NVIDIA Video Codec SDK

A comprehensive set of APIs including high-performance tools, samples and documentation for hardware accelerated video encode and decode on Windows and Linux.

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NVIDIA GeForce Now is made possible by leveraging NVENC in the datacenter and streaming the result to end clients

Hardware Based Decoder and Encoder

NVIDIA GPUs contain one or more hardware-based decoder and encoder(s) (separate from the CUDA cores) which provides fully-accelerated hardware-based video decoding and encoding for several popular codecs. With decoding/encoding offloaded, the graphics engine and the CPU are free for other operations.

GPU hardware accelerator engines for video decoding (referred to as NVDEC) and video encoding (referred to as NVENC) support faster than real-time video processing which makes them suitable to be used for transcoding applications, in addition to video playback. Video Codec SDK lets you harness NVENC and NVDEC for real-time 8k 60FPS AV1 and HEVC video on Ada Lovelace architecture.

NVIDIA hardware-based decoder and encoder

NVENC - Hardware-Accelerated Video Encoding

Introducing AV1 encoding with Video Codec SDK 12.0 on NVIDIA’s Ada architecture. AV1 is the state of the art video coding format that supports higher quality with better performance compared to H.264 and HEVC. On Ada, multiple NVENC coupled with AV1 enables encoding 8k video at 60fps alongside a higher number of concurrent sessions. With complete encoding (which is computationally complex) offloaded to NVENC, the graphics engine and the CPU are free for other operations. For example, in a game recording and streaming scenario like streaming to Twitch.tv using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), encoding being completely offloaded to NVENC makes the graphics engine bandwidth fully available for game rendering.

NVENC enables streaming applications at high quality and ultra-low latency without utilizing the CPU, encoding at very high quality for archiving, OTT streaming, web videos, and encoding with ultra-low power consumption per stream (Watts/stream)

Graph showing 2160p30 latency tolerant encoding

Graph showing 1080p30 low latency encoding

Note: These graphs showcases performance on NVIDIA datacenter T4, A10 and L40.

Bitrate savings are BD-BR based on PSNR, average across a large variety of content (several hundreds of video clips), using FFmpeg.

Only datacenter GPUs are presented on the benchmark graphs for clarity but equivalent workstation GPU with same architecture performs similarly. To learn more about the hardware details, the process and software configuration used for generating above data, please refer to this detailed documentation.

Supported Format Details (Click to learn more)

GPU	H.264 (AVCHD) YUV 4:2:0		H.264 (AVCHD) YUV 4:4:4		H.264 (AVCHD) LOSSLESS		H.265 (HEVC) YUV 4:2:0		H.265 (HEVC) YUV 4:4:4		H.265 (HEVC) LOSSLESS		AV1
GPU	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.
Maxwell (1st Gen)*	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Maxwell (2nd Gen)	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Maxwell (GM206)	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	N/A	N/A
Pascal	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	10-bit	8192 x 8192**	10-bit	8192 x 8192**	10-bit	8192 x 8192**	N/A	N/A
Volta	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	10-bit	8192 x 8192	10-bit	8192 x 8192	10-bit	8192 x 8192	N/A	N/A
Turing	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	10-bit	8192 x 8192	10-bit	8192 x 8192	10-bit	8192 x 8192	N/A	N/A
Ampere (A100)	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Ampere (non A100)	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	10-bit	8192 x 8192	10-bit	8192 x 8192	10-bit	8192 x 8192	N/A	N/A
Ada	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 4096	10-bit	8192 x 8192	10-bit	8192 x 8192	10-bit	8192 x 8192	10-bit	8192 x 8192

* Except GM108 and GP108 (not supported)

** Except GP100 (is limited to 4K resolution)

NVDEC - Hardware-Accelerated Video Decoding

NVIDIA GPUs contain a hardware-based decoder (referred to as NVDEC) which provides fully-accelerated hardware-based video decoding for several popular codecs. With complete decoding offloaded to NVDEC the graphics engine and the CPU are free for other operations. NVDEC supports much faster than real-time decoding which makes it suitable to be used for transcoding applications, in addition to video playback applications.

