Hardware video acceleration
Hardware video acceleration makes it possible for the video card to decode/encode video, thus offloading the CPU and saving power.
There are several ways to achieve this on Linux:
- Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is a specification and open source library to provide both hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding, developed by Intel.
- Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) is an open source library and API to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware, developed by NVIDIA.
- Advanced Media Framework SDK (AMF) is an open source framework which allows "Optimal" access to AMD GPUs for multimedia processing using the AMDGPU PRO Stack, Developed by AMD.
- NVDEC/NVENC - NVIDIA's proprietary APIs for hardware video acceleration, used by NVIDIA GPUs from Fermi onwards.
For comprehensive overview of driver and application support see #Comparison tables.
Installation
Intel
Intel graphics open-source drivers support VA-API:
- HD Graphics series starting from Broadwell (2014) and newer (e.g. Intel Arc) are supported by intel-media-driver.
- GMA 4500 (2008) up to Coffee Lake (2017) are supported by libva-intel-driver.
- GMA 4500 H.264 decoding is supported by libva-intel-driver-g45-h264AUR, see Intel graphics#Hardware accelerated H.264 decoding on GMA 4500.
- Haswell Refresh to Skylake VP9 decoding and Broadwell to Skylake hybrid VP8 encoding is supported by intel-hybrid-codec-driver-gitAUR.
- Skylake or later also need linux-firmware.
Also see VAAPI supported hardware and features.
NVIDIA
Nouveau open-source driver supports both VA-API and VDPAU:
- GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs up until GeForce GTX 750 are supported by libva-mesa-driver and mesa-vdpau.
- Requires nouveau-fwAUR firmware package, presently extracted from the NVIDIA binary driver.
NVIDIA proprietary driver supports via nvidia-utils:
- VDPAU on GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs;
- NVDEC on Fermi and newer GPUs [1];
- NVENC on Kepler and newer GPUs.
AMD/ATI
AMD and ATI open-source drivers support both VA-API and VDPAU:
- VA-API on Radeon HD 2000 and newer GPUs is supported by libva-mesa-driver.
- VDPAU on Radeon R600 and newer GPUs is supported by mesa-vdpau.
AMDGPU PRO proprietary driver is built on top of AMDGPU driver and supports both VA-API and VDPAU in addition to AMF.
- AMF on Fiji and newer GPUs supported by amf-amdgpu-proAUR.
- You may need to force your application to use AMDGPU PRO Vulkan Driver.
- HEVC encoding may not be available on GPUs older than Navi.
Translation layers
- libva-vdpau-driver — A VDPAU-based backend for VA-API.
- https://cgit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/vdpau-driver || libva-vdpau-driver, libva-vdpau-driver-vp9-gitAUR
- libvdpau-va-gl — VDPAU driver with OpenGL/VAAPI backend. H.264 only.
- nvidia-vaapi-driver — A CUDA NVDEC based backend for VA-API.
- Series 525 and later of the NVIDIA driver introduced a regression, breaking VA-API. Use the direct-backend.
- The code for libva-vdpau-driver has not been touched for years. As a result, it crashes when running VLC or OBS with recent versions of the NVIDIA driver. [2] If you need a translation layer for NVIDIA drivers, use libva-nvidia-driver instead.
Verification
Your system may work perfectly out-of-the-box without needing any configuration. Therefore it is a good idea to start with this section to see that it is the case.
- mpv with its command-line support is great for testing hardware acceleration. Look at the log of
mpv --hwdec=auto video_filename
and see hwdec for more details. - Use nvtop to check "DEC" (decoder) usage on the top lines while playing a video, for AMD, Intel and NVIDIA.
- For Intel GPU, use intel-gpu-tools and run
intel_gpu_top
as root to monitor the GPU activity during video playback for example. The video bar being above 0% indicates GPU video decoder/encoder usage. - For AMD GPU, use radeontop to monitor GPU activity. Unlike intel-gpu-tools, there is currently no way to see decode/encode usage on radeontop [3].
