# VDPAU

Related articles

- 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 together with the libva-intel-driver.

- NVIDIA GeForce 8 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 official repositories) together with the libva-xvba-driver package. It uses the catalyst-utils driver for Radeon HD 5000 series and newer, and catalyst-total-hd234k 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 | --2 | Nvidia GeForce 8 and newer | --2 | Nvidia GeForce 8 and newer
MPEG4 decoding | AMD Radeon HD 6000 and newer | -- | Nvidia GeForce 200 and newer | --2 | Nvidia GeForce 200 and newer
H264 decoding | AMD Radeon HD 4000 and newer | Intel GMA 45001, Ironlake Graphics and newer | Nvidia GeForce 8 and newer | AMD Radeon HD 4000 and newer | Nvidia GeForce 8 and newer
VC1 decoding | AMD Radeon HD 4000 and newer | --2 | Nvidia GeForce 8200, 8300, 8400, 9300, 200 and newer | --2 | Nvidia GeForce 8 and newer

1Supported by the libva-driver-intel-g45-h264 package, which is available in the AUR. See H.264 decoding on GMA 4500 for instructions and caveats.

2VA GL driver doesn't support any other hardware decoder than H264 (situation in 2014-06-21 master, and 0.3.x)

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

    $ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i vdpau
    (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

- Adobe Flash Player: see Browser plugins#Adobe Flash Player.

- MPlayer/mplayer2:

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

  Note: The `ffodivxvdpau` codec is only supported by the most recent series of NVIDIA hardware. Consider omitting it based on your specific hardware.
  `-vo` option selects VDPAU video output driver, `-vc` option selects VDPAU video codecs.

- 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`.
- cmplayer - To enable hardware acceleration: Tools > Preferences > Hardware acceleration, then set Video Output to `vdpau` and enable Use hardware-accelerated decoding.

- mpv: see Mpv#Hardware_Decoding.

- VLC media player: see VLC media player#Harware acceleration support.

Categories:

- Graphics
- X Server