NVDECODE API enables software developers to configure this dedicated hardware video decoder. This dedicated accelerator supports hardware-accelerated decoding of the following video codecs on Windows and Linux platforms: MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264 (AVCHD), H.265 (HEVC), VP8, VP9 and AV1 (see table below for codec support for each GPU generation).

Supported Format Details (Click to learn more)

GPU	*H.265 (HEVC) 4:4:4		H.265 (HEVC) 4:2:0		H.264 (AVCHD) 4:2:0		VP9		VP8		MPEG-2		VC-1		AV1
GPU	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.	MAX Color	MAX Res.
Kepler	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	8-bit	4096 x 4096	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	N/A	N/A
Maxwell (1st Gen)*	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	8-bit	4096 x 4096	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	N/A	N/A
Maxwell (2nd Gen)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	8-bit	4096 x 4096	N/A	N/A	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	N/A	N/A
Maxwell (GM206)	N/A	N/A	10-bit	4096 x 2304	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4096 x 2304	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	N/A	N/A
Pascal	N/A	N/A	12-bit	8192 x 8192**	8-bit	4096 x 4096	12-bit****	8192 x 8192**	8-bit	4096 x 4096***	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	N/A	N/A
Volta	N/A	N/A	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	N/A	N/A
Turing	12-bit	8192 x 8192	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	N/A	N/A
Ampere (A100)	12-bit	8192 x 8192	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	N/A	N/A
Ampere (non A100)	12-bit	8192 x 8192	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	10-bit	8192 x 8192
Ada	12-bit	8192 x 8192	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	12-bit	8192 x 8192	8-bit	4096 x 4096	8-bit	4080 x 4080	8-bit	2048 x 1024	10-bit	8192 x 8192

* Except GM108 (not supported)

** Max resolution support is limited to selected Pascal chips

*** VP8 decode support is limited to selected Pascal chips

**** VP9 10/12 bit decode support is limited to select Pascal chips

Video Codec APIs at NVIDIA

NVIDIA has provided hardware-accelerated video processing on GPUs for over a decade through the NVIDIA Video Codec SDK. This is a comprehensive set of APIs, high-performance tools, samples, and documentation for hardware-accelerated video encode and decode on Windows and Linux.

NVIDIA also supports GPU-accelerated encode and decode through Microsoft’s DirectX Video, a cross-vendor API for Windows developers and Vulkan Video which has both Linux and Windows support. In contrast to the NVIDIA Video Codec SDK, both DirectX Video and Vulkan Video are low-level APIs. While the Video Codec SDK provides automation for C++ developers, DirectX Video and Vulkan Video provide precise control over video streaming through hardware acceleration blocks, empowering applications to efficiently orchestrate system resources.

Whether you prefer DirectX or Vulkan, you can combine flexible GPU-accelerated video encoding and decoding with other GPU acceleration, like 3D and AI, using the language of your choice.

The low-level Vulkan Video extensions are also attractive to developers of popular open-source streaming media frameworks such as GStreamer and FFmpeg both of which are being actively ported to Vulkan Video. The cross-platform availability of Vulkan will enable accelerated GPU processing for these frameworks across multiple platforms without needing to port to multiple proprietary video APIs. Please refer to the Vulkan Video getting started page for more details.

PyNvVideoCodec is another set of APIs introduced in Q4 2023, which provides simple APIs for harnessing video encoding and decoding capabilities when working with videos in Python. PyNvVideoCodec is a library that provides python bindings over C++ APIs for hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding.

Video Codec SDK, DirectX Video, Vulkan Video and PyNvVideoCodec provide complementary support to GPU-accelerated video workflows. NVIDIA will continue to support all listed APIs providing developers with the option to use the ones that best suit their needs.

