The Vulkan Working Group at The Khronos Group has delivered a series of video decode and encode extensions since 2022 collectively referred to as “Vulkan Video.” These extensions integrate hardware-accelerated stream compression and decompression using widely adopted codecs with the full power of Vulkan, enabling developers to seamlessly combine GPU-powered rendering and compute acceleration with video processing in a single highly efficient runtime.

Today, with the release of Vulkan 1.3.302, Khronos is proud to announce two new encode extensions. First, the highly anticipated Encode AV1 extension enhances Vulkan Video by adding AV1 encode functionality to complement its existing AV1 decode support. This milestone means that Vulkan Video now provides full decode AND encode acceleration for the H.264, H.265 and AV1 codec standards. Additionally, the new Encode Quantization Map extension introduces advanced encoding features for all supported codecs to Vulkan Video developers for the first time. We are confident these extensions provide the necessary building blocks for your advanced Vulkan Video applications!