VDPAU

Related articles

Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix is an open source library and API to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware.

Supported hardware

Open source drivers:

Proprietary drivers:

Supported formats

Open source Proprietary
AMD Intel Nvidia AMD Nvidia
MPEG2 decoding Radeon 9500 and newer
2
GeForce 8 and newer
2
GeForce 8 and newer
MPEG4 decoding Radeon HD 6000 and newer
2
GeForce 200 and newer
2
GeForce 200 and newer
H.264 decoding Radeon HD 4000 and newer GMA 45001, Ironlake Graphics and newer GeForce 8 and newer Radeon HD 4000 and newer GeForce 8 and newer
H.265 decoding
2
2
GeForce 9004 and newer
VC1 decoding Radeon HD 4000 and newer
2
GeForce 83 and newer
2
GeForce 83 and newer

In order to check what features are supported by your GPU, run the following command, which is provided by the vdpauinfo package:

$ vdpauinfo

Configuration

The environment variable VDPAU_DRIVER determines the driver file used. You can enable the environment variable globally or locally per user.

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, you need to set it to the proper driver version depending on your GPU.

You can determine the driver name by running:

$ grep -i vdpau ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log
(II) RADEON(0): [DRI2] VDPAU driver: r300

In which case you want to set VDPAU_DRIVER=r300.

Hybrid graphics

For hybrid setups (both NVIDIA and AMD), it may be necessary to set following environment variable:

$ export DRI_PRIME=1

For more information, see the PRIME wiki page.

Supported software

|| flashplugin
|| mplayer mplayer2AUR
  • gnome-mplayer — To enable hardware acceleration: Edit > Preferences > Player, then set Video Output to vdpau.
|| gnome-mplayer
  • SMplayer — To enable hardware acceleration: Options > Preferences > General > Video, then set Output driver to vdpau.
|| smplayer
  • bomi — Hardware acceleration can be enabled: Preferences > Video > Hardware acceleration.
https://bomi-player.github.io || bomiAUR bomi-gitAUR
|| mpv
|| vlc