	Vulkan Video	DirectX Video	NVIDIA Video Codec SDK	PyNvVideoCodec
Platform	Windows and Linux	Windows	Windows and Linux	Windows and Linux
Benefits	Low Level Control Native Vulkan Integration Easy for Vulkan developers Multi Vendor	Low Level Control Native DirectX and Windows Integration Easy for DirectX developers Multi-Vendor	High Level Control Native Integration in custom pipelines Useful for users with less knowledge of Vulkan and Direct X Easy for C, C++ developers Nvidia Proprietary API Comprehensive feature set	Python bindings over C++ Video Codec SDK wrapper classes Easy for Python developers Nvidia Proprietary API
Native API interface	Vulkan Graphics	D3D11 (Decode only) and D3D12	D3D9, D3D10, D3D11, D3D12 (Encode only) CUDA (Encode and decode)	CUDA (Encode and decode)

Partners and Examples

Premiere Pro is the industry-leading video editing application for film, TV, social, and online content. Learn More

Chart showing Adobe Premiere Pro with NVIDIA GPU acceleration

Blackmagic is a leading manufacturer of creative video technology. Dedicated to quality and stability; Blackmagic is world famous for their codecs and affordable high-end quality editing workstations built upon Blackmagic software and hardware.

Visit Blackmagic for detailed product information

Comprimato is a JPEG2000 software codec toolkit offering media & entertainment and geospatial imaging technology company’s life-like viewing experience that result in better enjoyment and more accurate decision-making. The JPEG2000 standard compliant Ultra HD software codec leverages the supercomputing power of GPUs and CPUs to speed up video and image compression by 10x. The codec saves infrastructure costs by 70%, reducing development cycles by 50% and enabling new revenue streams such as Ultra HD, High Dynamic Range (HDR) and High Frame Rate (HFR) video.

Visit Comprimato for detailed product information

DELTACAST develops state-of-the-art products for the professional TV broadcast market, providing a range of cost-effective video cards that, with the SDK software, can be used in OEM products to create professional broadcast custom solutions and products.

Visit DELTACAST for detailed product information

Erlyvideo LLC has been developing software for streaming video since 2010. Our carrier-grade server solutions help business clients capture, process, transcode, archive, and deliver video to millions of subscribers. We are making every effort to research and develop reliable, premium quality products that truly meet customer needs. Customers in more than 100 countries use our products for building IPTV/OTT, CDN, and Video Surveillance as a Service CCTV systems.

Flussonic Media Server is a multi-purpose software solution for launching high load video streaming services. Using Flussonic Media Server you can set up an end-to-end video streaming pipeline of any scale. Flussonic can ingress and egress videos in almost any format, codec, and resolution. It will process and transcode incoming streams and deliver beautiful video to your subscribers. Let your business benefit from the most advanced and efficient video streaming platform.

Visit Flussonic.com for detailed product information

Gcore accelerates AI training, provides comprehensive cloud services, improves content delivery, and protects servers and applications.

Visit Gcore for detailed product information ((https://gcore.com/)

Fastvideo is a world leader in the field of high performance GPU-based image and video processing. Fastvideo team consists of experienced and highly dedicated professionals and it focuses on GPU image processing, algorithm design and parallel computations. Our technologies show unmatched performance in image compression and decompression (JPEG, JPEG2000, Raw Bayer), demosaicing, denoising, tone mapping, color correction, resizing, sharpening, encoding and decoding of video streams in various applications including image and video processing, high speed imaging, machine vision and other camera applications, streaming, digital cinema, 3D and VR, broadcasting, etc.

Visit Fastvideo for detailed product information

MainConcept has been the premier provider of video and audio codecs, plugins and applications to the production, streaming and broadcast industries for three decades. As the technology of choice for some of the most valued brands across the globe, MainConcept supports robust video workflows from ingest through delivery.

The MainConcept® Hybrid GPU HEVC Encoder combines the market-leading MainConcept® HEVC software encoder with the unrivaled performance of NVIDIA RTX architecture, bridging the gap between high-quality software and fast-performing hardware encoding. Leveraging MainConcept’s reliable, market-proven algorithms for rate control and quality encoding with the processing power of NVIDIA, the MainConcept Hybrid GPU HEVC Encoder gives you best-in-class image quality (up to 8K) at tremendous speed.

