Checking for NVENC support

Nvidia NVENC support comes with HandBrake in some distros, to check first make sure you have at least

• GeForce GTX Pascal (1050+)
• RTX Turing (1650+, 2060+)
• or later GPU.
• drivers are updated to at least 418.81 or later.

Testing if HandBrake recognizes your GPU - Run

HandBrakeCLI --help | grep -A12 "Select video encoder" or HandBrakeCLI --help > /tmp/HandBrakeHelp && grep -A12 "Select video encoder" /tmp/HandBrakeHelp

into your ssh/terminal window

If NVENC is enabled should give something similar to

   -e, --encoder <string>  Select video encoder:
                               x264
                               x264_10bit
                               nvenc_h264
                               x265
                               x265_10bit
                               x265_12bit
                               nvenc_h265
                               nvenc_h265_10bit
                               mpeg4
                               mpeg2
                               VP8
                               VP9
HandBrake has exited.

You can also check with HandBrakeCLI --version and it should output

[23:37:19] Compile-time hardening features are enabled
[23:37:19] nvenc: version 12.0 is available
[23:37:19] nvdec: is not compiled into this build
[23:37:19] hb_init: starting libhb thread
[23:37:19] thread 7f002300e700 started ("libhb")
HandBrake 20230130172537-a5238f484-master

Cant see those options ?

If you don't see the extra options for nvenc then you will need to build HandBrakeCLI from source. instructions can be found here:

First add all the dependencies from here: https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/developer/install-dependencies-ubuntu.html

and then when ready build handbrake following instructions from here: https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/developer/build-linux.html

Installing NVIDIA drivers:

We recommended to do a driver update immediately after installing ubuntu

1. Installing the drivers on servers and/or for computing purposes sudo ubuntu-drivers install --gpgpu If you have a desktop environment install drop the --gpgpu

2. Reboot system sudo reboot

Installing NVIDIA drivers directly:

If HandBrakeCLI lists the encoder but throws an error like: Driver does not support the required nvenc API version. Required: 13.0 Found: 12.1 you can install the latest driver from Nvidia directly to helpfully get a newer version of the driver

1. Find the correct version of driver from https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/ to your server.

2. Download the vendor provided installer e.g. : wget https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/570.144/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-570.144.run

3. Install the driver with admin privilages: sudo bash ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-570.144.run

4. Follow the prompts.

5. Reboot system sudo reboot

Installing the NVIDIA Container Toolkit:

Do this before point 5 in post installation guide for docker "Run the container with sudo ./start_arm_container.sh"

1. Adding the repository:

curl -fsSL https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/gpgkey | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg \
  && curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/stable/deb/nvidia-container-toolkit.list | \
    sed 's#deb https://#deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg] https://#g' | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list

2. Update repository sudo apt-get update

3. Install the NVIDIA Container Toolkit packages: sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-container-toolkit

4. Configure the container runtime by using the nvidia-ctk command: sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker

5. Restart the Docker daemon: sudo systemctl restart docker

Post install

Once handbrake recognizes your GPU, You can use one of the 2 built in profiles in your arm.yaml config.

H.265 NVENC 2160p 4K OR H.265 NVENC 1080p

You will also need to add the arm user to the video & render groups so that arm can access the NVENC encoder

sudo usermod -a -G video arm 
sudo usermod -a -G render arm

---

🐋 - NVENC doesn't work

Be sure that both variables for NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=all and --gpus all are set as NVENC won't work without them

HandBrake Official Documentation

For more detailed information you can read through the official HandBrake documentation HandBrake Building for linux