V1.37.37 doesnt not seem to respect the PATH_FFMPEG setting

Current Development version likely to have breaking changes
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SierraCharlie
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Joined: Mon Mar 20, 2023 10:14 am

V1.37.37 doesnt not seem to respect the PATH_FFMPEG setting

Post by SierraCharlie »

I guess the underlying question is - does the v1.37.xx development branch support hardware encoding on an NVIDIA GPU?
I was running v1.36.33 and it works there without issue but attempting the same settings on a different PC yield different results.

I compiled ffmpeg from source - the same instructions as I followed on the earlier version, but I am not seeing any HW acceleration.
v1.37.37 was installed from the repo as per the instructions at https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/st ... buntu.html
I can actually remove the PATH_FFMPEG option or set it to nothing and I see no errors in my system - the camera still keep on going. I can even delete the ffmpeg executable from /usr/bin and still see no errors - even if I apply the same settings from the old server - makes me wonder where ffmpeg is coming from. I do have a conda environment with ffmpeg installed in it - if I activate the environment in a terminal, I can call ffmpeg.

As I look at what I've written, I am aware of how silly it probably looks - removing things to prove a point one way or another, but I'm trying to get to the bottom of why the PATH-FFMPEG setting seems to not do anything no matter how I set it.

Has anyone successfully run ffmpeg with cuda on this development version as yet?

ffmpeg is configured for cuda on my system and the source type is set to ffmpeg.
Screenshot from 2023-03-20 20-48-11.png
Screenshot from 2023-03-20 20-48-11.png (14.31 KiB) Viewed 656 times

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -hwaccels
ffmpeg version N-110046-g3ead1fe413 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 9 (Ubuntu 9.4.0-1ubuntu1~20.04.1)
  configuration: --enable-nonfree --enable-cuda-nvcc --enable-libnpp --extra-cflags=-I/usr/local/cuda/include --extra-ldflags=-L/usr/local/cuda/lib64
  libavutil      58.  4.100 / 58.  4.100
  libavcodec     60.  6.101 / 60.  6.101
  libavformat    60.  4.100 / 60.  4.100
  libavdevice    60.  2.100 / 60.  2.100
  libavfilter     9.  4.100 /  9.  4.100
  libswscale      7.  2.100 /  7.  2.100
  libswresample   4. 11.100 /  4. 11.100
Hardware acceleration methods:
vdpau
cuda
I can see that there is another version in my conda environment. Would this possibly impact ffmpeg working properly?
dougmccrary
Posts: 1172
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2019 7:35 am
Location: San Diego

Re: V1.37.37 doesnt not seem to respect the PATH_FFMPEG setting

Post by dougmccrary »

Did you see this?
Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 17-42-55 ZMX - Options.png
Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 17-42-55 ZMX - Options.png (16.5 KiB) Viewed 629 times
Isaac has stated elsewhere that using the hardware is kind of a wash because of how zm vs hardware works.
This may be an intermediate version as he looks to make it more efficient, or perhaps drop it altogether.
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iconnor
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Location: Toronto
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Re: V1.37.37 doesnt not seem to respect the PATH_FFMPEG setting

Post by iconnor »

We only use the ffmpeg executable when generating thumbnails and still frame images from the saved mp4.

For encoding, we use the LIBRARIES so, you would need to alter the LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

encoding works fine on my old nvidia hardware using standard ubuntu packages. Or at least it did the last time I checked.

hwaccel should be of great benefit in ENCODING. It is not useful for decoding at this time.
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