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Mattscreative edited this page Dec 5, 2025 · 2 revisions

Arch Linux Hardware Acceleration Guide

Complete beginner-friendly guide to hardware acceleration on Arch Linux, including VAAPI, VDPAU, GPU acceleration for video playback, encoding, and browser acceleration.

Table of Contents

  1. Understanding Hardware Acceleration
  2. VAAPI Setup
  3. VDPAU Setup
  4. Video Player Configuration
  5. Browser Acceleration
  6. Troubleshooting

Understanding Hardware Acceleration

What is Hardware Acceleration?

Hardware acceleration uses GPU for video processing.

Benefits:

  • Lower CPU usage
  • Better performance
  • Power savings
  • Smooth playback

Acceleration APIs

Available APIs:

  • VAAPI: Video Acceleration API (Intel/AMD)
  • VDPAU: Video Decode and Presentation API (NVIDIA)
  • NVDEC/NVENC: NVIDIA decode/encode

VAAPI Setup

Install VAAPI

Install packages:

# Intel VAAPI
sudo pacman -S intel-media-driver libva-intel-driver

# AMD VAAPI
sudo pacman -S libva-mesa-driver

# VAAPI utils
sudo pacman -S libva-utils

Verify VAAPI

Check VAAPI:

# List VAAPI devices
vainfo

# Check codecs
vainfo --display drm --codecs

VDPAU Setup

Install VDPAU

Install packages:

# NVIDIA VDPAU
sudo pacman -S libvdpau libvdpau-va-gl

# VDPAU info
sudo pacman -S vdpauinfo

Verify VDPAU

Check VDPAU:

# Check VDPAU
vdpauinfo

Video Player Configuration

MPV

Configure MPV:

# Edit MPV config
vim ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf

Add:

# Hardware acceleration
hwdec=auto
vo=gpu
gpu-context=wayland

VLC

Configure VLC:

# VLC > Tools > Preferences > Input/Codecs
# Hardware-accelerated decoding: Automatic

FFmpeg

Use FFmpeg:

# Hardware decode
ffmpeg -hwaccel vaapi -hwaccel_device /dev/dri/renderD128 -i input.mp4 output.mp4

Browser Acceleration

Firefox

Enable acceleration:

# Edit about:config
# Set:
media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled = true
media.ffvpx.enabled = false

Chromium

Enable acceleration:

# Launch with flags
chromium --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder

Troubleshooting

Acceleration Not Working

Check drivers:

# Check VAAPI
vainfo

# Check VDPAU
vdpauinfo

# Check GPU
glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"

Codec Issues

Install codecs:

# Install codecs
sudo pacman -S gstreamer-vaapi

Summary

This guide covered VAAPI, VDPAU, video player configuration, browser acceleration, and troubleshooting.

Next Steps

This guide is based on the ArchWiki. For the most up-to-date information, always refer to the official ArchWiki.

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