"Enabling access to HEVC/H.265 video encoding in hardware allows our customers to continue working in the well-known MainConcept environment with its rich portfolio of multiplexers and auxiliary components, while benefiting from the computational power of NVIDIA GPUs. Using NVIDIA GPUs for HEVC/H.265 encoding increases server density for processing multiple video streams on one system while still having enough CPU cycles available for applications." Deacon Johnson, SVP Global Sales - Technology Licensing for MainConcept

Learn more about MainConcept Hybrid GPU HEVC Encoder

Medialooks, founded in 2005, provides broadcast customers with a high-level software development kit to quickly build playout automation, virtual studio and video capture solutions. Customers include PlayBox Technologies, Arvato Systems, Masterplay, Winjay, Etere, Axel Technology, Xeus Media, Wolftech and Broadcast Play.

Visit Medialooks for detailed product information

Multicamera.Systems LLC is a developer of video acquisition and recording software for machine vision cameras, catering for variety of industries: science labs, VR, sport analytics autonomous cars and military. "The Recorder" software is the only software on the market capable of recording h.26x compressed video at thousands of frames per second thanks to our own "GPUSqueeze" library supporting multi-GPU video compression. This library is now available for third party developers.

"The Recorder" software major features:

unparalleled support for multi-camera and multi-PC setups
compatible with all machine vision camera types: USB-Vision, GigE-Vision, CoaXPress and CLHS
full remote control of recording system with real time video streaming
recording to Uncompressed, M-JPEG and H.26x formats at any frame rates
easy integration with user’s own modules for online and offline image processing

"GPUSqueeze" library major features:

can be easily integrated into user’s own application to enable high speed and multi-stream video encoding and transcoding
the library can accept bayer images and performs high quality demosaicing
all image processing is done purely on GPU and performance scales linearly with the increase of number of GPUs in a system
the library supports mixed GPU configuration (e.g. GTX 1660 + RTX 2080) allowing extra flexibility and cost saving to end users

NVIDIA's high performance Video Engine alongside with CUDA enabled us to develop “GPUSqueeze” library and opened up the possibility of long high speed video recordings for the users of “The Recorder” software and can greatly increate performance of video encoding or transcoding applications being developed by users. Dmitry Semiannikov, Founder and Director, Multicamera.Systems LLC

Visit Multicamera.systems for more information on the "GPUSqueeze" library
Visit Medialooks for detailed product information on "The Recorder" software

Norpix is a developer of digital video recording software for scientific, machine vision, military and general purpose digital video acquisition applications. We market the industries number 1 DVR software Streampix for single or multiple camera acquisition. We also develop an SDK and CUDA JPEG compression library that runs on NVIDIA GPU’s.

Benefit of the product:

Capture in real time lossy JPEG with a quality factor varying from 1 to 99%.
Compress up to 3.0 billion pixels in monochrome.
Up to 2.2 billion pixels in color.
Compatible usb3Vision, GigE Vision, 10 GigE Vision, Camera Link and CoaXPress cameras.
Supports multiple nVidia GPU for parallel processing load balancing over multiple cameras.
Stand along C/C++ libraries and run time.

Visit Norpix for detailed product information

NVIDIA GeForce NOW™ is an on-demand service that connects you to NVIDIA’s cloud-gaming supercomputers to stream PC games to your SHIELD device at up to 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second.

Learn more about GeForce NOW

OBS Studio is a free and open source software designed for capturing, compositing, encoding, recording, and live streaming video content, efficiently.

Learn more about OBS Studio

BLOG - New GeForce-Optimized OBS and RTX Encoder Enables Pro-Quality Broadcasting on a Single PC

Based in Hong Kong and with a development center in Manila, Philippines. More than 8 Million people and businesses use SplitmediaLabs products to grow their communities, create innovative content and connect with other players from around the world. SplitmediaLabs has helped usher in the new age of live streaming gameplay since its creation back in 2009 and is the developer XSplit, Challonge and Player.me.

XSplit Broadcaster: A simple yet powerful live streaming software and recording software that powers countless live streams and recordings around the world. XSplit Broadcaster is the perfect solution for producing and delivering rich video content.

