GPU Hardware Acceleration

Speed up encoding by 5-10x using your computer’s graphics card (GPU) instead of just the CPU.

What is GPU acceleration? Using your graphics card to encode videos much faster than CPU-only encoding. See hardware acceleration in the glossary.

Performance boost: A movie that takes 2 hours to encode on CPU finishes in 15-20 minutes with GPU hardware acceleration.

Supported Hardware

NVIDIA

NVENC (Best Quality)

GTX 1050+
RTX 20/30/40 series
Requires NVIDIA drivers 450+

Performance: 5-10x faster

Intel

Quick Sync (QSV)

6th gen (Skylake)+
Built into CPU (no separate GPU needed)
Arc GPUs support AV1

Performance: 3-8x faster

AMD

VCE/VCN

RX 400/500/5000/6000/7000 series
Limited support

Performance: 3-6x faster

Quality trade-off: Hardware acceleration encodes slightly faster than CPU at the cost of minor quality reduction. For most content, this is imperceptible. See codec selection for quality comparisons.

Checking Hardware Support

NVIDIA GPUs

Check if your NVIDIA GPU is detected:

# Check GPU is recognized
nvidia-smi

# Should show:
# +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
# | NVIDIA-SMI 525.60.11    Driver Version: 525.60.11    CUDA Version: 12.0     |
# |-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
# | GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
# | Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
# |                               |                      |               MIG M. |
# |===============================+======================+======================|
# |   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |

If nvidia-smi shows your GPU, you’re ready to enable hardware acceleration.

Intel Quick Sync

Check if Intel QSV is available:

# Check for Intel GPU device
ls -la /dev/dri

# Should show:
# drwxr-xr-x  3 root root        100 Jan 10 12:00 .
# crw-rw----  1 root video  226,   0 Jan 10 12:00 card0
# crw-rw----  1 root video  226, 128 Jan 10 12:00 renderD128

Intel iGPU: Built into your CPU. Even if you have a dedicated GPU, Intel Quick Sync can still be used for encoding.

AMD GPUs

Check if AMD GPU is detected:

# Check for AMD GPU device
ls -la /dev/dri

# Check AMD GPU info
rocm-smi

Docker GPU Passthrough

To use hardware acceleration, you need to give Docker access to your GPU.

NVIDIA Setup

Install NVIDIA Container Toolkit

# Detect your distribution
distribution=$(. /etc/os-release;echo $ID$VERSION_ID)

# Add NVIDIA Docker repository
curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/nvidia-docker/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -
curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/nvidia-docker/$distribution/nvidia-docker.list | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-docker.list

# Install toolkit
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y nvidia-container-toolkit

# Restart Docker
sudo systemctl restart docker

Update docker-compose.yml

Add GPU passthrough to your docker-compose.yml:

services:
  bitbonsai-backend:
    deploy:
      resources:
        reservations:
          devices:
            - driver: nvidia
              count: 1
              capabilities: [gpu]

What this does: Gives the BitBonsai backend access to your NVIDIA GPU for hardware encoding.

Restart BitBonsai

cd /path/to/bitbonsai
docker compose down
docker compose up -d

Verify GPU is Accessible

# Check GPU is visible inside container
docker exec bitbonsai-backend nvidia-smi

# Should show GPU info

Unraid users: GPU passthrough is automatic if you enable NVIDIA support in Unraid settings.

Intel Quick Sync Setup

Enable iGPU in BIOS

Enter BIOS/UEFI settings
Enable Integrated Graphics or iGPU
Set Primary Display to iGPU (if you have dedicated GPU)
Save and reboot

Why? Intel Quick Sync requires the iGPU to be enabled even if you have a dedicated GPU.

Verify /dev/dri Device

ls -la /dev/dri

# Should show:
# crw-rw---- 1 root video 226,   0 Jan 10 12:00 card0
# crw-rw---- 1 root video 226, 128 Jan 10 12:00 renderD128

If missing, install Intel drivers:

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install intel-media-va-driver-non-free

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S intel-media-driver

Update docker-compose.yml

Add device passthrough:

services:
  bitbonsai-backend:
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri

What this does: Gives BitBonsai access to Intel Quick Sync for hardware encoding.

Restart BitBonsai

docker compose down
docker compose up -d

Headless servers: If you don’t have a monitor connected, you may need a dummy HDMI plug to keep the iGPU active.

AMD Setup

Install ROCm Drivers

# Ubuntu 22.04
wget https://repo.radeon.com/amdgpu-install/latest/ubuntu/jammy/amdgpu-install_*_all.deb
sudo apt install ./amdgpu-install_*_all.deb
sudo amdgpu-install --usecase=graphics,rocm

Update docker-compose.yml

Add device passthrough:

services:
  bitbonsai-backend:
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
      - /dev/kfd:/dev/kfd
    group_add:
      - video
      - render

Restart BitBonsai

docker compose down
docker compose up -d

AMD quality: AMD hardware encoders have noticeably lower quality than NVIDIA/Intel. Use only if NVENC/QSV unavailable.

