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memories/docs/hw-transcoding.md

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description
Configuration for hardware acceleration for transcoding with VA-API and NVENC

Hardware transcoding

This document describes setting up transcoding in Memories, specifically using hardware acceleration. Hardware acceleration can significantly improve transcoding performance, especially for high resolution videos. Memories supports transcoding using CPU, VA-API and NVENC.

Overview

Newer Intel processors come with a feature called QuickSync that can significantly boost transcoding performance (4-5x improvement over x264 is common). QuickSync can be used for hardware accelerated transcoding using the VA-API in ffmpeg.

Note: VA-API acceleration may also work with some AMD GPUs.

To configure VAAPI, you need to have /dev/dri available to the Nextcloud instance with the www-data in the group owning the drivers. You also need the correct drivers and a compatible version of ffmpeg installed.

NVIDIA GPUs support hardware transcoding using NVENC.

!!! tip "Hardware acceleration is optional"

Hardware acceleration is optional and not required for Memories to function. If you do not have hardware acceleration, Memories will use the CPU for transcoding.

!!! bug "Filing bugs related to transcoding"

If you have issues with hardware transcoding, reach out for [help](/faq/#getting-help). Make sure you include details about your setup such as how the transcoder is set up, the version of each component and **the logs from the transcoder**.

External Transcoder

!!! success "Recommmended configuration"

The easiest and recommended way to use hardware transcoding is to use an external transcoder.
This setup utilizes a separate docker container that contains the hardware drivers and ffmpeg.
If you cannot use an external docker container, other installation methods are also possible (see below).

go-vod, the transcoder of Memories, ships with a Dockerfile that already includes the latest ffmpeg and VA-API drivers. To set up an external transcoder, follow these steps.

  1. Clone the go-vod repository. Make sure you use the correct tag, which can be found in the admin panel. Note that this is not the same as the version of Memories you run.

    git clone -b <tag> https://github.com/pulsejet/go-vod

    !!! tip "go-vod version" Make sure you always use the correct version of go-vod corresponding to your Memories installation. If you use a different version, the admin panel will show a warning and transcoding may not work properly.

  2. Use a docker-compose file that builds the go-vod container and mounts the Nextcloud data directories to it. The directory containing the docker-compose.yml must contain the go-vod repository in it. You can then run docker compose build to build the image and docker compose up -d to start the containers.

    # docker-compose.yml

services:
  nc:
    image: nextcloud
    restart: always
    depends_on:
      - db
      - redis
    volumes:
      - ncdata:/var/www/html

  go-vod:
    build: ./go-vod
    restart: always
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
    volumes:
      - ncdata:/var/www/html:ro

    !!! tip "Devices and volumes" In this example, the VA-API device /dev/dri/renderD128 is passed to the container, along with the Nextcloud data directory (as readonly). All volumnes must be mounted at the same location as the Nextcloud container.

  3. You can now configure the go-vod connect address in the Memories admin panel to point to the external container. go-vod uses port 47788 by default, so in our example the connection address would be set to go-vod:47788.

  4. Finally, turn on enable external transcoder in the admin panel. This will initiate a test of the transcoder and show the result.

Your external transcoder should now be functional. You can check the transcoding logs by running docker compose logs -f go-vod.

!!! info "Usage with Nextcloud AIO"

With Nextcloud AIO, you will need to put the container into the `nextcloud-aio` network. Also the datadir of AIO needs to be mounted at the same place like in its Netxcloud container into the go-vod container. Usually this would be `nextcloud_aio_nextcloud_data:/mnt/ncdata:ro` or `$NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR:/mnt/ncdata:ro`.
See the instructions [here](https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one#how-to-enable-hardware-transcoding-for-nextcloud).

!!! info "Usage without docker-compose"

You can run a similar setup without `docker-compose` by building the go-vod container manually. Make sure that the Nextcloud and go-vod containers are in the same network and that the Nextcloud data directories are mounted at the same locations in both containers.

NVENC

If you want to use NVENC instead of VA-API, the steps are similar. In this case, you need to build the image from Dockerfile.nvidia instead. You can specify the image to build in the docker-compose.yml file.

  ...
  go-vod:
    build:
      context: ./go-vod
      dockerfile: Dockerfile.nvidia
  ...