With NVIDIA NVENC, single PC game streaming with XSplit has never been easier. By natively integrating the NVIDIA Video Codec SDK, XSplit is able to offload the video encoding for both the recording and the live stream from the CPU to the GPU, allowing our users to produce high quality content without compromising on gaming performance. Miguel Molina, Director of Developer Relations, SplitmediaLabs Limited

Learn more about XSplit

Streamline is a reference system design for a premium quality, white label, end to end live streaming system from HDMI / HD-SDI capture all the way to a player on a CDN that works on web, iOS, and Android devices. Using commodity computer hardware, free software, and AWS, it’s an affordable way to learn how to build a very high quality live streaming system.

Learn more about Streamline

Telestream® specializes in products that make it possible to get video content to any audience regardless of how it is created, distributed or viewed. Throughout the entire digital media lifecycle, from capture to viewing, for consumers through high-end professionals, Telestream products range from desktop components and cross-platform applications to fully-automated, enterprise-class digital media transcoding and workflow systems. Telestream enables users in a broad range of business environments to leverage the value of their video content.

Visit Telestream for detailed product information

Wowza Media Systems™ is the recognized gold standard of streaming, with more than 22,000 customers in 170+ countries. By reducing the complexities of video and audio delivery to any device, Wowza™ enables organizations to expand their reach and more deeply engage their audiences, in industries ranging from education to broadcasting. Service providers, direct customers and partners worldwide trust Wowza products to provide robust, customizable and scalable streaming solutions—with powerful APIs and SDKs to meet organizations’ evolving streaming needs. Wowza was founded in 2005, is privately held, and is headquartered in Colorado.

Visit Wowza for detailed product information

Beamr (NASDAQ:BMR) is a video technology and image science software company. Beamr is a leading provider of video encoding, transcoding, and optimization software solutions that enable high quality, performance, and bitrate efficiency for Live and VOD video services.

Since 2021 Beamr and Nvidia have been working together to port Beamr's Content Adaptive BitRate (CABR) and seamlessly integrate it with Nvidia's NVENC video encoder to create an accelerated video optimization solution. This guarantees the highest video quality at the lowest bitrate possible and is available to all NVENC encoders.

In Oct 2023 Beamr launched a cloud service running over Nvidia's NVENC with the vision of democratizing videooptimization at large scale.

Learn more about Beamr

Video Codec SDK in the News

Video Codec 12.1 accelerates video creation and streaming

New Video Creation and Streaming Features Accelerated by the NVIDIA Video Codec SDK

Video Codec SDK 12.1 is available now, bringing improvements to split encoding and a new low-level NVENC API. Learn about the new features and how they have been used to accelerate video creation and streaming.

AV1 Encoding on NVIDIA Ada Lovelace Architecture

Improving Video Quality and Performance with AV1 and NVIDIA Ada Lovelace Architecture

AV1 is the new gold standard video format, with superior efficiency and quality compared to older H.264 and H.265 formats. It is the most recent royalty-free, efficient video encoder standardized by the Alliance for Open Media.

AV1 Encoding and FRUC: Video Performance Boosts and Higher Fidelity on the NVIDIA Ada Architecture

Updates to Video Codec SDK, including AV1 encoding on the new Ada GPU generation and updates to Optical Flow SDK, including the new frame rate up conversion library, are announced at GTC.

GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs: Ushering In A New Era of Video Content With AV1 Decode

NVIDIA Video Technologies in Ada

NVIDIA GPUs contain dedicated hardware for video encoding, decoding, JPEG sill image decoding and optical flow computation. This talk covers latest features supported by Ada GPUs as well as software updates such as new SDK features, use-cases etc.

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Cut to the Video: Adobe Premiere Pro Helps Content Creators Work Faster with GPU-Accelerated Exports

With NVIDIA encoder acceleration in Adobe Premiere Pro, editors can export high-resolution videos up to 5x faster than on CPU.

Video Codec SDK Connect with Experts Series

Q&A style sessions provide an overview of the two SDKs including new features and enhancements, provide tips for efficient use, and address any open questions from developers.

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Resources

GPU Support Matrix

Get Started Developing with Video Codec SDK.

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