OBS Studio on Ubuntu 24.04 doesn't offer Intel Encoding on Core 3 N355, "Standard" Graphics drivers

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-04-2025

Hi.

I am by no means expert at OBS Studio or Linux, but I have lots of experience/skills with Personal Computing in general.

On my new ASUS NUC 14 Essential (Model # NUC14MNK35*) with Intel Core 3 N355 CPU, running Ububtu 24.04 LTS, I followed the instructions to install Graphics Drivers at

https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/driver/client/overview.html

... and it gave no errors, and the Verification step yielded:

To verify that the kernel and compute drivers are installed and functional, run clinfo:

clinfo | grep "Device Name"

james@NUC14Ess:~$ clinfo | grep "Device Name"
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics
james@NUC14Ess:~$

then I followed the instructions "Install OBS Studio on Ubuntu 18.04 or newer ..." at

https://obsproject.com/kb/linux-installation

... and it gave no errors, then I started OBS Studio and it seems to run normally, I ran the Configuration Wizard and it connects to my Nginx webserver at localhost and will actually do streaming, but the CPU load is unacceptable because OBS Studio is stuck in Software encoding, and there is no Intel option in the droplist to choose Hardware encoding.

I checked the System Requirements for OBS Studio and my rig is _far_ better than the required specifications. I installed:

Kingston RAM: Fury Impact 16GB 4800MT/s DDR5 CL38 SODIMM XMP Ready Laptop Memory Single Module KF548S38IB-16
https://shop.kingston.com/products/impact-ddr5-laptop-memory?variant=41738521968832

Crucial P3 1TB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 3500MB/s - CT1000P3SSD8

Please tell me what I need to do to get Hardware Encoding going on this rig.

If you want to chat by phone, please call my iPhone at

651.440.4328

Thanks for any help.

Sincerely,

Jim Harris

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-05-2025

More info:

OBS Studio is a well-respected open-source tool, which I gather from the OBS Studio Community Support forum works fine on Ubuntu 24.x but needs the correct driver. The log file analyzer finds no errors in my setup, and it reports:

09:38:09.652: Available Encoders:
09:38:09.652: Video Encoders:
09:38:09.652: - ffmpeg_svt_av1 (SVT-AV1)
09:38:09.652: - ffmpeg_aom_av1 (AOM AV1)
09:38:09.652: - obs_x264 (x264)

... which I believe are all Software encoders; certainly none of them have Intel in their names, which I have learned is what is offered in the Encoder picklist when the correct driver is installed, and I have searched really hard trying to find that "correct driver" and have found no useful info related to that on any Intel site, except the one I already referenced that says it installed "the most commonly needed" drivers.

Further, this Intel resource seems like exactly what I need/want, but it only works on Windows. If you have such a resource for Linux also, please send me the URL. If there is not one, please explain what diagnostics etc. I can run, and how to use and/or send their results.

Intel® Driver & Support Assistant (Intel® DSA)
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html

Bottom Line:

Can you please tell me exactly which Graphics driver I need to install (on Ubuntu or any Debian-based Linux, not Windows) for your Intel Core 3 N355 CPU? Please provide the exact URL to that driver, not to a "collection" of drivers.

Thanks for any help.

Jim

ArielP_Intel · ‎03-05-2025

Hello JimBobStPaul,

Thank you for posting in Intel Communities! I understand your concern regarding how to enable Hardware Encoding for your system.

To further assist you, I have a few questions:

What version of the driver were you installing?
What version of OBS are you currently using?
Could you share a screenshot of your OBS settings or configuration?
Has this worked before, or is this a recent issue you've encountered?
Have you tried using Windows OS before?

Looking forward to your response!

Best regards,

Ariel P.

Intel Customer Support Technician

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-06-2025

Hi, Ariel.

Thanks for looking at my recent input. Did you read both of my posts? I looked online just now and I only see my first one. I don't understand that, but I think we don't care much if any, because I have done some more digging on my own and found a lot more info that I am convinced will help; see my renewed request below, please.

