# elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver

A VA-API implemention using NVIDIA's NVDEC

Repository: https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/nvidia-vaapi-driver
Language: C
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Topics: vaapi, nvdec, nvidia
Last push: 2026-07-17T08:07:11+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 82/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 93, release rhythm 59, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 1752, "days_push": 47, "days_rel": 116, "gap_med": 144.5, "n_releases_24m": 5}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1687, forks 90 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:22.170861+00:00)

## What it is
A VA-API driver implementation that uses NVIDIA's NVDEC hardware decoder as its backend, written in C. It is primarily designed to enable hardware-accelerated video decoding in Firefox on Linux systems with NVIDIA GPUs.

## Use cases
- enable hardware video decoding in Firefox on NVIDIA GPUs
- decode AV1, H.264, HEVC, VP8, VP9, MPEG-2 and VC-1 via NVDEC
- use vainfo to inspect NVIDIA codec support
- accelerate video playback in MPV via VA-API
- avoid CPU-based video decoding on Linux with NVIDIA drivers

## When to choose
- you use Firefox on Linux with an NVIDIA GPU and want GPU video decoding
- you want VA-API applications to leverage NVDEC for hardware decode
- you need YUV444 HEVC decoding on Turing or newer cards

## When to avoid
- you need hardware video encoding, which is not supported
- you need MPEG-4 or JPEG decoding
- you use applications other than Firefox/MPV where the driver may not work correctly

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: video-processing, graphics
- domain: media, graphics, operating-systems
- platform: -
- tags: vaapi, nvdec, nvidia, hardware-video-decoding, firefox, linux

## Member repositories
- elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver (main) score 82

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:22.170861+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:38:51.216779+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:22.170861+00:00, sha 7f56567141db)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.