NVIDIA Video Codec SDK is a comprehensive set of APIs, high-performance tools, sample applications, reusable code, and documentation for hardware-accelerated video encoding and decoding on Windows and Linux. It leverages NVIDIA GPUs to provide fully accelerated hardware-based video processing for several popular codecs.

Features

• Hardware-Based Decoder and Encoder: NVIDIA GPUs contain hardware-based decoders (NVDEC) and encoders (NVENC) separate from CUDA cores, enabling fully accelerated video decoding and encoding.
• High Performance: Supports faster-than-real-time video processing, suitable for video transcoding, game broadcasting, virtual desktops, cloud gaming, and more.
• Wide Codec Support: Includes support for H.264, HEVC (H.265), AV1, MPEG-2, VC-1, VP8, and VP9 codecs.
• Advanced Capabilities: Introduces ultra-high quality (UHQ) mode for HEVC and AV1, 422 progressive and interlaced encode and decode support, and MV-HEVC for stereoscopic and 3D views.
• Cross-Platform: Available on Windows and Linux, with support for DirectX and Vulkan Video APIs.
• Python Bindings: PyNvVideoCodec provides simple APIs for video encoding and decoding in Python, with direct interoperability with deep learning frameworks like PyTorch.

Benefits

• Optimized Performance: Offloads video processing to GPU, freeing up CPU and compute engine for other operations.
• Efficiency: Directly integrates video decoding and encoding with GPU compute, reducing memory/PCIe transfers.
• Versatility: Suitable for a wide range of applications, from secure video playback to deep learning video data curation.
• Scalability: Multiple NVENCs can achieve high performance, including 8K video at 60FPS+.
• Developer-Friendly: Provides comprehensive support for GPU-accelerated video workflows with rich APIs and reusable code.