Hardware Encoding/Decoding for RK3399 on Helios64

[Victor B.]

Hello,

I am quite new to this topic, and I have found it to be quite complex. I primarily work with tiny MCUs and RTOSes, but I am enjoying the Linux space so far.

 

In essence I would like to use the Mali GPU that is embedded within the RK3399 of the Helios64 for hardware transcoding. This isn't a novel idea, as shown by these sources:

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/9272-development-rk3399-media-script/

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/66675-36078-transcoding-rockpro64/

 

I am using Jellying, and in so FFMPEG to decode/encode the data streams. It seems that V4L2 is supported for hardware ecoding/decoding in the FFMPEG package, but in my experience doesn't appropriately work with the Mesa Panfrost drivers (https://wiki.debian.org/PanfrostLima) and the ARM drivers fail to compile with the kernel headers provided by the armbian-config script. I like the idea of having hardware accelerated transcoding, and I'm not even interested in 4K content, but my helios64 fails to transcode h265 (HEVC) to h264 at a playable rate. Secondly I like to have watch-togethers with my friends and I have to use my power-hungry PC for this. Of course I can introduce new hardware to do this like an arm64 laptop, but I like the all-in-one solution, and I simply can't be the only one that feels this way.

Has anyone had success with hardware acceleration? Any ROE or ongoing efforts?

Thanks,

Victor

[barnumbirr]

I'd be delighted if the Helios64 gets hardware encoding/decoding as it would greatly increase perfomance when running Plex (or any media streaming service).
I'll be following this thread closely and will be available for any testing or debugging.

[Victor B.]

A small update if you're willing to use a legacy kernel:

 

I have not tested it yet...

[realmiwi]

Hi,

I am also very interested in a solution. I use emby and would like to use the hardware encoding/decoding.

I'll do some research myself as soon as I have a little more time. 

If I find a good solution I'll post it here. At the moment I'm using the current 5.9 kernel and a downgrade is out of the question (at least for now).

Edited January 8, 2021 by realmiwi

[mlem]

Hi,

I too would very much like be interested by it! I bought a USB-C-to-HDMI cable, plugged a monitor, and everything worked well. I thought that using this + and USB DAC for audio, I could directly turn my Helios64 NAS into a media center.

 

Unfortunately I tried tried the RK3399 legacy multimedia framework (I just did  sudo apt install media-buster-legacy-rk3399 --install-recommends ; I thought no harm could happen by just installing a package) and now my NAS won't boot (U-boot stops after "starting kernel").

 

I  don't remember what kernel I installed, possibly this was not the legacy kernel. Thus, I would happily use some advice on how to unbrick my system -- and also upvote this vote, it would be terrific if the feature was installed in the default images or if there was an easy way to install them!

 

Bests

[chall88]

I found this post when looking for the video decoder hardware in the RK3399

The mali is a gpu, it does 3d rendering. So unless you are using something like openGL, the mali isn't going to do anything.  It does not do the encode/decode of codec. There is another part in the SOC  called a vpu Video Proccessing Unit -that does that. 

I know it's difficult to seperate them in the mind because most gpu cards have a encode/decode chip on them and we refer to the entire piece as a gpu but gpus and vpus are seperate