memories/docs/hw-transcoding.md

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

Hardware transcoding

Memories supports transcoding acceleration with VA-API and NVENC.

External Transcoder

If you plan to use hardware transcoding, it may be easier to run the transcoder (go-vod) in a separate docker image containing ffmpeg and hardware acceleration dependencies. For this, you need to clone the go-vod repository and build the docker image. Then you need to change the vod connect address and mark go-vod as external. The important requirement for running go-vod externally is that the file structure must be exactly same for the target video files.

In the directory with the docker-compose.yml file, run,

git clone https://github.com/pulsejet/go-vod

If you are using docker, configure a service to start go-vod with the correct devices and filesystem structure. Otherwise, manually start the container with these parameters.

# docker-compose.yml

services:
  app:
    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

Make sure to put the container and the container into the same network so that they can talk to each other!

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.

Finally, point Memories to the external go-vod instance. In the admin interface, set go-vod to external and configure the connect URL to go-vod:47788. Alternatively, add the following configuration to config.php:

'memories.vod.external' => true,
'memories.vod.connect' => 'go-vod:47788',

VA-API

!!! warning "These instructions are not applicable for external transcoders"

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.

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y intel-media-va-driver-non-free ffmpeg

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

# 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

Docker installations

If you use Docker, you need to:

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

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

2. Make sure the right drivers are installed. This can be done using a custom Dockerfile, for example

   FROM nextcloud:latest
   
   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
   

   In start.sh,

   #!/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
   

3. Check the output of /tmp/go-vod/<instance-id>.log if playback has issues

Nextcloud AIO

See https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one#how-to-enable-hardware-transcoding-for-nextcloud

linuxserver/nextcloud image

You can add the following to the docker-compose.yml file to install the drivers:

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

FFmpeg from source

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 recipe might be useful.

FROM nextcloud:25

# Enable QSV support
SHELL ["/bin/bash", "-c"]
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y sudo curl git && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
RUN curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/pulsejet/4d81c1356703b2c8ba19c1ca9e6f6e50/raw/qsv-docker.sh | bash

...