Intel® Media Software Development Kit (Intel® Media SDK)

Q1: What did Intel announce?
A1: At the Intel Developers Forum, Intel announced the availability of the Intel® Media Software Development Kit (SDK), a tool specifically designed for software developers of media applications for video playback and encoding. Intel Media SDK enables developers to advantage of hardware acceleration in Intel platforms and future-proofs the software by allowing developers to program once and enjoy performance gains on future Intel processors and graphics chipsets.

Q2: What are the benefits to using Intel Media SDK?
A2: Developers using Intel Media SDK no longer have to write separate code paths to tap into platform specific hardware acceleration to improve video performance. The Intel Media SDK features a single API that streamlines workflow and exploits hardware acceleration capabilities within Intel hardware. Additionally, applications integrating Intel Media SDK today will take advantage of hardware acceleration capabilities of future graphics processing solutions without rewriting the program code.

Q3: Is the Intel Media SDK setting the stage for future multi-core products?
A3: Intel Media SDK helps developers produce future-proofed code by using a single API that supports today's hardware as well as well as hardware that will be available in the future. This API is available for developers to evaluate now through membership in Intel's Visual Adrenaline developer program at www.intel.com/software/media.

Q4: Are there developers currently using Intel Media SDK to optimize their media applications?
A4: Yes, Intel has worked with a number of media application developers in the Alpha and Beta phases leading to this announcement. Developers including Corel*, CyberLink*, and Sonic* are just a few of the companies working with Intel to develop and refine this tool. These same developers have made public their intentions to use the Intel Media SDK in future products.

Q5: What platforms does Intel Media SDK support?
A5: Intel Media SDK supports a broad selection of hardware platforms including Intel Integrated Graphics chipsets (starting with Intel® G45/GM45 Express Chipsets), Intel® Architecture Processors (for software-based encode and decode) and third-party graphics platforms (through DLL extensions). Intel® Media SDK supports the Windows* Vista operating system (32-bit and 64-bit) with Windows* 7 support planned for a future release.

Q6: Does the Intel Media SDK tool work with non-Intel graphics?
A6: The API within the Intel Media SDK is extensible, allowing development teams to create dynamic link libraries (DLL) that support platform-specific implementations, including hardware from third party vendors.

Q7: What is the pricing for the Intel Media SDK?
A7: The Intel Media SDK is a free download to members of the Visual Adrenaline Developer program. The Visual Adrenaline Developer program is a no-cost, individual membership offering visual computing developers insight on Intel's software tools, community interaction and developer support. For more information on the Visual Adrenaline developer program visit: http://intel.com/software/graphics/. For information on downloading the Intel Media SDK, visit http://www.intel.com/software/media/.

Q8: What video codecs does Intel Media SDK support?
A8: Intel Media SDK supports encode of AVC/H.264/MPEG-4 part 10 (an international standard for compressing/decompressing video) and MPEG-2 video and decode support for AVC/H.264, MPEG-2 video, and VC-1.

Q9: Does Intel Media SDK support any video pre-processing features?
A9: Yes, Intel Media SDK supports pre-processing functions, including: Inverse Telecine, Scene Detection, Deinterlacing, Denoising, Resizing and Color conversion.

Q10: How does Intel Media SDK work when no hardware acceleration is available?
A10: When hardware is not present for acceleration of decode or encode, Intel Media SDK will fall back to using software. This software will function on legacy and non-Intel CPUs. It is designed to not degrade performance on those non-Intel CPUs, but is not optimized for performance. Performance optimization is included for Intel processors and is fully threaded and utilizes a heritage of software encoders and decoders within the Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel® IPP) product.

Q11: Does Intel Media SDK software fall back on use of Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions (Intel® SSE)?
A11: All instruction level optimizations for software fallback originate from Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel® IPP). Intel guarantees functionality on competitive processors; however performance optimizations are designed for Intel processors. Intel Media SDK 1.0 supports instructions up to Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4.1 (Intel® SSE 4.1).

Q12: Is H.264 optimized for transmission latency?
A12: Intel Media SDK is not optimized for offline video editing, transcoding or video playback usages for streaming or video conferencing usage models where latency would be a focus.

Q13: Why limit support to the Microsoft Windows* operating environments?
A13: Intel is first supporting the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system (32-bit and 64-bit) with Microsoft Windows* 7 support planned for a future release. Intel continues to monitor customer feedback and will factor customer needs into future product plans.

Q14: Does the Intel Media SDK support Apple Mac OS and Apple platforms based on Intel hardware?
A14: For Intel's initial version of Intel Media SDK we chose to support Windows Vista and in the future will support Microsoft Windows 7 in order to support a broad customer base with the first release. Intel continues to monitor customer feedback and will factor customer needs into future product plans.

Q15: How can I use my own SW library for encoding or decoding instead of using the Intel supplied library?
A15: Replace libmfxsw32.dll or libmfxsw64.dll with your own SW library DLL. Use the same naming, and place into your unique install directory.