Enable in BitBonsai

After configuring Docker GPU passthrough:

Open BitBonsai Settings

Navigate to Settings → Encoding in the web UI

Enable Hardware Acceleration

Toggle Hardware Acceleration: ON
Select your GPU type:
- NVIDIA → NVENC
- Intel → QSV (Quick Sync)
- AMD → VCE/VCN

Select Codec

HEVC (H.265): Supported by all GPUs
AV1: Only Intel Arc GPUs (A380/A750/A770)

See codec selection for details.

Start Encoding

Queue videos and start encoding. You should see:

5-10x faster speeds (NVIDIA)
3-8x faster speeds (Intel)
3-6x faster speeds (AMD)

Verify it’s working: Check the Encoding tab → active jobs should show 40-100 FPS (vs 5-15 FPS CPU-only).

Performance Comparison

1080p Movie (2 hours, 10 GB H.264 → HEVC)

Hardware	Speed	Time	Quality
Intel i5-12400 (CPU)	15 FPS	75 min	Excellent
NVIDIA RTX 3060 (GPU)	80 FPS	15 min	Near-identical
Intel i5-12400 (QSV)	45 FPS	25 min	Very good
AMD RX 6600 XT (VCE)	35 FPS	35 min	Good

Best value: NVIDIA RTX 3060 provides excellent quality at 5x CPU speed for ~$300.

4K Movie (2 hours, 50 GB H.264 → HEVC)

Hardware	Speed	Time	Quality
Intel i9-13900K (CPU)	5 FPS	5 hours	Excellent
NVIDIA RTX 4090 (GPU)	60 FPS	40 min	Near-identical
Intel i9-13900K (QSV)	15 FPS	2 hours	Very good

Troubleshooting

GPU Not Detected in Container

Symptom: BitBonsai shows “No GPU detected” in settings Fix:

# Verify GPU is visible inside container
docker exec bitbonsai-backend nvidia-smi  # NVIDIA
docker exec bitbonsai-backend ls -la /dev/dri  # Intel/AMD

# If missing, check docker-compose.yml has correct device passthrough

Encoding Still Slow After Enabling GPU

Possible causes:

Hardware acceleration not enabled in Settings → Encoding
Wrong GPU type selected (e.g., selected NVENC but have Intel QSV)
GPU is being used by another process (gaming, video editing)

Fix:

Check Settings → Encoding → Hardware Acceleration is ON
Verify correct GPU type is selected
Close other GPU-intensive applications

Poor Quality with Hardware Encoding

Symptom: Encoded videos have visible compression artifacts Fix:

Lower CRF value (Settings → Encoding → Quality)
- Try CRF 18-20 instead of default 23
Switch to slower preset (NVIDIA: use p7 instead of p4)
For critical content, use CPU encoding instead

Codec Selection - HEVC vs AV1 quality comparison
Multi-Node Setup - Add more worker nodes with GPUs
Monitoring - Track GPU encoding performance
Troubleshooting - Fix GPU passthrough issues

Getting Started

Installation

User Guide

Advanced

Support

GPU Hardware Acceleration

Supported Hardware

NVIDIA

Intel

AMD

Checking Hardware Support

NVIDIA GPUs

Intel Quick Sync

AMD GPUs

Docker GPU Passthrough

NVIDIA Setup

Intel Quick Sync Setup

AMD Setup

Enable in BitBonsai

Performance Comparison

1080p Movie (2 hours, 10 GB H.264 → HEVC)

4K Movie (2 hours, 50 GB H.264 → HEVC)

Troubleshooting

GPU Not Detected in Container

Encoding Still Slow After Enabling GPU

Poor Quality with Hardware Encoding

​Supported Hardware

NVIDIA

Intel

AMD

​Checking Hardware Support

​NVIDIA GPUs

​Intel Quick Sync

​AMD GPUs

​Docker GPU Passthrough

​NVIDIA Setup

​Intel Quick Sync Setup

​AMD Setup

​Enable in BitBonsai

​Performance Comparison

​1080p Movie (2 hours, 10 GB H.264 → HEVC)

​4K Movie (2 hours, 50 GB H.264 → HEVC)

​Troubleshooting

​GPU Not Detected in Container

​Encoding Still Slow After Enabling GPU

​Poor Quality with Hardware Encoding

​Related Guides

Supported Hardware

Checking Hardware Support

NVIDIA GPUs

Intel Quick Sync

AMD GPUs

Docker GPU Passthrough

NVIDIA Setup

Intel Quick Sync Setup

AMD Setup

Enable in BitBonsai

Performance Comparison

1080p Movie (2 hours, 10 GB H.264 → HEVC)

4K Movie (2 hours, 50 GB H.264 → HEVC)

Troubleshooting

GPU Not Detected in Container

Encoding Still Slow After Enabling GPU

Poor Quality with Hardware Encoding

Related Guides