Vulkan Video 1.0 released with the Vulkan 1.3.238 spec update

The Khronos Group has announced that Vulkan Video is done and ready, the 1.0 release is out with the Vulkan 1.3.238 spec update and no longer considered provisional.

It's been a while coming, with the provisional extensions going out back in April 2021. It's used for proper hardware-accelerated video compression and decompression using the Vulkan API and could be quite exciting for lots of different uses. Sure would be great if game developers went for it, instead of using various proprietary video tech.

The release today includes the finalised extensions after gathering industry feedback and provides functionality to provide fully accelerated H.264 and H.265 decode.

More codecs are coming though, this is just the start. The announcement mentioned they will release more extensions to provide additional codecs and accelerated encode as well as decode.

These extensions are final:

• VK_KHR_video_queue: common APIs for all video coding operations.
• VK_KHR_video_decode_queue: common APIs for all video decode operations.
• VK_KHR_video_decode_h264: H.264 decode-specific capabilities and parameters (promoted from EXT to KHR in this final release).
• VK_KHR_video_decode_h265: H.265 decode-specific capabilities and parameters (promoted from EXT to KHR in this final release).

Whereas these are still provisional:

• VK_KHR_video_encode_queue: common APIs for all video encode operations.
• VK_EXT_video_encode_h264: H.264 encode-specific capabilities and parameters.
• VK_EXT_video_encode_h265: H.265 encode-specific capabilities and parameters.

At the Vulkanised 2023 event (February 7-9 in Munich), they will also do a presentation and live demo on Vulkan Video.