I have also tried to do you the courtesy of answering all your questions below that, but I think we can both save a lot of wasted time and effort in unfruitful and otherwise non-rewarding and otherwise unpleasant exchanges of questions and answers on "rabbit trails"; let's choose this simple and straightforward path instead:

I followed the instructions on

https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/devices/hardware-table.html

.... and I saw this:

"To determine which graphics processor you have, run the following lspci command:
lspci -nn | grep -Ei 'VGA|DISPLAY'
For example, the command may return:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:5927] (rev 06)
In this example, the PCI device ID is 5927, which corresponds to Intel® Iris® Plus Graphics 650.
This chapter lists Intel® General-Purpose GPUs with supported drivers, along with their key specifications. The kernel column indicates the upstream Linux kernel version that first introduced support for each GPU. Versions marked with an asterisk (*) require enabling support via the force_probe flag. The EU number represents the number of execution units in the GPU, which are responsible for handling multiple threads simultaneously. A higher EU count enhances parallel processing capabilities."

I followed through on this and learned which Linux kernel I need (I have it!) and maybe some things about my (Intel's) CPU that will be useful for you, Ariel, so you can tell me which Graphics Driver to download:

james@NUC14Ess:~$ sudo lspci -nn | grep -Ei 'VGA|DISPLAY'
[sudo] password for james:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N [Intel Graphics] [8086:46d3]
james@NUC14Ess:~$

***** the PCI device ID is 46d3 and I find it in the table on the WWW page I followed:

PCI IDs Name Architecture Codename Kernel EU number
46D3 Intel® Graphics Xe Alder Lake-N 6.9 32

I ran this to get my kernel info:
james@NUC14Ess:~$ uname -r
6.11.0-17-generic
james@NUC14Ess:~$

... so my kernel is 6.11.0-17, which is recent enough.

====> Please just gather from Intel's techies and/or Knowledge Base the complete list (including where to download them) of all Graphics Drivers for any version of Linux, specifically for my CPU's graphics unit, 46D3 Intel® Graphics Xe Alder Lake-N as shown in the command result and table lookup above, and email that collection of info to me, or tell me where I can download it.

If you don't already know how to do that (it clearly must exist somewhere in Intel), please escalate this request to the appropriate resources.

====> It would also be nice if you could get Intel's Web Team to improve the ease of finding and downloading Linux drivers to make it as easy as it apparently is for Windows.

Thanks for any help.

Sincerely,

Jim Harris

-------------------------

Here are what I think are reasonable attempts to give you and Intel useful responses to your questions, even though, as I said above, I think any work along these lines is probably not actually called for, and probably won't actually help.

NOTE: My request does not depend in any way on my planned use of this info for OBS Studio or any other app; it's just about finding the correct Graphics Drivers for one specific Intel CPU.

What version of the driver were you installing?

I don't know how to find out much of anything about Intel's drivers (and I have tried really hard, and I'm generally pretty good at this sort of activity) because Intel's driver management tools for Linux are IMHO terrible. This is all I have been able to do so far:

I followed the instructions to install Graphics Drivers at

https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/driver/client/overview.html

... and it gave no errors, and I followed the Verification step as instructed:

To verify that the kernel and compute drivers are installed and functional, run clinfo:

clinfo | grep "Device Name"

james@NUC14Ess:~$ clinfo | grep "Device Name"
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics
james@NUC14Ess:~$

What version of OBS are you currently using?

31.0.1, installed by the recommended method (found at https://obsproject.com/kb/linux-installation ) :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:obsproject/obs-studio
sudo apt install obs-studio

Again, my request no longer has any dependency on my planned use of this info for OBS Studio.

Could you share a screenshot of your OBS settings or configuration?

I don't know how to do that, but I am attaching a copy of a recent OBS log file, which OBS Support Community folks say is the best diagnostic info source.

Again, my request no longer has any dependency on my planned use of this info for OBS Studio.

Has this worked before, or is this a recent issue you've encountered?

Never worked. I have tried multiple ways of installing OBS over the last month or so and it never offers Intel Hardware Encoding. Of course, that is almost certainly because I have never been able to find the correct Graphics Driver for the Intel CPU I am using.

Again, my request no longer has any dependency on my planned use of this info for OBS Studio.

Have you tried using Windows OS before?

No, and I will never again use or try any version of Windows. Why are you asking me this? Are you suggesting I should try "Windows OS"?

- end -

ArielP_Intel · ‎03-06-2025

Hello JimBobStPaul,

Thank you for the thorough response. I understand your desire to get straight to the point and resolve the issue as quickly as possible. However, please be informed that I will need to check this internally to ensure we provide you with the accurate and relevant information. I will keep you posted when an update is available.

