From d22ce0ba5aebfff5ffaea97982472f876af5da22 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christophe Besson Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:37:08 +0200 Subject: feat: decode and re-encode video on the GPU where there is one MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit 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 --- packaging/rpm/meshbay-client.spec | 7 +++++++ packaging/rpm/meshbay-node.spec | 6 ++++++ 2 files changed, 13 insertions(+) (limited to 'packaging/rpm') diff --git a/packaging/rpm/meshbay-client.spec b/packaging/rpm/meshbay-client.spec index 867205f..0816741 100644 --- a/packaging/rpm/meshbay-client.spec +++ b/packaging/rpm/meshbay-client.spec @@ -17,6 +17,13 @@ Requires: libdrm Requires: mesa-libgbm Requires: alsa-lib Recommends: meshbay-node +# Weak deps: an unresolvable one is skipped, so naming the drivers of both +# families costs nothing and covers Fedora and RHEL alike. See hwaccel.py +# (node) / main.js (client) — neither assumes any of this is installed. +Recommends: libva +Recommends: intel-media-driver +Recommends: mesa-va-drivers +Suggests: libva-utils %description Desktop client for MeshBay. Connects to MeshBay nodes over WebRTC for diff --git a/packaging/rpm/meshbay-node.spec b/packaging/rpm/meshbay-node.spec index 6ac13fb..1ba7f26 100644 --- a/packaging/rpm/meshbay-node.spec +++ b/packaging/rpm/meshbay-node.spec @@ -10,6 +10,12 @@ BuildArch: noarch Requires: meshbay-common = %{version} Recommends: ffmpeg +# Weak deps: an unresolvable one is skipped, so naming the drivers of both +# families costs nothing and covers Fedora and RHEL alike. See hwaccel.py +# (node) / main.js (client) — neither assumes any of this is installed. +Recommends: libva +Recommends: intel-media-driver +Recommends: mesa-va-drivers %description MeshBay Node indexes local directories and serves encrypted files to -- cgit v1.2.3