subpicture alpha blending
*Scaling engine
*dithering circuit
Operating system support
The VPE SIP core needs to be supported by the
device driver
In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and o ...
. The device driver provides one or multiple
interfaces
Interface or interfacing may refer to:
Academic journals
* ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society
* ''Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics''
* '' Inte ...
, like e.g.
VDPAU
Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) is a royalty-free application programming interface (API) as well as its implementation as free and open-source library () distributed under the MIT License. VDPAU is also supported by Nvidia.
T ...
,
VAAPI
Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is an open source application programming interface that allows applications such as VLC media player or GStreamer to use hardware video acceleration capabilities, usually provided by the graphics processing unit ...
or
DXVA DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) is a Microsoft API specification for the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms that allows video decoding to be hardware-accelerated. The pipeline allows certain CPU-intensive operations such as iDCT, motion ...
. One of this interfaces is then used by end-user software, like e.g.
VLC media player
VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for d ...
or
GStreamer
GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework that links together a wide variety of media processing systems to complete complex workflows. For instance, GStreamer can be used to build a system that reads files in one format, processes the ...
, to access the VPE hardware and make use of it.
Nvidia's