Best regards,

Ariel P.

Intel Customer Support Technician

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-06-2025

No worries, Ariel.

Please take as much time as you think is best to get a complete and reliable answer, and please advise your "internal check" resources similarly. One of my favorite sayings is, "I would rather have a good answer than a fast one".

Thanks for any help.

Sincerely,

Jim Harris

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-06-2025

Will you also please bring up to the appropriate techies / other experts / managers / WWW Team that it should be straightforward, once I have all of the information that I just provided on exactly what kind of graphics hardware I have, and which Linux kernel I have, to simply look up and download the appropriate graphics driver(s) for that Linux?

Hoping in St. Paul,

Jim

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-07-2025

Here is another fact, easily demonstrable by scanning topics on all forums where users need to install or configure graphics drivers: There is overwhelming preference for Nvidia graphics; there are many comments like, "Nobody can [deal effectively with] the 500 Intel drivers", etc..

====> Don't you agree that if it were easier to find and install Intel's drivers, as I suggested in my last post on this thread, that it would actually benefit Intel?

IHTH

Jim Harris

VonM_Intel · ‎03-09-2025

Hello JimBobStPaul,

Based on the information you've provided, the Intel Core i3-N3550 features an integrated Intel HD Graphics GPU that supports Intel Quick Sync for hardware video encoding. However, OBS may not be detecting it due to improperly installed or configured drivers. Given that Ubuntu 24.04 is relatively new, there might be compatibility or driver issues preventing OBS from accessing hardware encoding. The error you encountered while installing graphics drivers likely indicates a missing dependency or a conflict with the installed drivers.

Are you able to run it on older Ubuntu versions?

Best regards,

Von M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-10-2025

Thanks for some useful info, VonM_Intel [ @VonM_Intel ].

I will reply to All with separate points, numbered for the convenience of anyone who wants to deal with them separately.

1.

I say: There was no "error [ I ] encountered while installing graphics drivers", as I documented in my post 03-06-2025 02:59 PM, as follows:

I followed the instructions to install Graphics Drivers at

https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/driver/client/overview.html

... and it gave no errors, and I followed the Verification step as instructed ...

Clearly, the fact that OBS Studio finds no Intel Graphics hardware encoding option may be correct, because the correct driver is not installed, which is what the OBS Studio Community help says is almost certainly the case. Therefore, it seems to me that we actually do not have anything that "indicates a missing dependency or a conflict with the installed drivers"; what do you say?

Further, as has been pointed out on Intel's own WWW pages, and as I have alluded to, it is apparently impossible to learn which Graphics Drivers are installed by this "shotgun" process; the sparse "documentation" that I was able to find says only that it is a "popular" or "commonly needed" collection. The "Verification" process reports four (4) drivers, with identical Device Name fields: "Device Name Intel(R) Graphics". It would be much more helpful if the instructions Intel provides, and the tools chosen, provided at least the Driver Name, and preferably also more info on which device(s) it supports, perhaps by a simple link to the relevant rows in the table at https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/devices/hardware-table.html .

====> Will someone please post here a simple "Yes" or "No" answer to this question:

Is, in fact, the correct driver for hardware video encoding in the Intel Core i3-N3550's integrated Intel HD Graphics GPU the one (is there only one?) called "Intel Quick Sync", and is it included in Intel's "shotgun" instructions I followed, as described in my previous post 03-06-2025 02:59 PM?

Again, to solve my current problem, and to avoid putting more users in this needlessly frustrating situation, would it not be better to just have correct and complete instructions and just install what we know to be the correct driver?

2

It seems to me that there is some disconnect and/or duplication going on among participants in this thread:

VonM_Intel [ @VonM_Intel ] seems to know that the correct driver for hardware video encoding in the Intel Core i3-N3550's integrated Intel HD Graphics GPU is, in fact, the one (is there only one?) called "Intel Quick Sync".
Ariel [ @ArielP_Intel ] says, "I will need to check this internally to ensure we provide you with the accurate and relevant information. I will keep you posted when an update is available."

At this point, I plan to wait until I hear more from Intel on this thread, especially answers to my remaining questions, which are all included in this post.

Again, I hope that my detailed and (I think) careful documentation helps Intel learn how messed-up is their Graphics Support on Linux, and I hope further that it helps Intel to improve it and thus improve their "image" among "graphics users", and thus their business.

