thaigps/livekit-gpu repository overview

⁠LiveKit Server with NVIDIA GPU Support

A Dockerized LiveKit server bundled with FFmpeg compiled for NVIDIA NVENC/NVDEC, suitable for live streaming workloads that benefit from hardware-accelerated transcoding.

⁠Prerequisites on Host

1. NVIDIA Driver (>= 535 recommended)

   nvidia-smi   # should print your GPU info
   

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2. NVIDIA Container Toolkit

   distribution=$(. /etc/os-release; echo $ID$VERSION_ID)
   curl -fsSL https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/gpgkey | \
       sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg
   curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/$distribution/libnvidia-container.list | \
       sed 's#deb https://#deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg] https://#g' | \
       sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list
   
   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-container-toolkit
   sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker
   sudo systemctl restart docker
   

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3. Verify

   docker run --rm --gpus all nvidia/cuda:12.4.1-base-ubuntu22.04 nvidia-smi
   

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⁠Build & Run

docker compose build
docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f

⁠Verify GPU + FFmpeg inside the container

# GPU visible?
docker compose exec livekit nvidia-smi

# NVENC encoders available?
docker compose exec livekit ffmpeg -hide_banner -encoders | grep nvenc

# Quick transcode test
docker compose exec livekit ffmpeg -f lavfi -i testsrc=duration=5:size=1280x720:rate=30 \
    -c:v h264_nvenc -f null -

⁠Important Notes

• GPU arch: The Dockerfile compiles FFmpeg for compute_75 (Turing — RTX 20-series, T4). Adjust --nvccflags in the FFmpeg build stage for your GPU:
  • Ampere (RTX 30-series, A100): compute_86
  • Ada Lovelace (RTX 40-series): compute_89
  • Hopper (H100): compute_90
• Networking: network_mode: host is recommended for WebRTC. If you must use bridge networking, expose the full UDP range (50000-60000) which can be slow on Docker Desktop.
• Production keys: Replace the keys section in livekit.yaml. Generate with:

  docker compose exec livekit livekit-server generate-keys
  

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• External IP: For public deployments, set rtc.external_ip in livekit.yaml to your server's public IP, or rely on use_external_ip: true if the server can detect it via STUN.
• Ingress/Egress: This image runs the LiveKit server only. For RTMP ingress or recording, deploy livekit-ingress⁠ and livekit-egress⁠ as separate services — both can use this same GPU-enabled FFmpeg base.

⁠Connecting a client

Default dev credentials (CHANGE FOR PRODUCTION):

• URL: ws://YOUR_HOST:7880
• API Key: devkey
• Secret: secretsecretsecretsecretsecretsecret

Generate a token:

docker compose exec livekit livekit-server create-token \
    --api-key devkey --api-secret secretsecretsecretsecretsecretsecret \
    --join --room test-room --identity test-user