Let's say I am currently playing a video in VLC. How do I find out if VLC is using hardware (GPU) rendering, or decoding, at this moment?
This question is not about enabling using the GPU.
You can install Process Explorer (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653)
In Process Explorer find vlc.exe
playing a video file, right click and choose Properties...
. Click GPU Graph
. Top graph should display GPU usage.
Try enabling and disabling GPU video decoding in VLC and see the graph.
More GPU usage - means VLC decoding video using GPU.
Because you need to restart VLC to apply changes - you should open properties of actual vlc.exe instance.