Overview: Apple
Apple media interfaces and engines provide different routes for video coding and picture processing.
VideoToolbox exposes media operations, Apple silicon media engines supply particular hardware work, and Metal provides a programmable graphics or compute route. A pipeline can use those facilities in different combinations. These pages identify the relevant interface and operation rather than attributing every stage to one acceleration label.
Apple VideoToolbox
VideoToolbox provides Apple-platform compression and decompression sessions whose selected implementation, pixel buffers and completion behavior define the media-processing path.Apple silicon media engines
Apple silicon includes specialized media resources whose codec directions and software exposure are distinct from CPU, GPU and Neural Engine counts.Metal for video processing
Metal exposes Apple GPU graphics and compute work used to process suitable picture textures, with CoreVideo interoperability, layout and synchronization connecting it to media sessions.