Graphics Cards

Definition

• VA-API (Video Acceleration API): The VA API is to be implemented by device drivers to offer end-user software, such as VLC media player or GStreamer, access to available video acceleration hardware. VA-API is developed by Intel
• VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix): a competing API designed by NVIDIA, can potentially also be used as a backend for the VA API. If this is supported, any software that supports VA API then also indirectly supports a subset of VDPAU

For more information Hardware Video Acceleration

Intel Graphics Card

To see the name of the architecture, run the following command. Note that vainfo is for verifying the support of VA API:

vainfo

or more precisely:

vainfo 2> /dev/null | grep -i "driver version"

If you want to see the exact model of graphics card:

lspci | grep -i vga

For example mine is Broadwell. It completely supports decoding VP8, but it partially supports VP9. In other words, to decode VP9 by both CPU and Graphics Card I need to install libva-intel-hybrid-driver in Fedora. After that vainfo shows VP9. In Fedora 29 when video player tries to do hardware-decoding, it hangs. The solution is to exclude VP9 for hardware decoding (for mpv see --hwdec-codecs flag) or remove libva-intel-hybrid-driver.

Nvidia Graphics Card

To verify VDPAU run the following command:

vdpauinfo