[HW Accel Support]: RTX 4070 automatically recognized?

[ALinkenbach]

Describe the problem you are having

Probably a stupid question, but I am confused: from how I read the docs it would appear that ffmpeg: hwaccel_args: would need to be set in order for my RTX 4070 to work. However it does appear in the system metrics even with the entry commented out. What do I then need the parameter for?

Version

0.17.1-416a9b7

Frigate config file

#ffmpeg:
#  hwaccel_args: preset-nvidia-h264

docker-compose file or Docker CLI command

services:
  frigate:
    container_name: frigate
    privileged: true
    restart: unless-stopped
    image: ghcr.io/blakeblackshear/frigate:stable-tensorrt
    shm_size: "512mb"
    deploy:
      resources:
        reservations:
          devices:
            - driver: nvidia
              count: 1
              capabilities: [gpu]
    #devices: 
    #  - /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - /home/alex/frigate/config/config.yml:/config/config.yml
      - /home/alex/frigate/storage:/media/frigate
      - type: tmpfs # 1GB of memory
        target: /tmp/cache
        tmpfs:
          size: 1000000000
    ports:
      - "5000:5000" # Port used by the Web UI
      - "8554:8554" # RTSP feeds
      - "8555:8555/tcp" # WebRTC over tcp
      - "8555:8555/udp" # WebRTC over udp
      - "1984:1984" #go2rt
    environment:
      FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD: "password"

Relevant Frigate log output

2026-04-12 00:11:20.574913079  [INFO] Preparing Frigate...
2026-04-12 00:11:20.821356228  [INFO] Starting Frigate...
2026-04-12 00:11:23.343651777  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.util.config            INFO    : Checking if frigate config needs migration...
2026-04-12 00:11:23.357073520  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.util.config            INFO    : frigate config does not need migration...
2026-04-12 00:11:23.396921221  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.app                    INFO    : Starting Frigate (0.17.1-416a9b7)
2026-04-12 00:11:23.477222606  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] peewee_migrate.logs            INFO    : Starting migrations
2026-04-12 00:11:23.477470663  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] peewee_migrate.logs            INFO    : There is nothing to migrate
2026-04-12 00:11:23.516071258  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.app                    INFO    : Recording process started: 956
2026-04-12 00:11:23.533086695  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.app                    INFO    : Review process started: 969
2026-04-12 00:11:23.534729827  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.app                    INFO    : go2rtc process pid: 157
2026-04-12 00:11:23.721369264  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.app                    INFO    : Embedding process started: 979
2026-04-12 00:11:23.753790255  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.detectors.plugins.edgetpu_tfl INFO    : Attempting to load TPU as usb
2026-04-12 00:11:23.778888557  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.app                    INFO    : Output process started: 1041
2026-04-12 00:11:23.819067251  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.camera.maintainer      INFO    : Camera processor started for gate: 1099
2026-04-12 00:11:23.879669909  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.api.fastapi_app        INFO    : Starting FastAPI app
2026-04-12 00:11:23.991414456  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.api.fastapi_app        INFO    : FastAPI started
2026-04-12 00:11:23.992442892  [2026-04-12 00:11:23] frigate.camera.maintainer      INFO    : Capture process started for gate: 1201
2026-04-12 00:11:24.012162569  [2026-04-12 00:11:24] frigate.camera.maintainer      INFO    : Camera processor started for front: 1292
2026-04-12 00:11:24.033214303  [2026-04-12 00:11:24] frigate.camera.maintainer      INFO    : Capture process started for front: 1349
2026-04-12 00:11:24.052921205  [2026-04-12 00:11:24] frigate.camera.maintainer      INFO    : Camera processor started for back_yard: 1424
2026-04-12 00:11:24.099658586  [2026-04-12 00:11:24] frigate.camera.maintainer      INFO    : Capture process started for back_yard: 1482
2026-04-12 00:11:24.117638247  [2026-04-12 00:11:24] frigate.camera.maintainer      INFO    : Camera processor started for speed_4s: 1546
2026-04-12 00:11:24.137784437  [2026-04-12 00:11:24] frigate.camera.maintainer      INFO    : Capture process started for speed_4s: 1603
2026-04-12 00:11:24.161358417  [2026-04-12 00:11:24] frigate.camera.maintainer      INFO    : Camera processor started for mini: 1667