Logging

When running an external transcoder, the logs go to the container logs. You can view them using

docker compose logs -f go-vod     # for docker-compose
docker logs -f <container-name>   # if not using docker-compose

Internal Transcoder

Memories ships with an internal transcoder binary that you can directly use. In this case, you must install the drivers and ffmpeg on the same host as Nextcloud, and Memories will automatically handling starting and communicating with go-vod. This is also the default setup when you enable transcoding without hardware acceleration.

!!! danger "Advanced usage only"

In most cases, it is easier to use an external transcoder when you need hardware acceleration.
The internal transcoder is only suitable for CPU transcoding or if you do not use Docker.

!!! tip "NVENC"

These instructions mostly focus on VA-API. For NVENC, you may find further useful
pointers in [this](https://github.com/pulsejet/go-vod/blob/master/build-ffmpeg-nvidia.sh) build script.

Bare Metal

If you are running Nextcloud on bare metal, you can install the drivers and ffmpeg directly on the host. You need to make sure that the www-data user has access to the drivers. You can do this by adding the www-data user to the appropriate groups.

## Ubuntu
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y intel-media-va-driver-non-free ffmpeg # install VA-API drivers
sudo usermod -aG video www-data # add www-data to the video group (may be different)

## Alpine
apk update
apk add --no-cache bash ffmpeg libva-utils libva-vdpau-driver libva-intel-driver intel-media-driver mesa-va-gallium

In some cases, along with adding www-data to the appropriate groups, you may also need to set the permissions of the device manually:

sudo chmod 666 /dev/dri/renderD128

You can run a test using a sample video file to check if VA-API is working correctly for the www-data user:

# download sample or or use any other video file
wget https://github.com/pulsejet/memories-assets/raw/main/sample.mp4
chown www-data:www-data sample.mp4

# check if VA-API is working
sudo -u www-data \
  ffmpeg -hwaccel vaapi -hwaccel_device /dev/dri/renderD128 -hwaccel_output_format vaapi \
  -i 'sample.mp4' -vcodec h264_vaapi \
  output-www-data.mp4

In some cases, you may need to build the drivers and ffmpeg from source. For example, the available version of the media driver for the current debian image used by Nextcloud only supports upto Ice Lake CPUs. This script for VA-API or this one for NVENC might be useful.

Docker

!!! danger "Use an external transcoder"

If you need hardware transcoding and use Docker, it can be significantly easier to use an external transcoder. See [above](#external-transcoder) for instructions.
The instructions below, as a result, are mostly historical and **not recommended** for normal usage.

If you use Docker and want to use the internal transcoder, you need to:

  1. Pass the /dev/dri device to the Nextcloud container. In docker-compose.yml:

    nc:
  build: .
  restart: always
  devices:
    - /dev/dri:/dev/dri

  2. Make sure the right drivers are installed. This can be done using a custom Dockerfile as illustrated below.

    FROM nextcloud:stable-fpm

RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y lsb-release && \
    echo "deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian $(lsb_release -cs) non-free" >> \
       /etc/apt/sources.list.d/intel-graphics.list && \
    apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y intel-media-va-driver-non-free ffmpeg && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

COPY start.sh /
CMD /start.sh

  3. The start.sh should add the user to the video group and start php-fpm.

    #!/bin/bash
GID=`stat -c "%g" /dev/dri/renderD128`
groupadd -g $GID render2 || true # sometimes this is needed
GROUP=`getent group $GID | cut -d: -f1`
usermod -aG $GROUP www-data

php-fpm

Linuxserver Image

The linuxserver/nextcloud image is based on Alpine. You can add the following to the docker-compose.yml file to install the VA-API drivers and use the internal transcoder directly.

devices:
  - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
environment:
  - DOCKER_MODS=linuxserver/mods:universal-package-install
  - INSTALL_PACKAGES=libva|libva-intel-driver|intel-media-driver|mesa-va-gallium

Logging

When using the internal transcoder, the logs go to /tmp/go-vod/<instance-id>.log, where <instance-id is a unique ID for your Nextcloud instance that can be found in config.php. You can view them as illustrated below.

tail -f /tmp/go-vod/<instance-id>.log # bare metal

docker exec -it <container-name> cat /tmp/go-vod/<instance-id>.log # Docker