vdpauinfo

Display VDPAU video acceleration capabilities

TLDR

Display VDPAU capabilities

$ vdpauinfo

Query a specific X display

$ DISPLAY=:0 vdpauinfo

Show decoder capabilities only

$ vdpauinfo | grep -A20 "Decoder capabilities"

vdpauinfo queries and displays the capabilities of the VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) driver. It shows which video codecs can be hardware-accelerated and at what resolutions.The output includes API version, decoder profiles supported (MPEG1, MPEG2, H.264, VC1, HEVC, VP9, AV1), maximum resolution and macroblock limits for each codec, video surface formats, and output surface capabilities.This tool verifies that VDPAU is properly configured and helps determine which video content can benefit from GPU acceleration on NVIDIA hardware.

OUTPUT SECTIONS

API version: VDPAU API and driver implementation versions.Decoder capabilities: Supported codecs with resolution limits.Video surface formats: Supported color formats for decoding.Output surface formats: Formats for video output.Bitmap surface formats: Overlay and OSD capabilities.

ENVIRONMENT

DISPLAY

The X display to query. Defaults to the current display.

VDPAU_DRIVER

Override the VDPAU backend driver (e.g., nvidia, r600, radeonsi). Useful when multiple GPU drivers are available.

CAVEATS

Not limited to NVIDIA; VDPAU is also supported by AMD GPUs via the Mesa va_gl or radeonsi backends. Requires a running X server. Some newer codecs (VP9, AV1) require recent driver and GPU support. Output varies by GPU generation and driver version.

HISTORY

vdpauinfo was created as a diagnostic tool for NVIDIA's VDPAU API, introduced in 2009 with GeForce 8 series GPUs. VDPAU enabled GPU-accelerated video decoding on Linux, significantly reducing CPU usage for video playback. The tool helps users and developers verify hardware capabilities.