Video Player w/ Hardware Accelerated AV1 Decoding on Linux (Nvidia GPU)

Question As the title suggests, I'm looking for a video player that can playback AV1 encoded video files with hardware acceleration via an Nvidia GPU on Linux (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS). Personally I've used VLC Player on Windows for like 2 decades, and since v3.0.18 it's had Hardware Accelerated AV1 Decoding support on Windows. I install it with winget install VLC.VLC and it just works, no additional configuration needed. On Linux however... when selecting any of the "Hardware-accelerated decoding" options I get either poor performance or a black screen. - VA-API video decoder - Poor playback performance (anything over 1080p freezes). - VDPAU video decoder - Black screen on all codecs. - Disabled - Poor playback performance (anything over 1080p freezes). I installed an open source VAAPI driver for Nvidia on Linux. But I can't find anyone using it for anything outside of web browsers. I'm looking for a Video Player Desktop application that'll playback AV1 smoothly, at this point I'm open to switching of VLC Player if anything else can get the job done. Relevant System Info - OS - Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (X11) - Motherboard - ASRock Taichi X399M - CPU - AMD Threadripper 2970WX - GPU - Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti
6 Replies
ninbura
ninburaOP6mo ago
Answering my own question - Use mpv. It relies on FFmpeg, and the version installable with apt on Ubuntu 24.04 is compiled with Nvidia headers. I created a config with these options, works perfectly.
# ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
hwdec=nvdec
vo=gpu
# ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
hwdec=nvdec
vo=gpu
Addie
Addie6mo ago
I was just about to suggest MPV lol
ninbura
ninburaOP6mo ago
Weird how hard it was for me to find this answer, been trying to figure this out for months. I'm sure I just wasn't using the right queries, but also Linux things. Also note - I had to use the apt version of mpv, I initially installed mpv with snap and couldn't get it working. I know snap sandboxes stuff, probably a way to configure access of a snap package, but I couldn't figure it out. sudo apt install ffmpeg mpv easiest for sure.
gregandcin
gregandcin6mo ago
Snaps are very hit or miss, not a fan lol. There are several MPV frontends you can try as well. I would suggest Celluloid since you're probably on GNOME
gregandcin
gregandcin6mo ago
GitHub
GitHub - celluloid-player/celluloid: A simple GTK+ frontend for mpv
A simple GTK+ frontend for mpv. Contribute to celluloid-player/celluloid development by creating an account on GitHub.
ninbura
ninburaOP6mo ago
Oh that's interesting, I'll check it out. Thanks 🙏
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