# Hardware video acceleration

Related articles

- XvMC

The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.

Reason: I only have an Intel card so I wasn't able to test this out on AMD/NVIDIA. Please correct me in those places. (Discuss in Talk: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.
- X-Video Motion Compensation (XvMC) is an extension for the X.Org Server, allowing video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process to the GPU video-hardware.

## Support

### Formats

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: I haven't found a usable list for libva-mesa-driver or libvdpau-amdgpu-proAUR. (Discuss in Talk:Hardware video acceleration#)
Note: To choose the correct driver see #Installation.

VA-API
| libva-intel-driver | libva-mesa-driver | libva-xvba-driverAUR[broken link: archived in aur-mirror] | libva-vdpau-driver
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
MPEG2 decoding | GMA 4500 and newer | ? | Radeon HD 4000 and newer | See VDPAU.
MPEG4 decoding | ✗ | ? | Radeon HD 6000 and newer
H.264 decoding | GMA 45001, Ironlake Graphics and newer | ? | Radeon HD 4000 and newer
VC1 decoding | Sandy Bridge Graphics and newer | ? | Radeon HD 4000 and newer
MPEG2 encoding | Ivy Bridge Graphics and newer | ? | ✗ | ✗
H.264 encoding | Sandy Bridge Graphics and newer | ? | ✗ | ✗

VDPAU
| mesa-vdpau | libvdpau-va-gl | libvdpau-amdgpu-proAUR | nvidia-utils
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
MPEG2 decoding | Radeon 9500 and newer, GeForce 8 and newer | ✗2 | ? | GeForce 8 and newer
MPEG4 decoding | Radeon HD 6000 and newer, GeForce 200 and newer | ✗2 | ? | GeForce 200 and newer
H.264 decoding | Radeon HD 4000 and newer, GeForce 8 and newer | See VA-API. | ? | GeForce 8 and newer
VC1 decoding | Radeon HD 4000 and newer, GeForce 83 and newer | ✗2 | ? | GeForce 83 and newer
HEVC (H.265) decoding | ✗ | ✗2 | ? | GeForce 9004 and newer

- 1 Supported by libva-intel-driver-g45-h264AUR instead.
- 2 As of version 0.3, the VA GL driver doesn't support any other hardware decoder than H.264.
- 3 Except GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS (320/640 MB).
- 4 Except GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980.

The features supported by your GPU may vary. To see what your GPU supports see #Verification.

Regarding the libvdpau-amdgpu-proAUR package, see also: AMD Radeon™ Software AMD GPU-PRO Beta Driver – Linux® for Vulkan™ Release Notes. Loosely, this VDPAU driver is for the Radeon R9 family.

### Software

| VA-API | VDPAU
--- | --- | ---
GStreamer | ✓ (with gstreamer-vaapi, see GStreamer#Hardware acceleration) | ✓ (with gst-plugins-bad, see GStreamer#Hardware acceleration)
VLC media player | ✓ (see VLC media player#Hardware acceleration support) | ✓ (see VLC media player#Hardware acceleration support)
mpv | ✓ (see mpv#Hardware Decoding) | ✓ (see mpv#Hardware Decoding)
MPlayer | ✓ (with mplayer-vaapiAUR, see MPlayer#Enabling VA-API) | ✓ (see MPlayer#Enabling VDPAU)
Flash | ✓ (with libvdpau-va-gl, see Flash#Configuration) | ✓ (see Flash#Configuration)
Kodi | ✓ | ✓
Firefox | ✗ [1] [2] [3]

## Installation

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: The AMDGPU driver is not mentioned. (Discuss in Talk:Hardware video acceleration#)

The choice varies depending on your video card vendor:

- For Intel Graphics use VA-API.
- For NVIDIA cards use VDPAU.
- For AMD cards you can use both (with mesa).

There are also two specific types of drivers for VA-API and VDPAU:

- libva-vdpau-driver, which uses VDPAU as a backend for VA-API.
- libvdpau-va-gl, which uses VA-API as a backend for VDPAU.

For pre-2007 cards see XvMC.

Tip: It is recommended to install and configure both VA-API and VDPAU to achieve support in different scenarios, e.g. Flash doesn't support VA-API but can use the VDPAU VA-API backend.
Warning: Do not use libva-vdpau-driver and libvdpau-va-gl together as it will create an (infinite) loop between VA-API and VDPAU, which will result in something either really bad or really fun. But if you try it anyway please share your experiences.

