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I wanted to compile a variant of mplayer and came across these options: VAAPI VDPAU.

I once read somewhere that one of these is for the newer graphic cards (like new gforce GT) and overlaps the other. Or I am totally wrong and they are different technologies for different hardware?

Anthon
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r004
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1 Answers1

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They both are used and supports different set of codecs. Even more some va-api drivers run nvdpau interfaces and vice versa.

Archlinux wiki is good at explaining some basic things with its tables, even non distro specific stuff, which aplies to many distros: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VA-API https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VDPAU

IBr
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  • But if you have a new geforce GT series for example you should only enable VDPAU. yes? – r004 Feb 19 '14 at 10:04
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    Yes nvidia is better at handling VDPAU: rule of thumb, if you going to use nvidia use VDPAU, otherwise chose any of them - VAAPI is more universal, VDPAU is supported on newer devices and ads few features, though you have most to gain from nvidia cards, others use VAAPI to provide VDPAU. XVBA is amd technology and is third option in mplayer. – IBr Feb 19 '14 at 13:46