Requirements:
– nvidia proprietary driver installed
– kepler or maxwell (or later) nvidia GPU
– OBS Studio 0.14 or later
Step 1:
Grab the nvEncoder headerFFmpeg 3.1.3 and later includes this header so one does not need to download any nvenc sdk from nvidia if building FFmpeg 3.1.3+.
Otherwise:
Download and extract Nvidia nvenc sdk from: https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk
From that download, copy the file
/Video_Codec_SDK_7.0.1/Samples/nvEncoder/NvEncoder.h
to
/usr/local/include
Step 2:
Download and extract the Nvidia cuda sdk from: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloadsCopy
cuda.h
to
/usr/local/include
Step 3:
Configure and the install ffmpeg with:--enable-nonfree --enable-nvencThis may vary wildly by distro, or you may have your own preferred way to compile and build ffmpeg.
Debian Example
Below are debian specific steps using the latest nvidia driver from nvidia.com which will result in a .deb file installed and ffmpeg executable at /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg
sudo apt build-dep ffmpeg
sudo apt install yasm nasm \
build-essential automake autoconf \
libtool pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev \
checkinstall libavcodec-extra57
git clone git://git.videolan.org/ffmpeg.git
cd ffmpeg
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --extra-version=1+b3 --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu --shlibdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --cc=cc --cxx=g++ --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --enable-shared --disable-decoder=libopenjpeg --disable-decoder=libschroedinger --enable-avresample --enable-avisynth --enable-gnutls --enable-ladspa --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcaca --enable-libcdio --enable-libebur128 --enable-libflite --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libmodplug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-libpulse --enable-librubberband --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libssh --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx265 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzvbi --enable-openal --enable-opengl --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libiec61883 --enable-libzmq --enable-frei0r --enable-chromaprint --enable-libopencv --enable-libx264 --enable-pic --enable-nonfree --enable-nvenc
make -j4
sudo checkinstall
Step 4: OBS Setup
In OBS, there will now be an encoder option NVENC H.264. Now the bitrate can be cranked up to blu-ray or better quality for local recording if you have a recent video card. I’ve got mine set at 50000.
Note that NVENC encoding can be used in other apps as well. For instance in openshot, one can use nvenc for encoding videos.