### Installing VA-API

Open source drivers:

- AMD Radeon 9500 and newer GPUs are supported by either libva-mesa-driver with mesa or libva-vdpau-driver (see #Installing VDPAU).
- Intel GMA 4500 series and newer GPUs are supported by libva-intel-driver with mesa.
  - To get better support on GMA 4500 consider using libva-intel-driver-g45-h264AUR instead, see Intel#H.264 decoding on GMA 4500 for instructions and caveats.
- NVIDIA GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs are supported by libva-vdpau-driver (see #Installing VDPAU).

Proprietary drivers:

- AMD Radeon HD 4000 series and newer GPUs are supported by libva-xvba-driverAUR[broken link: archived in aur-mirror]. It uses the catalyst-utilsAUR driver for Radeon HD 5000 series and newer, and catalyst-total-hd234kAUR for Radeon HD 4000 series.
- NVIDIA GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs are supported by libva-vdpau-driver (see #Installing VDPAU).

### Installing VDPAU

Open source drivers:

- AMD Radeon 9500 and newer GPUs are supported by mesa-vdpau.
- Intel GMA 4500 series and newer GPUs are supported by libvdpau-va-gl (see #Installing VA-API).
- NVIDIA GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs are supported by mesa-vdpau. It requires nouveau-fwAUR, which contains the required firmware to operate that is presently extracted from the NVIDIA binary driver.

Proprietary drivers:

- AMD Radeon HD 4000 series and newer GPUs are supported by libvdpau-va-gl (see #Installing VA-API).
- NVIDIA GeForce 400 series and newer GPUs are supported by nvidia-utils.
  - GeForce 8/9 and GeForce 100-300 series are supported by nvidia-340xx-utils.

## Verification

Tip: mpv is great for testing hardware acceleration in practice.

### Verifying VA-API

Verify the settings for VA-API by running `vainfo`, which is provided by libva:

    $ vainfo

    libva info: VA-API version 0.39.0
    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 1.7.0)
    vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Sandybridge Mobile - 1.7.0
    vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
          VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
          VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
          VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
          VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
          VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
          VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
          VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
          VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
          VAProfileH264StereoHigh         : VAEntrypointVLD
          VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
          VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
          VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD
          VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointVideoProc

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:

    libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so

### Verifying VDPAU

You can verify that the VDPAU driver is loaded correctly using vdpauinfo:

    $ vdpauinfo | grep "Information string:"

    Information string: NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library  364.19  Tue Apr 19 14:14:26 PDT 2016

## Configuration

### Configuring VA-API

The driver for VA-API is autodetected. To determine which one is used see #Verification. You can override it by setting the `LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME` environment variable:

- For Intel Graphics use `i965`.
- For NVIDIA use `vdpau`.
- For AMD use either `gallium` (for libva-mesa-driver) or `vdpau` (for libva-vdpau-driver).

Note: You can find the installed drivers in `/usr/lib/dri/`.
Note: Since version 12.0.1 libva-mesa-driver provides `radeonsi` instead of `gallium`.

### Configuring VDPAU

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: When does `VDPAU_DRIVER` need to be set? So far I only know about Intel and Catalyst (because of libvdpau-va-gl), it should work correctly with other cards. (Discuss in Talk:Hardware video acceleration#)

The driver for use with VDPAU is auto-detected, but you may need to override it by using the `VDPAU_DRIVER` environment variable.

The correct driver name depends on your setup:

- For Intel Graphics or AMD Catalyst you need to set it to `va_gl`.
- For the open source AMD/ATI driver set it to the proper driver version depending on your GPU (see below).
- For NVIDIA's proprietary version set it to `nvidia`.

The driver name can determined by running:

    $ grep -i vdpau ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log

    (II) RADEON(0): [DRI2] VDPAU driver: r300

In this case you want to set `VDPAU_DRIVER=r300`.

Note: You can find the installed drivers in `/usr/lib/vdpau/`.

For hybrid setups (both NVIDIA and AMD), it may be necessary to set `DRI_PRIME=1`. For more information see PRIME.

## Troubleshooting

### Failed to open VDPAU backend

This happens when you use libvdpau-va-gl without overriding `VDPAU_DRIVER`. VDPAU doesn't know what driver to use in this case for some reason and guesses wrongly. See #Configuring VDPAU.

However you may want to configure your media player to use VA-API instead, getting far better results. See #Software.

### VA-API vaInitialize failed

If vainfo gives you this error:

    libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
    vaInitialize failed with error code -1 (unknown libva error),exit

You may need to set the `LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME` environment variable to `vdpau` or `gallium`, see #Configuring VA-API.

Categories:

- Graphics
- X server

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