ffmpeg packaging

[JRGonz]

I am running the jellyfin server in a jail and everything works fine but nvenc/dec requires using nv-sglrun to prefix the ffmpeg command. My solution was to mv ffmpeg to ffmpeg.bin and make a script to run ffmpeg:

#!/bin/sh
nv-sglrun ffmpeg "$@"

I'm not sure if there is a way this could be fixed in the pkg repo but the weird way ffmpeg needs to be used for nvidia was difficult to sort out. I am also curious about the Transcoding options not honoring decoding. I had to add -hwaccel cuda to the script to force it:

nv-sglrun ffmpeg -hwaccel cuda "$@"

This seems to do the trick but if you run into issues with hw accel decoding malfunctioning then you have to edit a script to disable it since jellyfin for freebsd does not honor the option it seems.

[Thefrank]

What version of ffmpeg and what version of jellyfin are you running? jellyfin on other platforms will typically come with its own version of ffmpeg (typically v7+). Starting in ffmpeg7 the API changed a bit on how it handles hwaccel. As far as I know, the options are being honored, it is just that jellyfin thinks it is passing the right options for 7+ of ffmpeg, not 6 which is still what FreeBSD uses.

It looks like ffmpeg8 just landed in ports which might resolve this issue. https://www.freshports.org/multimedia/ffmpeg/
It will take up to a week for that to make it into pkg mirrors.

[JRGonz]

I'm using jellyfin from the latest pkg repo (10.11.5) ... it uses ffmpeg from pkg as a dependency. I think the bigger issue here is that you need to use all types of awkwardness to get ffmpeg to use nvenc which requires a libc6-shim to work. This means that ffmpeg needs to be called using nv-sglrun in order to support the hwaccel options.

ffmpeg version 8.0.1

This is the version currently installed. I think jellyfin comes with its own version just to avoid this type of weirdness in linux where ffmpeg winds up becoming a dependency. I'm sure it would be a little complicated to get jellyfin-server-freebsd to be packaged with its own ffmpeg which is set up to call nv-sglrun for the hw benefits.

[Thefrank]

I looked into seeing if I could build a static-linked version of jellyfin-ffmpeg about a year ago and ended up dropping it as I did not have the time. It is more than just a series of patches as they have a whole build system set up for it https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-ffmpeg

One issue, like you said, is the need for a shim (glibc -> libc). The other is that CUDA is not supported by nVidia under FreeBSD requiring the use of both the shim and linux components :(

jellyfin should work fine with the (version 8) ports version of ffmpeg if you are using VAAPI (AMD GPU) or QSV (Intel iGPU)

[JRGonz]

That's understandable. Adjusting it would probably change it from jellyfin main as well. Maybe one solution would be to pkg it where it uses a different path for ffmpeg and installing a script (similar to what I had to do) with a pkg note saying "edit this script if you need nvidia support after getting it to work with libc6 / nv-sglrun" . By default it would just be /usr/loca/bin/ffmpeg "$@" and if people needed the nvidia support then the message can show how to edit the script to do so.