Vulkan Renderer to H.264 Encoder

A real-time graphics application using Vulkan that renders frames on the GPU and encodes them into an H.264 video using GPU-accelerated encoders such as Vulkan Video. This simulates the workflow of a lightweight game capture or visualization pipeline.

This project exists to deepen my understanding of modern GPU programming and video processing. The project bridges real-time rendering with hardware-accelerated video encoding. Rather than relying on platform-specific solutions like NVENC, this project explores Vulkan Video, a cross-platform and vendor-neutral API for encoding video directly from GPU-rendered content.

This project provides a practical way to learn how to:

• Efficiently manage GPU memory and synchronization
• Integrate Vulkan rendering and encoding pipelines
• Work with the Vulkan Video extensions to achieve hardware-accelerated encoding on any supported GPU (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel)
• Build a cross-platform application that avoids vendor lock-in

Development Environment

This project was built and tested on Linux (Ubuntu/Debian-based) with the following dependencies installed:

sudo apt update

# Vulkan core and extensions
sudo apt install libvulkan-dev vulkan-tools vulkan-utility-libraries-dev spirv-tools

# Windowing, math, and input support
sudo apt install libglfw3-dev libglm-dev libxi-dev libxxf86vm-dev

Note: Ensure your GPU and drivers support Vulkan Video extensions (e.g. NVIDIA driver 535+ or compatible AMD/Intel driver). Use vulkaninfo to inspect extension support

Building the Project

Ensure g++ and make are installed. Then build the project with:

make

This will:

• Compile all .cpp files in the src/ directory
• Link with Vulkan, GLFW, and other necessary libraries
• Produce a binary executable named VulkanTest

To run the compiled app:

make test

To clean build artifacts:

make clean

Debugging

To debug or inspect Vulkan behavior, ensure the Vulkan SDK is installed. See the official guide: LunarG Vulkan SDK - Getting Started on Ubuntu

Cross-compiling for Windows (from Linux)

Ensure that cross-compiler MinGW-w64 is installed:

sudo apt-get install mingw-w64 gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 g++-mingw-w64-x86-64

Build Windows dependencies (GLFW, Vulkan Headers, Vulkan Loader):

./setup-windows-deps.sh

Compile the project for Windows:

make TARGET_OS=windows MODE=release

This will produce a VulkanTest.exe, ready to run on Windows.