How to install / compile NVENC in ubuntu?

Question

I see support for nvidia NVENC in this document, but it seems confusing, some step by step? or PPA with ffmpeg-nvenc for ubuntu?

http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/redist/ffmpeg/1511-patch/FFMPEG-with-NVIDIA-Acceleration-on-Ubuntu_UG_v01.pdf

Answer 1

The good news is that if you compile your own copy of FFmpeg from this well tested guide:

• Compile FFmpeg on Ubuntu, Debian, or Mint
  https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/CompilationGuide/Ubuntu

You will now automatically have access to the nvenc encoder. This is courtesy of a decision by the FFmpeg developers to include the appropriate libraries in the source tree:

• avcodec/nvenc: include nvEncodeAPI v7 SDK header
  http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=commit;h=325e56479ff64c884f3bcccf922a7f7163488b89

Note: Bear in mind that you will also need to have NVidia driver version 367.35 or greater installed on your system...

Test your own copy of FFmpeg as follows:

andrew@ilium~$ ffmpeg -encoders 2>/dev/null | grep nvenc
 V..... h264_nvenc           NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... nvenc                NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... nvenc_h264           NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... nvenc_hevc           NVIDIA NVENC hevc encoder (codec hevc)
 V..... hevc_nvenc           NVIDIA NVENC hevc encoder (codec hevc)
andrew@ilium~$ 

And if you see a similar picture as above, and you have a well supported graphics card, you are right to go :)