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# VDPAU

From ArchWiki

Summary
Explains VDPAU support in various hardware and software components
Related
VA-API
XvMC

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:

- AMD Radeon 9500 and newer GPUs are supported by the ati-dri package, available in the official repositories.

- Intel GMA 4500 series and newer GPUs are supported by the libvdpau-va-gl package (available in the AUR) together with the libva-intel-driver.

- NVIDIA GeForce 400 series and newer GPUs are supported by the nouveau-dri package, available in the official repositories. It uses the nouveau-fw package, 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 the libvdpau-va-gl package (available in the AUR) together with the libva-xvba-driver package. It uses the catalyst-utils driver for Radeon HD 5000 series and newer, and catalyst-legacy-utils for Radeon HD 4000 series.

- NVIDIA GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs are supported by the nvidia-utils package, available in the official repositories.

### Supported formats

| ati-dri | libvdpau-va-gl with libva-intel-driver | nouveau-dri | libvdpau-va-gl with libva-xvba-driver | nvidia-utils
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
MPEG2 decoding | AMD Radeon 9500 and newer | Intel GMA 4500 and newer | Nvidia GeForce 400 and newer | AMD Radeon HD 4000 and newer | Nvidia GeForce 8 and newer
MPEG4 decoding | AMD Radeon HD 6000 and newer | - | Nvidia GeForce 400 and newer | AMD Radeon HD 6000 and newer | Nvidia GeForce 200 and newer
H264 decoding | AMD Radeon HD 4000 and newer | Intel GMA 45001, Ironlake Graphics and newer | Nvidia GeForce 400 and newer | AMD Radeon HD 4000 and newer | Nvidia GeForce 8 and newer
VC1 decoding | AMD Radeon HD 4000 and newer | Intel Sandy Bridge Graphics and newer | Nvidia GeForce 400 and newer | AMD Radeon HD 4000 and newer | Nvidia GeForce 8 and newer

1Supported by the libva-driver-intel-g45-h264 package. See H.264 decoding on GMA 4500 for instructions and caveats.

### Configuration

The libvdpau-va-gl driver (for Intel Graphics or AMD Catalyst) needs to be enabled manually. To enable it, create the following file:

    /etc/profile.d/vdpau_vaapi.sh

    #!/bin/sh
    export VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl

make it executable:

    # chmod +x /etc/profile.d/vdpau_vaapi.sh

and reboot or relogin.

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

    $ vdpauinfo

## Supported software

### Adobe Flash Player

In order to enable hardware based video decoding, add the following line to the `/etc/adobe/mms.cfg` file:

    EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1

### MPlayer

Install mplayer or mplayer2 package, available in the official repositories.

    $ mplayer -vo vdpau, -vc ffmpeg12vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau,ffh264vdpau,ffodivxvdpau, foobar.mpeg

Warning: The `ffodivxvdpau` codec is only supported by the most recent series of NVIDIA hardware. Consider omitting it based on your specific hardware.

- -vo - Select vdpau video output driver
- -vc - Select vdpau video codecs

MPlayer based players:

- gnome-mplayer: to enable hardware acceleration: `Edit -> Preferences -> Player`, then set Video Output to "vdpau".
- smplayer: to enable hardware acceleration: `Options -> Preferences -> General -> Video`, then set Output driver to "vdpau".

### VLC media player

Install vlc package, available in the official repositories.

To enable hardware acceleration: `Tools -> Preferences -> Input & Codecs`, then set Hardware-accelerated decoding to "Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU)".

Retrieved from "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=VDPAU&oldid=279881"
Categories:

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