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⇱ RADV Driver Adds Valve Video Extension Used By Steam Link VR - Phoronix


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RADV Driver Adds Valve Video Extension Used By Steam Link VR

Written by Michael Larabel in Radeon on 12 November 2025 at 06:32 AM EST. 2 Comments
Back in August with the Vulkan 1.4.327 spec update was the introduction of VK_VALVE_video_encode_rgb_conversion as a Valve vendor extension. The open-source Radeon Vulkan "RADV" driver has now merged support for this extension that is being used now by Steam Link VR.

VK_VALVE_video_encode_rgb_conversion builds on the VK_KHR_video_encode_queue extension to allow software to pass in RGB/RGBA images in video encode operations.

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Autumn Ashton of Valve worked on the VK_VALVE_video_encode_rgb_conversion Vulkan spec itself and subsequently worked out the implementation for the Mesa RADV Vulkan driver. Ashton explained in the merge request adding the support:
radv/video: Implement VK_VALVE_video_encode_rgb_conversion

This is used by Steam Link VR (driver_vrlink) to avoid doing YUV conversion itself.

There's some extra color models (eg. 2020), etc that can be implemented but they are not exposed in ac_vcn_enc.h right now, so I haven't hooked them up in this initial implementation.

After the merge request was open the past month, this RADV support for VK_VALVE_video_encode_rgb_conversion is now merged ahead of the Mesa 26.0 release due out in mid-Q1.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.