Relevant go2rtc log output

2026-04-12 00:11:20.773911218  [INFO] Preparing new go2rtc config...
2026-04-12 00:11:21.018328253  [INFO] Starting go2rtc...
2026-04-12 00:11:21.245774345  00:11:21.245 INF go2rtc platform=linux/amd64 revision=df95ce3 version=1.9.10
2026-04-12 00:11:21.245777601  00:11:21.245 INF config path=/config/go2rtc_homekit.yml
2026-04-12 00:11:21.246246013  00:11:21.246 INF [rtsp] listen addr=:8554
2026-04-12 00:11:21.246304042  00:11:21.246 INF [api] listen addr=:1984
2026-04-12 00:11:21.246470826  00:11:21.246 INF [webrtc] listen addr=:8555
2026-04-12 00:11:30.525749600  [INFO] Starting go2rtc healthcheck service...

FFprobe output from your camera

OCI runtime exec failed: exec failed: unable to start container process: exec: "ffprobe": executable file not found in $PATH

Install method

Docker CLI

Object Detector

Coral

Network connection

Wired

Camera make and model

Reolink Door bell

Screenshots of the Frigate UI's System metrics pages

Any other information that may be helpful

No response

[inkeep-ai-assistant[bot]]

Your RTX 4070 appearing in system metrics doesn't mean hardware-accelerated video decoding is active. Frigate can detect and display GPU presence for monitoring purposes, but you still need to configure hwaccel_args to actually use the GPU for decoding video streams. (1)

For NVIDIA GPUs, you should use:

ffmpeg:
  hwaccel_args: preset-nvidia

(1)

Using preset-nvidia, ffmpeg will automatically select the necessary profile for the incoming video and log an error if the profile is not supported by your GPU. (1)

To verify hardware decoding is working, run nvidia-smi on the host (not inside the container due to Docker limitations), and you should see ffmpeg processes listed under GPU processes. (1)

In summary: The GPU showing up in metrics confirms Frigate sees the hardware, but without hwaccel_args: preset-nvidia in your config, video decoding is happening on your CPU rather than being offloaded to the GPU. (1)

📚 Sources:

1. Video Decoding

---

Have another question? Just tag @inkeep.

[ALinkenbach]

OK. so. nvidia-smi gives me all the ffmpeg processes, one per active camera. But regardles whether hwaccel_args is set or commented out:

#ffmpeg:
#hwaccel_args: preset-nvidia

alex@hactor:~$ nvidia-smi
Sun Apr 12 00:33:40 2026
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.163.01 Driver Version: 550.163.01 CUDA Version: 12.4 |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Off | 00000000:08:00.0 Off | N/A |
| 0% 48C P2 37W / 200W | 1966MiB / 12282MiB | 1% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=========================================================================================|
| 0 N/A N/A 1298 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 56MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 1349 G /usr/bin/sddm-greeter-qt6 48MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 494842 C frigate.embeddings_manager 656MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 495058 C /usr/lib/ffmpeg/7.0/bin/ffmpeg 334MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 495270 C /usr/lib/ffmpeg/7.0/bin/ffmpeg 280MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 495527 C /usr/lib/ffmpeg/7.0/bin/ffmpeg 268MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 495646 C /usr/lib/ffmpeg/7.0/bin/ffmpeg 276MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 495762 C /usr/lib/ffmpeg/7.0/bin/ffmpeg 20MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[hawkeye217]

This is working as intended. When you comment out hwaccel_args, it falls back to the default value which is "auto" (not disabled). This is documented in the reference config.

On startup, Frigate queries go2rtc's hardware detection endpoint (/api/ffmpeg/hardware) to probe which acceleration methods are available. Since your RTX 4070 is passed through to the container, it detects CUDA support and automatically applies preset-nvidia (which translates to -hwaccel cuda -hwaccel_output_format cuda). That's why you see ffmpeg processes on the GPU in nvidia-smi.

To explicitly disable hardware acceleration, you'd need to set hwaccel_args to an empty value (eg hwaccel_args: ""). But there's no reason to, because auto-detection is picking the right thing for your setup.