Install vainfo on Ubuntu 26.04

The vainfo is a command-line tool for inspecting the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) capabilities available on a Linux system. It reports information about the installed VA-API driver and lists the supported video decoding, encoding, and processing profiles. This tutorial explains how to install vainfo on Ubuntu 26.04.

Install vainfo

Begin by refreshing the package lists:

sudo apt update

Install the vainfo package with the following command:

sudo apt install -y vainfo

Testing vainfo

Launch vainfo to check the active VA-API driver and available hardware acceleration features:

vainfo

A successful run may produce output similar to the following:

vainfo: Driver version: Intel iHD driver for Intel(R) Gen Graphics - 22.3.1 ()
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileNone                   :    VAEntrypointVideoProc
      VAProfileNone                   :    VAEntrypointStats
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            :    VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              :    VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               :    VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               :    VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileH264High               :    VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               :    VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
...

The displayed driver name identifies the VA-API backend in use, while the profile and entrypoint entries indicate the video formats and operations supported by the graphics hardware and driver.

If vainfo reports an initialization error or cannot find a suitable driver, the appropriate graphics driver and VA-API packages may be missing or incorrectly configured. Checking the GPU driver installation is recommended in such cases.

Uninstall vainfo

To remove vainfo along with packages that are no longer required, execute the following command:

sudo apt purge --autoremove -y vainfo