The GStreamer-VAAPI module which provides support for hardware-accelerated video decoding, encoding and post-processing on Intel (and other) graphics hardware on Linux has moved from its previous home at the Intel Open Source Technology Center (01.org) to the upstream GStreamer repositories, where it will in future be maintained as part of the upstream GStreamer project and released in lockstep with the other GStreamer modules.
The current maintainers will continue to spearhead the development at the new location:
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-vaapi/
GStreamer-VAAPI relies heavily on certain GStreamer infrastructure API that is still in flux such as the OpenGL integration API or the codec parser libraries, and one of the goals of the move was to be able to leverage new developments early and provide tighter integration with the latest developments of those APIs and other graphics-related APIs provided by GStreamer, which should hopefully improve performance even further and in some cases might also provide better stability.
Thanks to everyone involved in making this move happen!
New Versioning scheme and Supported GStreamer Versions
The version numbering has been changed to match the GStreamer version numbering to avoid confusion: there is a new gstreamer-vaapi 1.6.0 release and a 1.6 branch that is roughly equivalent to the previous 0.7.0 version. Future releases 1.7.x and 1.8.x will be made alongside GStreamer releases.
Whilst it was possible and supported by previous releases to build against a whole range of different GStreamer versions (such as 1.2, 1.4, 1.6 or 1.7/1.8), in future there will only be one target branch, so that git master will track GStreamer git master, 1.8.x will target GStreamer 1.8, and 1.6.x is targetting the 1.6 series.
Miscellaneous Changes
All GStreamer-VAAPI functionality is now provided solely by its GStreamer elements. There is no more public library exposing GstVaapi API, this API was only ever meant for private use by the elements. Parts of it may be resurrected again in future if needed, but for now it has all been made private.
GStreamer-VAAPI now unconditionally uses the codecparser library in gst-plugins-bad instead of shipping its own internal copy. Similarly, it no longer ships its own codec parsers but relies on the upstream codec parser elements.
The GStreamer-VAAPI encoder elements have been renamed from vaapiencode_foo to vaapifooenc, so encoders are now called vaapih264enc, vaapih265enc, vaapimpeg2enc, vaapijpegenc, and vaapivp8enc.
Bug Tracking
Bugs had already been tracked on GNOME bugzilla but will be moved from the gstreamer-vaapi product into a new gstreamer-vaapi component of the GStreamer product in bugzilla. Please file new bugs against the new component in the GStreamer product from now on.
Pending Patches
The code base has been re-indented to the GStreamer code style, which affected some files more than others. This means that some of the patches in bugzilla might not apply any longer, so if you have any unmerged patches sitting in bugzilla please consider checking if they still apply cleany and refresh them if not. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
More Information
Also see Víctor's blog post.