Thanks to All for any help.

Sincerely,

Jim Harris

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-10-2025

I received an "apparently nice" but actually frustrating email, asking me about recent "replies" (note: plural) in this thread, "Did it solve your problem?". Here is the relevant data:

from:	Intel Community <noreply@community-mail.intel.com> via us.khoros-mail.com
to:	james.bob.harris@gmail.com
date:	Mar 9, 2025, 3:06 AM
subject:	Did you get the answer you needed?
mailed-by:	em9032.us.khoros-mail.com

... and here is the relevant part of the text/body:

----

Hello JimBobStPaul,

Your topic recently received replies.

Topic: OBS Studio on Ubuntu 24.04 doesn't offer Intel Encoding on Core 3 N355, "Standard" Graphics drivers
Date: 03-04-2025 09:49 PM

Did it solve your problem?

Click here to view the replies and mark one as an Accepted Solution.

This helps others find helpful answers in the community too!

Thanks for being a Intel Community member.

Your Intel Community Team

Intel Community sent this message to james.bob.harris@gmail.com.

----

However, I cannot reply. I tried to send this reply (Note: this was before I saw the reply from @VonM_Intel ), partly because all of the recent "replies" your system detected were from me:

I have not seen any helpful replies to this topic from anyone but me. If you think there has been one, please point it out.

Thanks for any help.

Jim

... and I got the usual "email address not found" error. Therefore, I cannot answer the question I was asked, because it is sent via a "do not reply' method! And, of course, I cannot find out who to send the reply to.

Why do you do this, Intel? It doesn't seem "Intel"ligent to me to ask a question and block your own ability to receive the reply, does it to you?

====> Anyway, I suggest Intel should fix their method so a simple email reply would "just work".

Sincerely,

Irritated in St. Paul

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-10-2025

@VonM_Intel ,

Sorry, Von, I forgot to answer your question, so here it is now:

I don't know how it might work on other versions of Ubuntu, and I have no reasonable way to find out. I have no other machines to install it on and I am unwilling to mess with this one machine, my only "development environment". Besides, I think it would be of little value to Intel or to others like me, as we typically upgrade as new stable versions are released.

Sorry I'm not much help on this point.

Sincerely,

Jim Harris

ArielP_Intel · ‎03-11-2025

Hello JimBobStPaul,

Thank you for your wonderful insights and explanation. Upon checking, I’d like to clarify that drivers for Linux are typically provided and maintained by the Linux vendors themselves. Please note that we cannot guarantee any immediate action will be taken, as this is ultimately dependent on the Linux developers and their release cycles.

Let me know if you have any further questions or need additional information!

Best regards,

Ariel P.

Intel Customer Support Technician

VonM_Intel · ‎03-19-2025

Hello, JimBobStPaul.

I appreciate your kind words and engagement in our discussion. I just wanted to follow up and see if you had a chance to review our previous response regarding Linux drivers. Please let me know if you have any further questions or if there's anything else I can clarify for you.

Best regards,

Von M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-20-2025

Wow, thanks, Von.

Well, this continues to be a very long and complicated saga. Based on the answer I got from Ariel, I went back to the Ubuntu Discourse and asked them how to find and install the correct driver. As a result, from a combination of other people's attempts to help and my (even if I say so myself) serious digging, I have learned a lot and I'm getting closer.

At this point, all I have is an opinion, and that is that somehow the Alder Lake-N hardware hides its Graphics Hardware Encoding Acceleration "Capability" from the i915 driver so it's not just slow; it's not detected at all.

As you know, I am into this way over my head, so all I can recommend is that you read what's going on on that other forum, and maybe you can find something useful in it. I said I would come back to this forum and post what I learned, but I haven't found anything useful yet; maybe you will.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/please-tell-me-how-to-find-and-install-the-correct-graphics-driver-for-this-system/57038/

Thanks again!

Jim

VonM_Intel · ‎03-25-2025

Hello, JimBobStPaul.

I really appreciate the effort and deep research you've put into this. Thank you for your patience. It's great to see your persistence in troubleshooting. Your insights about the Alder Lake-N hardware possibly hiding its Graphics Hardware Encoding Acceleration capability from the i915 driver are definitely interesting, and I’ll take a closer look at the discussion on the Ubuntu forum you shared. Based on my internal review, I recommend installing the Intel Media VA driver to address the issue. Please run the following command in your terminal: sudo apt install intel-media-va-driver-non-free

This should help enable the proper media acceleration support for your system. For more details on supported platforms and features, you can refer to the following link:

Intel Media Driver GitHub

Once you've installed the driver, please restart your system and test if the issue persists. Let me know if you need any assistance or if you encounter any errors during the process.

