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.
- NVDECODE/NVENCODE - proprietary APIs for hardware video acceleration used by NVIDIA Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell and Pascal generation GPUs.
For pre-2007 video cards see XvMC.
Contents
Driver support
VA-API
Codec | libva-intel-driver [1] | intel-media-driver [2] | libva-mesa-driver [3] [4] | Catalyst XvBA |
libva-vdpau-driver
(VDPAU adapter) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Decoding | |||||
MPEG2 | GMA 4500 and newer | Broadwell and newer | Radeon HD 6000 and newer GeForce 8 and newer1 |
Radeon HD 4000 and newer | See #VDPAU |
MPEG4 | No | No | Radeon HD 6000 and newer | Radeon HD 6000 and newer | |
AVC (H.264) | GMA 45002, Ironlake and newer | Broadwell and newer | Radeon HD 2000 and newer GeForce 8 and newer1 |
Radeon HD 4000 and newer | |
HEVC (H.265) 8bit | Cherryview/Braswell and newer | Skylake and newer | Radeon R9 Fury and newer | No | |
HEVC (H.265) 10bit | Broxton and newer | Broxton/Apollo Lake and newer | Radeon 400 and newer | ||
VC1 | Sandy Bridge and newer | Broadwell and newer | Radeon HD 2000 and newer GeForce 9300 and newer1 |
Radeon HD 4000 and newer | |
VP8 | Broadwell and newer | No | No | No | |
VP9 8bit | Broxton and newer | Broxton/Apollo Lake and newer | Raven Ridge and newer | ||
VP9 10bit | Kaby Lake and newer | Kaby Lake and newer | |||
Encoding | |||||
MPEG2 | Ivy Bridge and newer | Broadwell and newer except Broxton/Apollo Lake |
No | No | No |
AVC (H.264) | Sandy Bridge and newer | Broadwell and newer | Radeon HD 7000 and newer | ||
HEVC (H.265) 8bit | Skylake and newer | Skylake and newer | Raven Ridge and newer | ||
HEVC (H.265) 10bit | Kaby Lake and newer | Cannonlake and newer | |||
VP8 | Cherryview/Braswell and newer | No | |||
VP9 8bit | Kaby Lake and newer | Icelake and newer | |||
VP9 10bit | No |
- 1 Up until GeForce GTX 750.
- 2 Supported by libva-intel-driver-g45-h264AUR instead.
VDPAU
Codec | mesa-vdpau [6] [7] | nvidia-utils [8] |
libvdpau-va-gl (VA-API adapter) |
|
---|---|---|---|---|
Decoding | ||||
MPEG2 | Radeon R300 and newer GeForce 8 and newer1 |
GeForce 8 and newer | No2 | |
MPEG4 | Radeon HD 6000 and newer GeForce 200 and newer1 |
GeForce 200 and newer | ||
AVC (H.264) | Radeon HD 2000 and newer GeForce 8 and newer1 |
GeForce 8 and newer | See #VA-API | |
HEVC (H.265) 8bit | Radeon R9 Fury and newer | GeForce 900 and newer3 | No2 | |
HEVC (H.265) 10bit | Radeon 400 and newer | No4 | ||
VC1 | Radeon HD 2000 and newer GeForce 9300 and newer1 |
GeForce 8 and newer5 |
- 1 Up until GeForce GTX 750.
- 2 As of version 0.3, the VA GL driver does not support any other hardware decoder than H.264.
- 3 Except GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980.
- 4 NVIDIA implementation is limited to 8-bit streams [9] [10].
- 5 Except GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS (320/640 MB).
