In order to be able to use the hardware encoding and hardware decoding features in Livestream Studio, you must have the proper hardware installed on your computer. One of these options is via NVENC (encoding) and NVDEC (decoding), which process the video via a supported NVIDIA GeForce graphics card.
The first sign of knowing whether your PC supports these features is to go into Studio and check Settings: Streaming for Hardware Encoding, then check Settings: Advanced for Hardware Decoding. If these options do not appear in these menus, then, unfortunately, you do not have the supported hardware.
We have successfully tested the following NVIDIA GeForce models:
- GTX1050
- GTX950
- GT730 (GK208-400-A1 - other versions of this model have been reported to not work)
- GTX650
To find out if a specific model supports these features, visit the NVIDIA GPU Support Matrix. The first table on this page represents cards that support hardware encoding (NVENC); the second table (below) is for cards that support hardware decoding (NVDEC). Below each of these tables are three green buttons which are different NVIDIA product lines; clicking all of these will expand and complete each respective list.
Search for the the model name of the GPU on your system (e.g. GTX 1050). The quickest way to do this is to hold CTRL+F (Windows) or CMD+F (Mac) and type the model name into the page search. The browser will jump to the first matching result.
If your model name is on the first set of tables and lists "YES" under the H.264 (AVCHD) YUV 4:2:0 column, then your GPU supports hardware encoding in Livestream Studio.
If it appears in the second set of tables and lists "YES" under the H.264 (AVCHD) column, then it supports hardware decoding.
If your NVIDIA card falls outside of these parameters, then NVENC and/or NVDEC may not be supported on that card