Best regards,

Von M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-26-2025

Wow; thanks again, Von, for continuing to try to help, and now your kind words.

Short answer: Been there; did that; no change, so no joy.

( I just thought I would try being succinct for a change, but it didn't work. ;^) )

Below is a copy of my screen when I did that install, about 10 days ago, I think (seems like a long time), and I have been trying to learn enough about ffmpeg (the means OBS Studio uses to do its media transcoding etc.) to test the actual driver included in that package, which I believe is h264_qsv (I will try hevc_qsv next; I want h265 anyway). Do you agree that that is the right driver, and that it should be used on the Alder Lake-N Graphics hardware for both encoding and decoding?

So far, every time I do an ffmpeg task (they are all variations of taking 1920x1080 live video from my "webcam", as OBS Studio does, and transcoding it to 1280x720 and writing <filename>.mp4 to my high-speed NVMe internal SSD) it works fine using -c libx264 (the software encoder) and the same command with -c h264_qsv crashes.

(I'm writing this post from memory, as I am many miles from the target system, so I may have the name of h264_qsv wrong here, but I copied it from the ffmpeg -encoders output on that system).

Also, regarding my "insights about the Alder Lake-N hardware possibly hiding its Graphics Hardware Encoding Acceleration capability from the i915 driver", I now think it is the same problem, but it was clearly the intel-media-va-driver that I replaced; see the "screen copy" below.

New "rabbit trail"; but possibly important:

https://packages.debian.org/sid/intel-media-va-driver-non-free

says, "

VAAPI driver for the Intel GEN8+ Graphics family

The VA-API (Video Acceleration API) enables hardware accelerated video decode/encode at various entry-points (VLD, IDCT, Motion Compensation etc.) for the prevailing coding standards today (MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP/H.263, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, and VC-1/WMV3). It provides an interface to fully expose the video decode capabilities in today's GPUs.

This package contains the video decode and encode driver backend for the Intel HD Graphics of the Intel Core processor family. The supported platforms include:

 * Broadwell
 * Skylake
 * Broxton
 * Apollo Lake
 * Kaby Lake
 * Coffee Lake
 * Whiskey Lake
 * Cannon Lake
 * Ice Lake
"
Note that Alder Lake is NOT INCLUDED, let alone Alder Lake-N!

https://github.com/intel/media-driver

says

"Components and Features

Media driver contains three components as below

Video decoding calls hardware-based decoder(VDBox) which provides fully-accelerated hardware video decoding to release the graphics engine for other operations.
Video encoding supports two modes, one calls hardware-based encoder(VDEnc/Huc) to provide low power encoding, another one is hardware(PAK)+shader(media kernel+VME) based encoding. User could choose the mode through VA-API.
Video processing supports several popular features by hardware-based video processor(VEBox/SFC) and shader(media kernel) based solution together.

"

... but the normal consumer has no idea how "User could choose the mode through VA-API".

However,

https://github.com/intel/media-driver

includes "TGLx (TGL: Tiger Lake, RKL: Rocket Lake, ADL-S/P/N: Alder Lake, RPL-S/P: Raptor Lake)" (but not Alder Lake-N)

and it talks about building with options selected, etc., which is way beyond the capabilities of any normal consumer.

Also,

https://github.com/intel/media-driver

says, "The Intel(R) Media Driver for VAAPI is a new VA-API (Video Acceleration API) user mode driver supporting hardware accelerated decoding, encoding, and video post processing for GEN based graphics hardware." [emphasis mine].

What are the relationships among these things, all of which I might have on the target system (which of these do I actually have?):

"GEN based graphics hardware"
"Xe Architecture"
"the Intel(R) Media Driver for VAAPI"
"the Intel Core i3-N3550's integrated Intel HD Graphics GPU
"Intel Quick Sync"
VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N [Intel Graphics] [8086:46d3]
Graphics Hardware Encoding Acceleration "Capability", available in a ffmpeg "encoder" report (sorry; I don't remember the details)

... and how do I choose whatever driver is the correct one in the package intel-media-va-driver or intel-media-va-driver-non-free?

