Hardware Accelerated Streaming (2026.2)
For low-latency video streaming support with hardware acceleration, we added the AV1 and H.265 video codecs. Find these in the Streaming App > Settings > Codec section.
New Video Streaming Codecs
VRED added support for two low-latency video codecs, AV1 and H.265 (HEVC), which increases the speed and quality of image stream over the network, compare to software encoding and decoding. Find it in the Streaming App > Settings > Codec section.
VRED employs an NVIDIA-based hardware encoder that supports these. To use either of these codecs, your machine needs to have a compatible NVIDIA graphics card. The age of your graphics card will determine the codecs available for use. If your machine does not have a compatible graphics card, VRED will use the OpenH264-based software encoder and these video codecs will be unavailable.
In the Streaming App > Settings > Codec section, once H264, H265, or AV1 is selected, if the viewer is blank, this indicates a driver issue. An error will appear in the Terminal stating VRED has failed to create that encoder.
Solution: In the Streaming App > Settings > Codec section, choose a different encoder. If the error persists, updating your NVIDIA graphics card driver. If the issue isn't corrected, your graphics card does not support these codecs and VRED will use the OpenH264-based software encoder.
H.265 (HEVC) is a lossy low-latency video codec with higher efficiency than H.264. It is a lossy compression standard, meaning unnecessary information is removed from the video. Use it for 4K and 8K video, streaming, and storage. The advantages of H.265 (HEVC) are its better compression (smaller files with the same quality as H.264 (AVC)) and support for higher resolutions. However, the disadvantages are that it requires more CPU/GPU power, there are also patent/licensing issues, and it is less universally supported than H.264 (AVC).
AV1 is a lossy low-latency video codec with very high efficiency. It is a lossy compression standard, meaning unnecessary information is removed from the video. Use it for modern streaming, web videos, and futureproofing. The advantages of AV1 are that it is royalty-free, has the best compression efficiency, is an open standard, and has growing hardware support. However, the disadvantages are that it might be slower at encoding and is not as widely supported in hardware as H.264 or H.265 at the time of this release.