- For any GPU, you can compare CPU usage with a tool like htop. Especially for higher resolution videos (4k+), CPU usage when VA-API is enabled and working should be dramatically lower on laptops and other relatively low-power devices.
Verifying VA-API
Verify the settings for VA-API by running vainfo
, which is provided by libva-utils:
$ vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 0.39.4 libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0 libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_39 libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0 vainfo: VA-API version: 0.39 (libva 1.7.3) vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Skylake - 1.7.3 vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSliceLP VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP VAProfileH264MultiviewHigh : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264MultiviewHigh : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264StereoHigh : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264StereoHigh : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointEncPicture VAProfileVP8Version0_3 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVP8Version0_3 : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAEntrypointVLD
means that your card is capable to decode this format, VAEntrypointEncSlice
means that you can encode to this format.
In this example the i965
driver is used, as you can see in this line:
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Skylake - 1.7.3
If the following error is displayed when running vainfo
:
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1 vaInitialize failed with error code -1 (unknown libva error),exit
You need to configure the correct driver, see #Configuring VA-API.
Verifying VDPAU
Install vdpauinfo to verify if the VDPAU driver is loaded correctly and retrieve a full report of the configuration:
$ vdpauinfo
display: :0 screen: 0 API version: 1 Information string: G3DVL VDPAU Driver Shared Library version 1.0 Video surface: name width height types ------------------------------------------- 420 16384 16384 NV12 YV12 422 16384 16384 UYVY YUYV 444 16384 16384 Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8 Decoder capabilities: name level macbs width height ---------------------------------------------------- MPEG1 --- not supported --- MPEG2_SIMPLE 3 9216 2048 1152 MPEG2_MAIN 3 9216 2048 1152 H264_BASELINE 41 9216 2048 1152 H264_MAIN 41 9216 2048 1152 H264_HIGH 41 9216 2048 1152 VC1_SIMPLE 1 9216 2048 1152 VC1_MAIN 2 9216 2048 1152 VC1_ADVANCED 4 9216 2048 1152 ...
Configuration
Although the video driver should automatically enable hardware video acceleration support for both VA-API and VDPAU, it may be needed to configure VA-API/VDPAU manually. Only continue to this section if you went through #Verification.
The default driver names, used if there is no other configuration present, are guessed by the system. However, they are often hacked together and may not work. The guessed value will be printed in the Xorg log file, which is ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log
if rootless, or /var/log/Xorg.0.log
if Xorg is running as root. To search the log file for the values of interest:
$ grep -iE 'vdpau | dri driver' xorg_log_file
(II) RADEON(0): [DRI2] DRI driver: radeonsi (II) RADEON(0): [DRI2] VDPAU driver: radeonsi
In this case radeonsi
is the default for both VA-API and VDPAU.
journalctl -b --grep='vdpau | dri driver'
as root instead.This does not represent the configuration however. The values above will not change even if you override them.
Configuring VA-API
You can override the driver for VA-API by using the LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME
environment variable:
- Intel graphics:
- For libva-intel-driver use
i965
. - For intel-media-driver use
iHD
.
- For libva-intel-driver use
- NVIDIA:
- AMD:
- For AMDGPU driver use
radeonsi
.
- For AMDGPU driver use
- You can find the installed drivers in
/usr/lib/dri/
. They are used as/usr/lib/dri/${LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME}_drv_video.so
. - Some drivers are installed several times under different names for compatibility reasons. You can see which by running
sha1sum /usr/lib/dri/* | sort
. LIBVA_DRIVERS_PATH
can be used to overrule the VA-API drivers location.- Since version 12.0.1 libva-mesa-driver provides
radeonsi
instead ofgallium
.
Configuring VDPAU
You can override the driver for VDPAU by using the VDPAU_DRIVER
environment variable.
The correct driver name depends on your setup:
- For Intel graphics you need to set it to
va_gl
. - For the open source AMD driver set it to
radeonsi
. - For the open source Nouveau driver set it to
nouveau
. - For NVIDIA's proprietary version set it to
nvidia
.