(Another whine from me: Do y'all (all who are watching this thread) understand how complex, mysterious, and difficult-to-work-with is this multiplicity of Intel terminology and entities that must be dissected in order to be used optimally?) Please consider the plight of an ordinary consumer who buys a computer, a fairly capable one by most measures, and even one which the provider (ASUS in this case) says works so well on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS that they will support it for years, and said consumer simply wants to use the Graphics Hardware Acceleration?

I just thought of another reason why installing the VA package didn't change anything: Could it be that the i915 driver is still being "chosen" somehow (and the VA driver ignored) on my system? Can I disable the i915 driver and/or force choosing the VA driver without breaking my console GUI screen?

Thanks again.

Sincerely,

Jim Harris

---------------- Screen Copy: ---------------

james@NUC14Ess:~/WebcamRecording$ sudo apt install intel-media-va-driver-non-free
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
libigdgmm12
The following packages will be REMOVED:
intel-media-va-driver
The following NEW packages will be installed:
intel-media-va-driver-non-free
The following packages will be upgraded:
libigdgmm12
1 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 1 to remove and 128 not upgraded.
Need to get 7,818 kB of archives.
After this operation, 30.0 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
Get:1 https://repositories.intel.com/gpu/ubuntu noble/unified amd64 libigdgmm12 amd64 22.6.0-1097~24.04 [179 kB]
Get:2 https://repositories.intel.com/gpu/ubuntu noble/unified amd64 intel-media-va-driver-non-free amd64 25.1.2-1099~24.04 [7,639 kB]
Fetched 7,818 kB in 1s (5,365 kB/s)
(Reading database ... 156968 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libigdgmm12_22.6.0-1097~24.04_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libigdgmm12:amd64 (22.6.0-1097~24.04) over (22.5.5-1077~24.04) ...
dpkg: intel-media-va-driver:amd64: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested:
va-driver-all:amd64 depends on intel-media-va-driver | intel-media-va-driver-non-free; however:
Package intel-media-va-driver:amd64 is to be removed.
Package intel-media-va-driver-non-free is not installed.

(Reading database ... 156968 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing intel-media-va-driver:amd64 (24.1.0+dfsg1-1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package intel-media-va-driver-non-free:amd64.
(Reading database ... 156964 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../intel-media-va-driver-non-free_25.1.2-1099~24.04_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking intel-media-va-driver-non-free:amd64 (25.1.2-1099~24.04) ...
Setting up libigdgmm12:amd64 (22.6.0-1097~24.04) ...
Setting up intel-media-va-driver-non-free:amd64 (25.1.2-1099~24.04) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.39-0ubuntu8.4) ...
james@NUC14Ess:~/WebcamRecording$

- end -

VonM_Intel · ‎03-26-2025

Hello, JimBobStPaul.

Thank you for your detailed update and for continuing to troubleshoot this issue. I appreciate your patience and effort. Based on your description, it seems like the h264_qsv driver should indeed be the correct one for your Alder Lake-N graphics hardware for both encoding and decoding. However, the crashes you're experiencing suggest there might be a compatibility issue or a misconfiguration.

I'll need to conduct further research on this issue and will post an update in this thread once I have more information.

Best regards,

Von M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-27-2025

Thanks again,Von.

Part of the problem, of course, is that I am truly a rank beginner at building ffmpeg commands. I know that I do not know how to write a command that would certainly force use of hardware acceleration and that specific h264_qsv encoder, and the errors I get back are so obscure to me that I cannot tell if the failure is in the encoder or in my command syntax etc..

I really appreciate the time and effort you are apparently putting into this. Speaking of which, are you doing this just for me, or do you think there's a possibility that there actually is something wrong with that encoder, that it works on regular Alder Lake hardware but not on Alder Lake-N? In that case, I will be happy to help Intel by providing a representative testbed (I will run commands for you here), and maybe you could get ASUS involved and they could provide to Intel a system identical to mine. I can easily give you all of the exact model numbers of all three parts: computer, RAM, and SSD. Regardless of all that, I think one of us should also try the hevc_qsv encoder, because it needs to work also, and if we discover that it does and the h264_qsv encoder does not, that would be really valuable.

I also just learned this morning that I can install ffmpeg with more features than the default installation, so I may try that soon and see if it makes any difference:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/FFmpeg

says

Install the ffmpeg package.

