Libav Finally Lands VDPAU Support For Accelerated HEVC Decoding

While FFmpeg has offered hardware-accelerated HEVC decoding using NVIDIA's VDPAU API since last summer, this support for the FFmpeg-forked libav landed just today.

In June was when FFmpeg added support to its libavcodec for handling HEVC/H.265 video decoding via NVIDIA's Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix interface. Around that same time, developer Philip Langdale who had done the FFmpeg patch, also submitted the patch for Libav for decoding HEVC content through VDPAU where supported.

A half-year later, the patch has landed in Libav Git. So if you are using Libav, you can now enjoy HEVC decoding with VDPAU.

On the hardware side, HEVC decoding requires NVIDIA GPUs supporting PureVideo Feature Set F, which is currently limited to the GeForce GTX 950 / GTX 960 graphics cards.