Debian/NVIDIA: how do I build with hardware-accelerated AV1 decoding?

[linguisticmind]

When I build mpv by using mpv-build, hardware-accelerated AV1 decoding doesn't work. I get the following errors when trying to play an AV1-encoded video:

Error while decoding frame!
[ffmpeg/video] av1: Your platform doesn't support hardware accelerated AV1 decoding.
[ffmpeg/video] av1: Failed to get pixel format.
[ffmpeg/video] av1: Get current frame error

mpv installed from Debian repositories doesn't have this problem. The video plays normally.

How do I compile with hardware acceleration enabled?

I compared the lists of enabled features between the compiled and Debian versions by running mpv --log-file=log.txt:

Compiled: alsa build-date caca cdda cplugins dmabuf-interop-gl dmabuf-wayland drm dvbin dvdnav egl egl-drm egl-wayland egl-x11 ffmpeg gbm gl glibc-thread-name glob glob-posix gpl iconv jack javascript jpeg lcms2 libarchive libass libavdevice libbluray libdl libplacebo linux-fstatfs lua52 memfd-create memrchr pipewire posix posix-shm ppoll pthread-condattr-setclock pulse rubberband rubberband-3 sixel sndio sndio-1-9 uchardet vaapi vaapi-drm vaapi-wayland vaapi-x11 vdpau vector vk-khr-display vt.h vulkan wayland wayland-protocols-1-32 wayland-protocols-1-38 wayland-protocols-1-39 wayland-protocols-1-41 wayland-protocols-1-44 x11 x11-clipboard xv zlib
Debian: alsa caca cdda cplugins cuda-hwaccel cuda-interop dmabuf-interop-gl dmabuf-wayland drm dvbin dvdnav egl egl-drm egl-wayland egl-x11 ffmpeg ffnvcodec gbm gl glibc-thread-name glob glob-posix gpl iconv jack javascript jpeg lcms2 libarchive libass libavdevice libbluray libdl libplacebo linux-fstatfs lua52 memfd-create memrchr pipewire posix posix-shm ppoll pthread-condattr-setclock pulse rubberband rubberband-3 sdl2 sdl2-audio sdl2-gamepad sdl2-video sixel sndio sndio-1-9 uchardet vaapi vaapi-drm vaapi-wayland vaapi-x11 vdpau vector vk-khr-display vt.h vulkan wayland wayland-protocols-1-32 wayland-protocols-1-38 wayland-protocols-1-39 wayland-protocols-1-41 x11 xv zimg zimg-st428 zlib

I guessed that cuda-hwaccel cuda-interop is what I needed to enable and tried to set them in mpv_options:

-Dcuda-hwaccel=enabled
-Dcuda-interop=enabled

I got the following error when trying to build:

Run-time dependency ffnvcodec found: NO (tried pkgconfig and cmake)

meson.build:1357:42: ERROR: Feature cuda-hwaccel cannot be enabled: ffnvcodec was not found!

I tried searching ffnvcodec on apt, but didn't find anything. Tried installing nvidia-cuda-dev, but that didn't work.

What packages do I need to install and what build options do I need to set to make this work? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

System information:

- Linux version: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)
- Kernel Version: Linux debian 6.12.57+deb13-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.57-1 (2025-11-05) x86_64 GNU/Linux
- GPU Model: NVIDIA Corporation AD103M / GN21-X11 [GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU] [10de:2757] (rev a1)
- Mesa/GPU Driver Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 550.163.01
- Window Manager and Version: awesome 4.3-7+b2

[qyot27]

https://code.ffmpeg.org/FFmpeg/nv-codec-headers

[linguisticmind]

Thanks for the link. I don't have a ton of experience compiling software, and the repo you linked to doesn't have any instructions. So I don't know how to use these headers. Could you explain how to use them when compiling mpv using the mpv-build repo?

[Andarwinux]

I tried searching ffnvcodec on apt, but didn't find anything

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nv-codec-headers

[linguisticmind]

Thanks. Following your link, I installed libffmpeg-nvenc-dev and I managed to compile with cuda-hwaccel and cuda-interop enabled, but I still get the same errors when trying to play an AV1-encoded video. So it looks like there is something else that needs to be enabled.

[Andarwinux]

I'm guessing you probably didn't rebuild ffmpeg after installing ffnvcodec.

[linguisticmind]

@Andarwinux I used the rebuild script in mpv-build. It rebuilds everything on every run. Do you know if there are any ffmpeg or mpv compiling options that I need to set?