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cloudwebrtc merged 2 commits into from
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Add hardware video codec support info to README.md. #652

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Add hardware video codec support info to README.md.
cloudwebrtc May 6, 2026
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update.
cloudwebrtc May 6, 2026
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15 changes: 15 additions & 0 deletions README.md
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Expand Up @@ -274,6 +274,21 @@ LiveKit is a dynamic realtime environment and calls can fail for various reasons

You may throw errors of the type `RpcError` with a string `message` in an RPC method handler and they will be received on the caller's side with the message intact. Other errors will not be transmitted and will instead arrive to the caller as `1500` ("Application Error"). Other built-in errors are detailed in `RpcError`.

## Hardware video codec support

The underlying Rust SDK ships with platform-specific hardware-accelerated encoders/decoders, which are enabled automatically when the requested codec and OS match.

@xianshijing-lk xianshijing-lk May 6, 2026

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nit,

These are used automatically when available and compatible with the runtime environment (OS, drivers, GPU, and codec).


| Platform | Codec(s) | Encoder | Decoder | Backend |
| ------------------------------ | ---------- | ------- | ------- | -------------------------------------- |
| macOS | H264, H265 | ✓ | ✓ | VideoToolbox |
| Linux (AMD GPU) | H264 | ✓ | | VAAPI |
| Linux x64 (NVIDIA GPU) | H264, H265 | ✓ | ✓ | NVENC / NVDEC (NVIDIA Video Codec SDK) |
| Linux ARM (NVIDIA Jetson) | H264, H265 | ? | ? | NVENC / NVDEC (to be confirmed) |

@xianshijing-lk xianshijing-lk May 6, 2026

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what it means by ?
do you mean TBD ? if not sure, should we just remove Linux ARM for now ?


Software encoders (libvpx for VP8/VP9, libaom for AV1, OpenH264 for H264) are used as a fallback on platforms or codecs not listed above.

@xianshijing-lk xianshijing-lk May 6, 2026

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are used as a fallback when hardware acceleration is not available.


> **Note:** NVIDIA data-center / AI-inference GPUs such as the **H100, H200, A100** physically omit the NVENC/NVDEC engines — running on these cards will silently fall back to the software encoder/decoder regardless of the table above.

@xianshijing-lk xianshijing-lk May 6, 2026

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nit, maybe

Note: Availability depends on the specific machine configuration, including GPU model, driver support, and runtime environment.

Note: NVIDIA data-center / AI-inference GPUs such as the H100, H200, A100 do not include NVENC/NVDEC engines. On these GPUs, encoding and decoding will fall back to software implementations.


## Examples

- [Facelandmark](https://github.com/livekit/python-sdks/tree/main/examples/face_landmark): Use mediapipe to detect face landmarks (eyes, nose ...)
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