Nvcodec element missing on Ubuntu 25.04 (GStreamer 1.26.0)

Newcomers
1

Hi all,

I’m trying to get NVIDIA hardware–accelerated decoding/encoding working with GStreamer on my Kubuntu 25.04 (“plucky”) laptop, but I can’t seem to find any of the nvcodec/nvdec/nvenc elements.

When I run gst-inspect-1.0 nvcodec I always get:
No such element or plugin 'nvcodec' The result is the same if run the command with sudo.

My questions would be:

  • Does Ubuntu’s stock gst-plugins-bad package ship the NVIDIA Video Codec SDK–enabled elements?
  • If not, what’s the recommended way to get nvdec/nvenc support on Ubuntu 25.04?

Environment:

# Ubuntu release
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 25.04
Release:	25.04
Codename:	plucky

# GStreamer version
gst-inspect-1.0 --version
→ gst-inspect-1.0 version 1.26.0
  GStreamer 1.26.0
  https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gstreamer1.0

# NVIDIA driver
nvidia-smi
→ Driver Version: 575.51.03
  GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada Generation

# Installed GStreamer packages
dpkg -l | grep -i gstreamer
→ gir1.2-gst-plugins-bad-1.0:amd64    1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-1.0:amd64   1.26.0-1
  gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0:amd64          1.26.0-3
  gstreamer1.0-alsa:amd64             1.26.0-1
  gstreamer1.0-gl:amd64               1.26.0-1
  gstreamer1.0-gtk3:amd64             1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  gstreamer1.0-libav:amd64            1.26.0-1
  gstreamer1.0-pipewire:amd64         1.2.7-1ubuntu5
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad:amd64      1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-base:amd64     1.26.0-1
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-good:amd64     1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly:amd64     1.26.0-1
  gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio:amd64       1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  gstreamer1.0-qt5:amd64              1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  gstreamer1.0-tools                  1.26.0-3
  gstreamer1.0-x:amd64                1.26.0-1
  libgstreamer-gl1.0-0:amd64          1.26.0-1
  libgstreamer-opencv1.0-0:amd64      1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0:amd64 1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-dev:amd64 1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0:amd64 1.26.0-1
  libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev    1.26.0-1
  libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0-0:amd64 1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0-dev    1.26.0-1ubuntu2
  libgstreamer1.0-0:amd64             1.26.0-3
  libgstreamer1.0-dev:amd64           1.26.0-3

# Registered GStreamer elements
gst-inspect-1.0 | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq | head -n 50
→ (only generic elements: audioconvert, autovideoconvert, videoconvert, va, x264, ximagesink, etc.; **no** nvdec/nvenc/nvcodec)

# Environment variables
env | grep -E 'GST_PLUGIN_PATH|LD_LIBRARY_PATH'
→ (none set)

Many thanks,
Zoltan

EDIT:
There is definitely something wrong with the version 1.26. on Ubuntu 25.04.
I just installed Ubuntu 24.10 that comes with gstreamer v1.24.8, nvcodec works just fine. After upgrading the OS to 25.04, nvcodec disappears.

2 
sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Try that. A few years back I wanted to run blender with cuda support on debian and it refused to work until I installed that. I don’t have the source for where I found it but after a quick online search it (linux-headers-*) seems to pop up in guides for installing nvidia drivers. If it breaks on upgrade there could be a mismatch between linux-headers-generic and your kernel version?

3

Thanks for the reply.

There is no mismatch between linux-headers-generic and my kernel.
I did some tests on both my laptop where I originally wanted to use gstreamer for development, and on my ML machine where I don’t have a desktop environment.

I could not do much on my laptop since there are a lot of packages depending on gstreamer and I just don’t want to break it. Reinstalled the gstreamer plugins, double checked the nvidia driver, everything seems to be normal.

I had Ubuntu 24.04 running on my ML machine with an older nvidia driver (560 maybe). gstreamer worked fine with the nvcodec.

Then, I created a snapshot of the machine (its actually a VM) and installed the same driver I have on my laptop. Then, upgraded to ubuntu 24.10, finally to ubuntu 25.04. The nvcodec disappeared after the 25.04 upgrade.

As a last step I installed Ubuntu 25.04 from scratch, installed the same nvidia driver and then the plugins. The nvcodec was missing in this case, too.

I think it is safe to assume that there is something wrong with the version 1.26.0 that comes with ubuntu 25.04.