Nvidia hardware video encoding not working

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Hello. I am trying to get Nvidia hardware encoding working, specifically for ALVR but we may use FFmpeg to test if it’s working as that’s a more widely known program. I have an RTX 3060 card on a desktop computer running Endeavour OS (Arch Linux). My Driver version is 525.89.02 and CUDA version 12 (pacman shows cuda 11.8.0-1 but nvidia-smi outputs CUDA version 12). I followed the Arch Wiki and installed nvidia-utils. The modules are loaded:

$ lsmod | grep nvidia
nvidia_drm             73728  7
nvidia_uvm           2908160  0
nvidia_modeset       1515520  9 nvidia_drm
nvidia              61444096  480 nvidia_uvm,nvidia_modeset
video                  65536  1 nvidia_modeset

Trying to render a video with FFmpeg using this command ffmpeg -y -hwaccel cuda -i bigbuckbunny.mp4 bigbuckbunny2.mp4 works, but uses CPU. I compiled FFmpeg myself following Nvidia’s instructions and tried again and got this error:

Device creation failed: -12.
No device available for decoder: device type cuda needed for codec h264.

Also, ffmpeg -help encoder=h264_nvenc returns error Codec 'h264_nvenc' is not recognized by FFmpeg.. I have also installed x265, libde265 and nvenc packages from the AUR but the same issue still occurs. What can I do to get Nvidia H265 Hardware encoding working? Thanks in advance.

2

Please post the output of
ffmpeg -encoders |grep -i nvidia

3 
$ ffmpeg -encoders |grep -i nvidia
ffmpeg version N-109896-g156ca86569 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 12.2.1 (GCC) 20230201
  configuration: --enable-nonfree --enable-cuda-nvcc --enable-libnpp --extra-cflags=-I/opt/cuda/include --extra-ldflags=-L/opt/cuda/lib64 --disable-static --enable-shared
  libavutil      58.  3.100 / 58.  3.100
  libavcodec     60.  4.100 / 60.  4.100
  libavformat    60.  4.100 / 60.  4.100
  libavdevice    60.  2.100 / 60.  2.100
  libavfilter     9.  4.100 /  9.  4.100
  libswscale      7.  2.100 /  7.  2.100
  libswresample   4. 11.100 /  4. 11.100

Also, ffmpeg -h encoder=h264_nvenc returns:

$ ffmpeg -h encoder=h264_nvenc
ffmpeg version N-109896-g156ca86569 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 12.2.1 (GCC) 20230201
  configuration: --enable-nonfree --enable-cuda-nvcc --enable-libnpp --extra-cflags=-I/opt/cuda/include --extra-ldflags=-L/opt/cuda/lib64 --disable-static --enable-shared
  libavutil      58.  3.100 / 58.  3.100
  libavcodec     60.  4.100 / 60.  4.100
  libavformat    60.  4.100 / 60.  4.100
  libavdevice    60.  2.100 / 60.  2.100
  libavfilter     9.  4.100 /  9.  4.100
  libswscale      7.  2.100 /  7.  2.100
  libswresample   4. 11.100 /  4. 11.100
Codec 'h264_nvenc' is not recognized by FFmpeg.
4

nvenc wasn’t built into it. Rather use the standard arch ffmpeg.

5

That worked. Weird that Nvidia’s documentation doesn’t instruct how to compile FFmpeg with Nvenc support.

6

Those instructions are from a time when nvidia first released the free headers so are likely much outdated and only work with a years-old ffmpeg source release. Nowadays, most distros include this.

7

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