nVidia Hardware Acceleration Configuration
 

I'm trying to take advantage of my nVidia GPU when streaming video. I have the proprietary nVidia drivers installed but I am not sure if there are any specific configuration change I need to make in the xorg.conf file - used the nvidia-config script to generate the file.

I am using VLC for the playback.

The "glxinfo" command returns "direct rendering: Yes"

I am wondering if I need VDPAU (vdpauinfo libva-vdpau-driver libva-utils) packages installed? What do those packages do?

Thanks!

VDPAU is the interface that the Nvidia drivers use to offer hardware video acceleration, so yes, you need to have VDPAU installed. No further configuration is needed, except that you have to tell VLC in its Settings dialog to use VDPAU. Haven't tested the latest versions, but last time I tested VLC was buggy with VDPAU, you might be better of with using MPlayer (or one of the Players that build up on MPlayer, like SMPlayer, if you want to have a better interface).

Thank you for your reply. Seems like things are working except VLC as you mentioned.