NVDEC/NVENC
Codec | nvidia-utils | |
---|---|---|
Decoding (NVDEC) | Encoding (NVENC) | |
MPEG-2 | Kepler and newer1 | No |
VC-1 | ||
AVC (H.264) | Kepler and newer2 | |
HEVC (H.265) 8bit | Maxwell (GM206) and newer | Maxwell (2nd Gen) and newer |
HEVC (H.265) 10bit | Pascal and newer | |
VP8 | Maxwell (2nd Gen) and newer | No |
VP9 8bit | Maxwell (GM206) and newer | |
VP9 10bit | Pascal and newer |
- 1 Except GM108 (not supported)
- 2 Except GM108 and GP108 (not supported)
Software support
VA-API | VDPAU | NVDEC/NVENC | Documentation | |
---|---|---|---|---|
GStreamer | Yes, via gstreamer-vaapi | Yes, via gst-plugins-bad | Yes, via gst-plugins-bad | GStreamer#Hardware video acceleration |
VLC media player | Yes | Yes | No | VLC media player#Hardware video acceleration |
mpv | Yes | Yes | Yes | mpv#Hardware decoding |
MPlayer | Yes, via mplayer-vaapiAUR | Yes | No | MPlayer#Hardware video acceleration |
Flash | NPAPI-only via freshplayerpluginAUR |
NPAPI-only via freshplayerpluginAUR or flashplugin |
No | Flash#Configuration |
Kodi | Yes | Yes | Yes | Kodi#Hardware video acceleration |
Firefox | No | No | No | Hardware decoding on Linux tracker bug |
Chromium | Yes, via chromium-vaapiAUR | No | No | Chromium#Hardware video acceleration |
FFmpeg | Yes | Yes | Yes | FFmpeg#Hardware video acceleration |
Installation
Intel
Intel graphics open-source drivers support VA-API:
- GMA 4500 series and newer GPUs up to Coffee Lake are supported by libva-intel-driver.
- GMA 4500 H.264 decoding is supported by libva-intel-driver-g45-h264AUR, see Intel#Hardware accelerated H.264 decoding on GMA 4500.
- Intel HD Graphics series starting from CannonLake (or optionally from Broadwell) and newer are supported by intel-media-driver.
NVIDIA
Nouveau open-source driver supports both VA-API and VDPAU:
- GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs 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 VDPAU and NVDECODE/NVENCODE.
ATI/AMD
ATI and AMDGPU open-source drivers support both VA-API and VDPAU:
- VDPAU on Radeon R300 and newer GPUs is supported by mesa-vdpau.
- VA-API on Radeon HD 2000 and newer GPUs is supported by libva-mesa-driver.
AMD Catalyst proprietary driver supports VA-API via XvBA.
AMDGPU PRO proprietary driver supports both VA-API and VDPAU.
Other drivers
- libva-vdpau-driver, which uses VDPAU as a backend for VA-API.
- libvdpau-va-gl, which uses VA-API as a backend for VDPAU.
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.
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:
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so
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 guess by the system. However, they are often hacked together and may not work. You can see the guessed values by running:
$ grep -iE 'vdpau | dri driver' ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log
(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 -iE 'vdpau | dri driver'
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:
- For Intel Graphics use
i965
oriHD
. - For the open source Nouveau driver use
nouveau
. - For the proprietary NVIDIA driver use
vdpau
. - For the open source AMD driver use
radeonsi
. - For the proprietary AMD Catalyst use
fglrx
.
- You can find the installed drivers in
/usr/lib/dri/
. They are used as/usr/lib/dri/${LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME}_drv_video.so
. - Some drivers are installed several times under different names for compatibility reasons. You can see which by running
sha1sum /usr/lib/dri/*
. - Since version 12.0.1 libva-mesa-driver provides
radeonsi
instead ofgallium
.
Configuring VDPAU
You can override the driver for VDPAU by using the VDPAU_DRIVER
environment variable.
The correct driver name depends on your setup:
- For Intel Graphics or AMD Catalyst you need to set it to
va_gl
. - For the open source AMD/ATI driver set it to the proper driver version depending on your GPU, see #Verification.
- For the open source Nouveau driver set it to
nouveau
. - For NVIDIA's proprietary version set it to
nvidia
.
- You can find the installed drivers in
/usr/lib/vdpau/
. They are used as/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_${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
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 does not 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.
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 --opengl-backend=wayland
.