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OBS Studio NVENC Setup

How It Works

OBS Studio (Flatpak) uses the host NVIDIA driver for hardware encoding. No container GPU passthrough needed.

Prerequisites

  1. NVIDIA driver installed: nvidia-smi should show your GPU
  2. OBS installed: flatpak install flathub com.obsproject.Studio

Verification

Step 1: Check driver

nvidia-smi
# Should show driver version 535+ for modern NVENC support

Step 2: Launch OBS

flatpak run com.obsproject.Studio

Step 3: Check encoder availability

  1. Go to Settings → Output
  2. Click Streaming tab
  3. Under Encoder, you should see:
    • NVIDIA NVENC H.264 (new)
    • NVIDIA NVENC H.264 (FFmpeg) (older but works)

If not present, check troubleshooting below.

Step 4: Test recording

  1. Add a source (e.g., Display Capture)
  2. Click Start Recording
  3. Record for 10 seconds
  4. Check file: should be small (hardware encoding is efficient)
  5. In OBS Stats, CPU usage should be low (~5-10% vs 50%+ for x264)

Troubleshooting

NVENC not visible in encoder list

Possible causes:

  1. Driver too old: Update via sudo zypper up nvidia-*
  2. Flatpak permissions: Check if Flatpak can access GPU 
    flatpak override --user --device=all com.obsproject.Studio
  3. Wayland quirks: Try running OBS on Xorg session instead (logout → select Xorg at login)

"Failed to open NVENC codec"

Fix: Restart OBS after updating driver:

flatpak kill com.obsproject.Studio
flatpak run com.obsproject.Studio

Check OBS logs

# View logs
flatpak run com.obsproject.Studio --verbose

# Or check saved logs
~/.var/app/com.obsproject.Studio/config/obs-studio/logs/

Recommended Settings

For streaming/recording:

  • Encoder: NVIDIA NVENC H.264
  • Rate Control: CBR (constant bitrate)
  • Bitrate: 6000 Kbps for 1080p60 (adjust based on internet)
  • Preset: Quality (slower = better quality, but NVENC is fast anyway)
  • Profile: high
  • GPU: 0 (auto-selects your GPU)

Performance Notes

  • NVENC offloads encoding to GPU → CPU stays free for other tasks
  • Latency is lower than x264 CPU encoding
  • Quality is comparable to x264 "veryfast" preset
  • For archival quality, use x264 "slow" or "slower" (but CPU-intensive)