- You can find the installed drivers in
/usr/lib/vdpau/
. They are used as/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_${VDPAU_DRIVER}.so
. - Some drivers are installed several times under different names for compatibility reasons. You can see which by running
sha1sum /usr/lib/vdpau/*
. - For hybrid setups (both NVIDIA and AMD), it may be necessary to set the
DRI_PRIME
environment variable. For more information see PRIME.
Configuring applications
Multimedia frameworks:
Video players:
- Kodi#Hardware video acceleration
- MPlayer#Hardware video acceleration
- mpv#Hardware video acceleration
- VLC media player#Hardware video acceleration
Web browsers:
Multimedia recording/streaming:
Troubleshooting
Failed to open VDPAU backend
You need to set VDPAU_DRIVER
variable to point to correct driver. See #Configuring VDPAU.
VAAPI init failed
An error along the lines of libva: /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so init failed
is encountered. This can happen because of improper detection of Wayland. One solution is to unset $DISPLAY
so that mpv, MPlayer, VLC, etc. do not assume it is X11. Another mpv-specific solution is to add the parameter --gpu-context=wayland
.
This error can also occur if you installed the wrong VA-API driver for your hardware.
Video decoding corruption or distortion with AMDGPU driver
When experiencing video decoding corruption or distortion with AMDGPU driver, set allow_rgb10_configs=false
as an environment variable. [4][dead link 2024-10-12 ⓘ]
Comparison tables
VA-API drivers
Codec | libva-intel-driver [5] | intel-media-driver [6] | libva-mesa-driver [7] [8] | libva-vdpau-driver (VDPAU adapter) |
libva-nvidia-driver (NVDEC adapter) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Decoding | |||||
MPEG-2 | GMA 4500 and newer | Broadwell and newer | Radeon HD 6000 and newer GeForce 8 and newer1 |
See #VDPAU drivers | See #NVIDIA driver only |
H.263/MPEG-4 Visual4 | No | No | Radeon HD 6000 and newer | ||
VC-1 | Sandy Bridge and newer | Broadwell and newer | Radeon HD 2000 and newer GeForce 9300 and newer1 | ||
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC | GMA 45002, Ironlake and newer | Radeon HD 2000 and newer GeForce 8 and newer1 | |||
H.265/HEVC 8bit | Cherryview/Braswell and newer | Skylake and newer | Radeon R9 Fury and newer | ||
H.265/HEVC 10bit | Broxton and newer | Broxton/Apollo Lake and newer | Radeon 400 and newer | ||
VP8 | Broadwell and newer | Broadwell and newer | No | No | |
VP9 8bit | Broxton and newer Hybrid: Haswell refresh to Skylake3 |
Broxton/Apollo Lake and newer | Raven Ridge + Radeon RX 5000 and newer | See #VDPAU drivers5 | |
VP9 10bit & 12bit | Kaby Lake and newer | Kaby Lake and newer | No | ||
AV1 8bit & 10bit | No | Tiger Lake and newer | Radeon RX 6600 and higher/newer | ||
Encoding | |||||
MPEG-2 | Ivy Bridge and newer | Broadwell and newer except Broxton/Apollo Lake |
No | – | No6 |
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC | Sandy Bridge and newer | Broadwell and newer | Radeon HD 7000 and newer | ||
H.265/HEVC 8bit | Skylake and newer | Skylake and newer | Radeon 400 and newer | ||
H.265/HEVC 10bit | Kaby Lake and newer | Kaby Lake and newer | Raven Ridge + Radeon RX 5000 and newer | ||
VP8 | Cherryview/Braswell and newer Hybrid: Haswell to Skylake3 |
No | |||
VP9 8bit | Kaby Lake and newer | Icelake and newer | |||
VP9 10bit & 12bit | No | ||||
AV1 8bit & 10bit | Alchemist and newer | Radeon RX 7900 and higher/newer |
- 1 Up until GeForce GTX 750.
