RK3576 - Support for full video hardware acceleration on Armbian

[Marus Gradinaru]

Hi !

I have a FriendlyElec NanoPi M5 and I want to play movies with it. But I want to squeeze everything out of this SBC ! So, I need hardware acceleration.

I tested first with a OS image downloaded from FriendlyElec and mpv and (almost) everything works well. The mpv working configuration is: hwdec=rkmpp, vo=gpu, gpu-api=opengl. But I don't like that OS for other reasons, so I switched to Armbian. I installed the image "Armbian 26.5.1 KDE Wayland (Ubuntu 26.04 - vendor 6.1.115)", then I installed mpv, but when I try to play movies, it says:

 

marus@nanopi-m5:/mnt/NAS/WDRed1/Samples/FullHD$ mpv --hwdec=rkmpp --vo=gpu --gpu-api=opengl H265.8bit.FullHD.1920x816.24fps.10Mbps.SDR.mkv
● Video  --vid=1  --vlang=eng  'Carlito's Way 1993' (hevc 1920x816 23.976 fps) [default]
● Audio  --aid=1  --alang=eng  'DDP 5.1 ch 640 Kb/s' (eac3 6ch 48000 Hz) [default]
Unsupported hwdec: rkmpp
AO: [pipewire] 48000Hz 5.1(side) 6ch floatp
VO: [gpu] 1920x816 yuv420p
AV: 00:00:14 / 00:01:59 (12%) A-V:  0.000 Cache: 104s/146MB
Exiting... (Quit)

 

It seems that this mpv doesn't know about rkmpp's existence... Strange ! What can I do ? 

Has anyone managed to play movies with mpv and full hardware acceleration on NanoPi M5 and Armbian OS?

[Marus Gradinaru]

I've made some progress in debugging the mpv error... 

I introduced some additional debug display instructions into the mpv source code, so I could see what was actually happening. And here is the new log:

 

[vd] Codec list:
[vd]     hevc - HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding)
[vd]     hevc_rkmpp (hevc) - Rockchip MPP (Media Process Platform) HEVC decoder
[vd]     hevc_v4l2m2m (hevc) - V4L2 mem2mem HEVC decoder wrapper
[vd] Opening decoder hevc
[vd] Looking at hwdec hevc_rkmpp-rkmpp...
ctx->hwdec_devs = 0xffff64347e20
[vo/gpu] Loading hwdec drivers for format: 'drm_prime'
[vo/gpu] Loading hwdec driver 'drmprime'
[vo/gpu/drmprime] Using EGL dmabuf interop via GL_EXT_EGL_image_storage
[vo/gpu/drmprime] Using DRM device: /dev/dri/renderD128
[vo/gpu/drmprime] ADDING DRMPRIME DEVICE
[vo/gpu/drmprime] hw->devs=0xffff64347e20
[vo/gpu/drmprime] av_device_ref=0xffff64348860
ADD: ctx=0xffff6434af60 hw_imgfmt=1057 type=8 av_device_ref=0xffff64348860
num_hwctxs=1
[vo/gpu/drmprime] DEVICE ADDED
[vo/gpu] Loading hwdec driver 'drmprime-overlay'
[vo/gpu/drmprime-overlay] Failed to retrieve DRM fd from native display.
[vo/gpu] Loading failed.
Searching: hw_imgfmt=1057 device_type=12 (rkmpp) num_hwctxs=1
ENTRY 0: ctx=0xffff6434af60 av_device_ref=0xffff64348860 hw_imgfmt=1057 type=8 (drm)
hw_ctx = (nil)
[vd] Could not create device.
[vd] Using software decoding.
[vd] Detected 8 logical cores.
[vd] Requesting 9 threads for decoding.
[vd] Selected decoder: hevc - HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding)
[vd] DR parameter change to 1920x1088 yuv420p align=64
[vd] Allocating new (host-cached) DR image...
[vo/gpu] DR path suspected slow/uncached, disabling.
[vd] ...failed..
[vd] DR failed - disabling.
[vd] Using software decoding.
[vd] Decoder format: 1920x1080 yuv420p bt.709/bt.709/bt.1886/limited/auto CL=mpeg2/4/h264 crop=1920x1080+0+0 A=none
[vd] Using container aspect ratio.
[vo/gpu] reconfig to 1920x1080 yuv420p bt.709/bt.709/bt.1886/limited/display CL=mpeg2/4/h264 crop=1920x1080+0+0 A=none
[vo/gpu/wayland] Reconfiguring!
[vo/gpu] max content size: 1024x600
[vo/gpu] monitor size: 1024x600

 

The result says exactly this:

  VO (drmprime): add a DRM type device

  Decoder (rkmpp): look for an RKMPP type device

  => can't find it
  => hw_ctx = NULL
  => Could not create device
  => decoding software

 

More precisely: ADD:  hw_imgfmt = 1057  type = DRM

and immediately after: Searching:  hw_imgfmt = 1057  device_type = RKMPP

So the problem is not: The MPP, FFmpeg, mpv does not create hwdec_devs, drmprime driver

The problem is that the two components are not talking about the same type of device.

 

Actually, that tells me something else very important:

hwdec_drmprime.c from mpv was written for decoders using: Vape, V4L2, other DRM backends

It creates AVHWDeviceType = DRM, instead, FFmpeg's hevc_rkmpp is a new decoder, which expects AVHWDeviceType = RKMPP. These two pieces of code were not made for each other.

 

That also explains why the decoder exists... I have hevc_rkmpp,  but mpv knows absolutely nothing about RKMPP. mpv only knows: drmprime and drmprime creates a DRM device.

 

My logical conclusion is that the official MPV is not suitable for the rkmpp hardware (it doesn't know about its existence). So what to do ? Where do I get a suitable MPV ?