Dan MacDonald

just a little update: i got the open source nouveau gpu driver working with the mainline kernel finally by using a self compiled xorg server from the latest sources (required - see: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/3505), a self compiled mesa 21.0.1 (not sure if this is really required) and the "nouveau.modeset=1" kernel cmdline parameter - what is nice is that it is opengl 4.3
 
so far the good part, the bad part is that it is extremely slow (glmark2 score of 68) as it is clocked at the lowest gpu frequency by default and trying to increase the gpu frequency via /sys/kernel/debug/dri/128/pstate seems to make the system quite unstable or quickly hangs it (maybe my power supply - 5.1v/3a - is not powerful enough?)
 
i'm also able to run a wayfire wayland session using the nouveau gpu driver, but it shows quite a few graphical artifacts when scrolling in a terminal or doing other activities - glmark2 score here is 83, but its also for lima or panfrost higher in wayland/wayfire than in xorg/xfce
 
all in all it looks like the quality of the open source nouveau driver on the jetson nano (maybe even in general?) is not really the best and as it looks to me far behind the quality of the lima and panfrost open source drivers for the mali gpus in other socs

Starting 5.12, no kernel patches are needed for H264. With 5.14 (due in about a week or two), only HEVC needs patches. Other supported codecs (MPEG2, VP8, H264) do not.
 
You still have to make sure that you have enough CMA memory available. 4k videos can be pretty demanding in worst case. I would suggest 256 MiB just to be on the safe side.

All patches that do not conflict are included.

Hi Ubobrov
 
You seem to be the expert on using the Cedrus decoder under Armbian so I've got a few questions that I'm hoping you would be kind enough to answer:
 
Have you tried 4K@30fps h264 playback using cedrus/v4l2-request with mpv?
 
Have you tried the most recent 5.10 Libreelec AW kernel patches? I'm hoping Balbes can include these in the Armbian AW kernel as standard.
 
Have you also got an Allwinner H6 board? Your guide should also work for H6 devices. I've got a T95 Max.
 
I noticed in your guide to building ffmpeg you disable vaapi and vdpau. Why? Was that just to save build time or do you have another reason? It may no longer be required to rebuild ffmpeg, maybe v4l2-request is enabled in the regular deb now?
 
It looks like libvdpau-sunxi isn't required and it hasn't been updated in years so I presume its dead.

I've got ffmpeg working with v4l2_request api on Allwinner H3 (orange pi pc).
It achieved in a few steps:
1. Download FFmpeg https://github.com/xbmc/FFmpeg/archive/4.0.4-Leia-18.4.tar.gz
2. Patch it with https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv/tree/master/packages/multimedia/ffmpeg/patches
3. Download mainline kernel 5.3.5
4. Patch it with https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv/tree/master/projects/Allwinner/patches/linux
5. Copy linux headers on rootfs /usr/include after kernel built:
make headers_install ARCH=arm INSTALL_HDR_PATH=/your/path/to/headers 6. Install libdrm-dev and libudev-dev before configuring FFmpeg
7. Configure FFmpeg with:
/configure --enable-v4l2-request --enable-libudev --enable-libdrm --enable-shared --disable-static \ --disable-openssl --disable-gray --disable-vaapi --disable-vdpau --disable-rkmpp 8. Build FFmpeg on the target machine (orange pi pc in my case)
That's it )
 
ffmpeg -re -hwaccel drm -i Big_Buck_Bunny_720_10s_2MB.mp4 out.avi FFmpeg perfectly uses HW acceleration on decoding H264.

I own a few Android TV boxes that have poor thermal designs that are prone to overheating when under sustained load. This can either cause your device to significantly slow down or shut down entirely. This can be fixed by cutting a hole in the bottom on your TV box above the SoC and sticking a small USB fan on it. In my case I am using a AC Infinity 40mm x 20mm USB Fan that cost me £10.
 
CH340-fan-control is a python script to only activate my TV boxes USB fan when required by using a USB relay module. I'd expect somebody (or several somebodies) have already wrote a similar script for the same device but I failed to find it so here is my effort at fixing this common TV box issue. Hopefully someone else will find it useful.

https://github.com/danboid/CH340-fan-control

 

Please first read:
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first
 
Then read the following thread which should be relevant for your needs:
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16859-allwinner-h6/