Hardware Acceleration¶

MediaX supports hardware-accelerated video encoding and decoding on a variety of platforms and GPU hardware.

Supported Platforms¶

Acceleration Backends¶

MediaX uses native backends to access hardware encoders and decoders. The following backends are available depending on your hardware:

Platform / Backend Matrix¶

CMake Build Options¶

Enable hardware acceleration at build time:

# Intel/AMD VAAPI
cmake -DVAAPI_SUPPORTED=ON ..

# CUDA colourspace acceleration
cmake -DBUILD_CUDA=ON ..

# All options combined
cmake -DVAAPI_SUPPORTED=ON -DBUILD_CUDA=ON ..

Intel VAAPI Setup¶

Install Drivers¶

# Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04
sudo apt install -y \
    intel-media-va-driver \
    libva-dev

Verify Installation¶

# Check VA-API support
vainfo

Usage¶

#include "h264/vaapi/rtp_h264_vaapi_payloader.h"
#include "h265/vaapi/rtp_h265_vaapi_payloader.h"

// H.264 with VAAPI
mediax::rtp::h264::vaapi::RtpH264VaapiPayloader h264_payloader;

// H.265 with VAAPI
mediax::rtp::h265::vaapi::RtpH265VaapiPayloader h265_payloader;

Native VAAPI AV1¶

MediaX includes a native VAAPI AV1 backend that uses libva directly. This is automatically built when CMake detects libva (LIBVA_FOUND).

Requirements¶

• Decode: Intel 11th gen+ or AMD RDNA2+
• Encode: Intel 12th gen+ or AMD RDNA3+

Verify Support¶

# Check for AV1 profiles
vainfo 2>&1 | grep -i av1

# You should see entries like:
#   VAProfileAV1Profile0   : VAEntrypointVLD        (decode)
#   VAProfileAV1Profile0   : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP  (encode)

Usage¶

#include "av1/vaapi/rtp_av1_vaapi_payloader.h"
#include "av1/vaapi/rtp_av1_vaapi_depayloader.h"

// AV1 encode + transmit (native VAAPI)
mediax::rtp::av1::vaapi::RtpAv1VaapiPayloader av1_payloader;

// AV1 receive + decode (native VAAPI)
mediax::rtp::av1::vaapi::RtpAv1VaapiDepayloader av1_depayloader;

// Check availability at runtime
if (mediax::rtp::av1::vaapi::RtpAv1VaapiPayloader::IsVaapiAvailable()) {
  // Hardware AV1 encoding is available
}

Performance Comparison¶

Typical encoding performance for 1920×1080 @ 30fps:

CUDA Colourspace Acceleration¶

MediaX can use CUDA for GPU-accelerated colourspace conversions (RGB ↔ YUV, scaling, etc.) independently of video codec acceleration:

cmake -DBUILD_CUDA=ON ..

Supported conversions include:

• RGB24 ↔ YUV422
• RGB24 ↔ Mono8/Mono16
• NV12 → BGRA / RGB
• YUV → ARGB
• Bilinear scaling (BGRA)

CUDA acceleration requires an NVIDIA GPU and the CUDA toolkit.

AVX2 Colourspace Acceleration¶

On x86_64 platforms (Ubuntu 22.04/24.04), MediaX automatically detects AVX2 support at runtime and uses SIMD-accelerated colourspace conversions when available. No build flags are required — AVX2 is compiled as a separate object library with -mavx2 and dispatched via CPUID at startup.

AVX2-accelerated functions:

On CPUs without AVX2 (or on ARM platforms), these functions automatically fall back to the optimised scalar CPU implementation. No application code changes are needed.

Platform Availability¶

Troubleshooting¶

No Hardware Acceleration Detected¶

1. Verify driver installation with vainfo
2. Ensure the correct CMake option is enabled (-DVAAPI_SUPPORTED=ON)

Fallback to Software Encoding¶

If hardware encoding fails, MediaX falls back to OpenH264 software encoding. Check build output for warnings about missing hardware support.

VAAPI Permission Denied¶

# Add user to video and render groups
sudo usermod -aG video,render $USER
# Log out and back in

Support¶

• Website: https://astutesys.com/support
• Email: support@astutesys.com