Weekly newsletter 23rd June 2017

[Daniel van Vugt]

The documentation for video acceleration continues to evolve day-to-day 
as we learn where the bugs are, and errata in external documentation. So 
if you're interested, please check this page for updates:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IntelQuickSyncVideo


On 23/06/17 22:48, Will Cooke wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Here's an update from this week:
> 
> = GNOME =
> We’ve migrated ubuntu-session to a new unity-session package.  This 
> means that the default session is GNOME Shell and people can install 
> Unity 7 and it’s related packages via unity-session.  The migration is 
> working well so far, but we still have some more work to do in order to 
> make sure everything “just works”.
> = LivePatch =
> We’re now working on the update-manager UI to add the list of kernel 
> CVEs which are handled by the LivePatch service and a brief description 
> of each.
> = Snaps =
> We’ve done more work on getting desktop themes working better with 
> Snaps.  We’re documenting the problems we’ve encountered and are 
> creating some sample Snaps help with making the improvements we need.
> = QA =
> We completed our review of the desktop test plan this week and have set 
> our priorities for this cycle. This will cover installation, upgrades, 
> some core application smoke tests, suspend/resume, Network Manager and 
> translations.  We will be publishing a blog on how you can get involved 
> next week.
> = Updates =
> A new version of PulseAudio is in Xenial proposed (version 
> 1:8.0-0ubuntu3.3).  This brings fixes for Bluetooth A2DP audio devices.  
> We’d appreciate testing and feedback.
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/1:8.0-0ubuntu3.3
> Updated chromium beta to 60.0.3112.32, dev to 61.0.3128.3.
> = Video Acceleration =
> We’ve got hardware accelerated video decoding working in a 
> Proof-Of-Concept using a GStreamer and VA-API pipeline.  The result is 
> 3% CPU usage to play an h264 4K 60FPS video on Haswell.  4K h265 HEVC is 
> also playable but requires a Skylake or later processor.    This wiki 
> page has been updated with information about how to try it yourself:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IntelQuickSyncVideo
> 
> Cheers, Will
> 
> 
>