Hardware video codecs become more and more common and nowadays most SoCs include such a video coding acceleration module. This presentation describes the path from the early stages of development, through numeorus discussions to the final merge of the Multi Format Codec driver in 3.1 kernel. The quikrs of the MFC device and challenges encountered with the hardware encouraged the expansion of the Video4Linux2 API and introduction of the multiplane framework. Typical video coding steps and their implementation in the Video4Linux2 framework will be presented, both from the end user and driver developer perspective.
