Probing FFmpeg's av1_vulkan encoder: does your GPU actually support it?

TL;DR FFmpeg 8.x includes av1_vulkan , the first cross-vendor GPU AV1 encoder in mainline FFmpeg. We'll probe whether your GPU + driver actually expose AV1 encode, run a first working encode, benchmark it against SVT-AV1 on your own content, and talk about which jobs deserve it. 📦 Code: github.com/USER/repo (replace before publishing) Until FFmpeg 8.0 ("Huffman", released August 2025), GPU AV1 encoding meant picking a vendor: av1_nvenc for NVIDIA RTX 40+, av1_amf for AMD, av1_qsv for Intel Arc. Three code paths, three sets of flags, three driver stacks. The Vulkan Video encode work gives FFmpeg one encoder that reaches all three vendors through the standard VK_KHR_video_encode_av1 extension. The catch: driver support is a lottery. Plenty of capable hardware sits behind drivers that don't expose the encode extension yet. So before any pipeline decisions, we probe. 1. Check what you're running You want FFmpeg 8.x (8.1.2 is current as of late June 2026) built with Vulkan support, plus the vulkaninfo tool from the Vulkan SDK / vulkan-tools package. $ ffmpeg -version | head -1 ffmpeg version 8.1.2 Copyright ( c ) 2000-2026 the FFmpeg developers $ ffmpeg -hide_banner -encoders | grep vulkan V....D av1_vulkan AV1 ( Vulkan ) ( codec av1 ) If av1_vulkan doesn't appear, your build wasn't compiled with --enable-vulkan (distro packages vary; the BtbN static builds and most 8.x distro packages include it). 2. Probe the driver for AV1 encode 🔍 The encoder existing in FFmpeg means nothing if the driver doesn't expose the extension. This is the step that separates "should work" from "works": $ vulkaninfo | grep -iE "video_encode_(av1|queue)" VK_KHR_video_encode_av1 : extension revision 1 VK_KHR_video_encode_queue : extension revision 12 You see Meaning Both extensions listed You can encode AV1 via Vulkan 🎉 Only video_encode_queue Driver does Vulkan encode, but not AV1 (maybe H.264/H.265 only) Neither Driver too old, or GPU lacks an AV1-capable video engine Rough hardware floor: the