- 2 Supported by libva-intel-driver-g45-h264AUR instead.
- 3 Hybrid VP8 encoder and VP9 decoder supported by intel-hybrid-codec-driver-gitAUR.
- 4 MPEG-4 Part 2 is disabled by default due to VAAPI limitations. Set the environment variable
VAAPI_MPEG4_ENABLED=true
to try to use it anyway. - 5 Experimental VP9 support provided by libva-vdpau-driver-vp9-gitAUR instead.
- 6 NVIDIA CUDA adapter codec support is in active development and susceptible to change [9].
VDPAU drivers
Codec | Color depth |
mesa-vdpau [10] [11] | nvidia-utils | libvdpau-va-gl (VA-API adapter) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Decoding | ||||
MPEG-2 | 8bit | Radeon R600 and newer GeForce 8 and newer1 |
GeForce 8 and newer | No |
H.263/MPEG-4 Visual | 8bit | Radeon HD 6000 and newer GeForce 200 and newer1 |
GeForce 200 and newer | |
VC-1 | 8bit | Radeon HD 2000 and newer GeForce 9300 and newer1 |
GeForce 8 and newer2 | |
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC | 8bit | Radeon HD 2000 and newer GeForce 8 and newer1 |
GeForce 8 and newer | See #VA-API drivers |
H.265/HEVC | 8bit | Radeon R9 Fury and newer | GeForce 900 and newer3 | No |
10bit | Radeon 400 and newer | No4 | ||
VP9 | 8bit | Raven Ridge + Radeon RX 5000 and newer | GeForce 900 and newer3 | |
10bit/12bit | No4 | |||
AV1 | 8bit | Radeon RX 6600 and higher/newer | GeForce 30 and newer5 | |
10bit | No4 |
- 1 Up until GeForce GTX 750.
- 2 Except GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS (320/640 MB).
- 3 Except GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980.
- 4 NVIDIA implementation is limited to 8bit streams [12] [13].
- 5 Starting with driver version 510.[14]
NVIDIA driver only
Codec | nvidia-utils [15] | |
---|---|---|
NVDEC | NVENC | |
MPEG-2 | Fermi and newer1 | No |
VC-1 | ||
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC | Kepler and newer2 | |
H.265/HEVC 8bit | Maxwell (GM206) and newer | Maxwell (2nd Gen) and newer |
H.265/HEVC 10bit | Pascal and newer | |
VP8 | Maxwell (2nd Gen) and newer | No |
VP9 8bit | Maxwell (GM206) and newer | |
VP9 10bit & 12bit | Pascal and newer | |
AV1 8bit & 10bit | Ampere and newer3 | Ada Lovelace and newer |
- 1 Except GM108 (not supported)
- 2 Except GM108 and GP108 (not supported)
- 3 Except A100 (not supported)
Application support
Application | Decoding | Encoding | Documentation | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
VA-API | VDPAU | NVDEC | VA-API | NVENC | ||
FFmpeg | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | FFmpeg#Hardware video acceleration |
GStreamer | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | GStreamer#Hardware video acceleration |
Kodi | Yes | Yes | No | – | – | Kodi#Hardware video acceleration |
mpv | Yes | Yes | Yes | – | – | mpv#Hardware video acceleration |
VLC media player | Yes | Yes | No | – | – | VLC media player#Hardware video acceleration |
MPlayer | Yes1 | Yes | No | – | – | MPlayer#Hardware video acceleration |
Flash | No2 | Yes2 | No | – | – | Browser plugins#Adobe Flash Player |
Chromium | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Chromium#Hardware video acceleration |
Firefox | Yes | No | No | No | No | Firefox#Hardware video acceleration |
GNOME/Web | GStreamer | ? | ? | GNOME/Web#Video |
- 1 VA-API support provided by mplayer-vaapiAUR instead.
- 2 VDPAU is supported only by NPAPI plugin. PPAPI plugin to NPAPI browser experimental adapter is available that provides partial VA-API and VDPAU acceleration.