| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
A 1080p film is decoded by whoever watches it and re-encoded by the node
when no browser can decode the source. Both were on the CPU, and on an
Atom or Celeron mini-PC neither reaches real time — which is what
`transcode_incompatible_video` exists to refuse. This adds the mechanism
that makes refusing it unnecessary.
Node — `hwaccel.py`: VA-API on Linux, Quick Sync or NVENC on Windows,
established by encoding 1080p and reading the file back with ffprobe.
Nothing is accepted that does not produce the exact profile and level
`stream_init` announces, since the client checks that string before it
trusts a byte: an encoder that wrote another level would make the node's
own codec string a lie, and ffmpeg takes `-level 4.1` and `-level 41`
from h264_qsv without saying which it understood. Three modes per
stream — hardware decode and encode, hardware encode alone, libx264 —
demoted per source codec, because a GPU that decodes HEVC may have no
decoder for MPEG-4 Part 2 and only asking it finds out. A mode that
fails is detected on an empty stdout before `stream_init` goes out, so
the viewer sees one working stream and never an error.
Client — Chromium ships VA-API off on Linux. It is enabled where a
render node and a driver are present, then verified through
`navigator.mediaCapabilities`: a no moves to the next GL backend on the
next launch and an exhausted list drops the switches, so a renamed
feature cannot pass for a feature that is on and `--ignore-gpu-blocklist`
cannot survive on a machine it did not help. Feature lists now merge
rather than overwrite — `appendSwitch` replaces the value, and a second
caller would have silently cancelled the mDNS switch aiortc depends on.
Packaging — the drivers are weak dependencies on all four formats, so a
machine without a GPU installs exactly as before. `dpkg -i` and
`rpm -ivh` ignore weak deps; `packaging/README.md` now says so. Windows
needs no driver: the bundled ffmpeg already carries h264_qsv and
h264_nvenc, and a re-pin that dropped them would cost every low-power
Windows node its hardware encoding silently.
AMD on Windows (AMF) and macOS (VideoToolbox) are named gaps, not
oversights: neither could be tried anywhere in this project, and both
re-encode in software as before.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
|
|
|
winget install ffmpeg was considered and rejected as the mechanism: it
needs network access and winget/App Installer present at the exact
moment setup runs, and its failure mode is silent -- video just does
not stream, with nothing pointing back at ffmpeg. Not viable for a
non-technical install.
MeshBay transcodes browser-incompatible video to H.264 (-c:v libx264,
webrtc_server.py) -- a real encode, not remux -- so this needs a genuine
GPL ffmpeg build; no LGPL-only build includes an H.264 encoder, since
libx264 itself is GPL.
packaging/win/fetch-ffmpeg.ps1 (new)
Downloads, checksum-verifies and stages ffmpeg for the build. Source:
BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds' Windows x86_64 gpl-shared preset -- shared DLLs
rather than two independent static binaries, which is what nearly
tripled this: the "full" static build many devs already have via
winget is ~220 MB *per executable*. Pinned to one dated release tag
(immutable once published) and its own sha256, not the "latest" alias
BtbN repoints on every auto-build -- verified by hand first (downloaded,
hash matched, ran a real encode+probe with libx264) before pinning.
ffplay.exe (an SDL2 player, ~17 MB) is dropped; MeshBay never invokes
it. Cached after the first build. Runs its own smoke test (encode +
probe a real clip) so a broken fetch fails at build time, not for the
first user who tries to watch something.
packaging/win/LICENSE-ffmpeg.txt (new)
GPLv3 notice + where the corresponding source is, required because
this redistributes a GPL binary even though it is unmodified and only
ever invoked as a subprocess. Ships alongside ffmpeg.exe in the
installer.
build-node-runtime.ps1 / build-win.ps1
Bundling is now the DEFAULT, replacing the old opt-in -FfmpegDir (which
copied from a local directory and left most builds without ffmpeg at
all). -SkipFfmpeg opts out for a smaller, streaming-less local-iteration
build.
Also fixes a real bug the ffmpeg change exposed rather than caused: the
final `--help` smoke test did `$help -notmatch "meshbay-node"` against
$help captured as a PowerShell ARRAY (one element per line) -- -notmatch
on a collection is a FILTER, not a boolean test, and returns the
non-matching elements; any non-empty array is truthy in if() regardless
of content. Once --help wrapped past one line (it now does, with
autostart/service in the verb list) this threw unconditionally. Fixed
by joining to one string before matching, and pinned by a new test so
a future edit cannot silently reintroduce the collection-vs-scalar trap.
Verified: downloaded and hashed the pinned release by hand (matches),
ran a real libx264 encode + ffprobe against the extracted build,
fetch-ffmpeg.ps1 end to end (161 MB staged), a full build-node-runtime.ps1
run (308 MB node-runtime/) and a full installer build (MeshBay-Setup-
1.0.0.exe, 210.8 MB with ffmpeg bundled). Node suite 850 pass / 25 skip.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
|