For the development version, install the ffmpeg-git package. There is also ffmpeg-full, which is built with as many optional features enabled as possible. [ emphasis mine ]. However, apparently that is a package built by an ArchLinux user, and it may not be compatible with my OS, and/or it may break my system or at least void my warranty from ASUS.

I will keep trying to learn, and if you come across a command that you know works, please share it with me, and I will do likewise.

Best regards,

Jim Harris

JimBobStPaul · ‎03-27-2025

I just found this in the documentation:

https://www.ffmpeg.org/general.html#Supported-File-Formats_002c-Codecs-or-Features

says

1.10 Intel QuickSync Video

FFmpeg can use Intel QuickSync Video (QSV) for accelerated decoding and encoding of multiple codecs. To use QSV, FFmpeg must be linked against the libmfx dispatcher, which loads the actual decoding libraries.

The dispatcher is open source and can be downloaded from https://github.com/lu-zero/mfx_dispatch.git. FFmpeg needs to be configured with the --enable-libmfx option and pkg-config needs to be able to locate the dispatcher’s .pc files.

[ emphasis mine ]

I don't know how to do this, but at least I know I have not been doing it, so of course none of my ffmpeg commands trying to use QSV and hardware acceleration can possibly work!

As always, I will keep working on this and post again when I learn more, but I'm going to do something else first:

It finally occured to me that everything that I have been doing with ffmpeg, and that others have been trying to help me with, may just be one giant rabbit trail, and here's why: The authors of OBS Studio must know about all of those requirements (above), because many of their users have systems with Intel graphics and their instructions say users can choose Intel Hardware Accelerated Encoding, so again, the mystery that occurs to me is, "Why does OBS Studio not offer the choice of Intel graphics on my system"? And I think the answer must be, "Because the driver correctly discloses the "Hardware Accelerated Encoding" Capability on most Intel CPUs but doesn't on Alder Lake-N".

If anyone sees any flaws in this logic, please speak up.

Because of this new "inspiration", I'm going to pause trying to get a specific ffmpeg encoding command to work, and try instead to learn how to ask for Capabilities while using the h264_qsv encoder.

Jim

phd21 · ‎08-17-2025

Hi JimBobStPaul,

Are you still having issues getting OBS Studio to use the Intel QSV decoder?

I was researching OBS and came across your post (this post).

I am running Linux Mint 22.1 based on Ubuntu 24.04 with X11 display manager (not Wayland), using an Intel UHD Graphics 620 from 2018, using the default video driver i915 , ffmpeg v6.1.1, video acceleration package "va-driver-all" (vappi), and OBS v31.1.2 installed from their PPA. I installed the Intel drivers using the same Intel link you provided before (& rebooted), Installing Client GPUs on Ubuntu Desktop.

Installing Client GPUs — Intel® software for general purpose GPU capabilities documentation
Installing Client GPUs

My OBS shows options in its Settings for using the Intel QSV video decoder. Under Settings, Output - Simple Mode, under Streaming Video Encoder I only get Software (x264) and under Recording, I can select Video Encoder Hardware QSV, H. 264.
*** However, if I select Output Mode - Advanced at the top, the options change. I can then select under Streaming Video Encoder QuickSync H.264 or FFmpeg VAAPI H.264; both are accelerated hardware video decoders; in your case, I would choose the QuickSync. Not sure why, but under the Recording options, I can also choose the QSV HEVC H.265 option, but not under streaming? FYI: I also tested OBS in my KDE Neon User Edition (also using Ubuntu 24.04 base) using the Wayland display server, and it works in the same way.

Caution: I do not recommend trying to compile and install a newer FFmpeg, or you can really mess up your system. The default FFmpeg v6.x can use the Intel QSV decoder. Always do a full backup or snapshot before installing any self-compiled packages, especially something like ffmpeg that has system-wide ramifications. There is a PPA for a newer version of ffmpeg v7.x (ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ffmpeg7), but still do a backup first.

Example FFmpeg command using Intel QSV. This worked on my system with default FFmpeg v6..1.1

ffmpeg -hwaccel_output_format qsv -i video-input.mp4 -c:v h264_qsv -b:v 2M output.mp4

If you still need help, you can contact me on the Linux Mint forums as member "phd21" or using my email at <email removed for privacy>

Good luck,

Phil