Unable to make H.264 NVENC work

[mattlazarowitz]

Motion and MotionEyeversion info:

motionEye Version  0.43.1b2
Motion Version  4.7.0
OS Version  Ubuntu 24.04

Here is the output from my nvidia-smi command:

nvidia-smi
Mon Jan 27 22:16:36 2025
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.120                Driver Version: 550.120        CUDA Version: 12.4     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  Quadro P620                    Off |   00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| 34%   37C    P8             N/A /  N/A  |       2MiB /   2048MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                              GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                             |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

FFMPEG version:

ffmpeg -h
ffmpeg version 6.1.1-3ubuntu5 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 13 (Ubuntu 13.2.0-23ubuntu3)

More info from FFMPEG:

ffmpeg -codecs | grep nvenc
ffmpeg version 6.1.1-3ubuntu5 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 13 (Ubuntu 13.2.0-23ubuntu3)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version=3ubuntu5 --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu --arch=amd64 --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --disable-omx --enable-gnutls --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcaca --enable-libcdio --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libdav1d --enable-libflite --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libglslang --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libharfbuzz --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libmysofa --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopus --enable-librubberband --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzimg --enable-openal --enable-opencl --enable-opengl --disable-sndio --enable-libvpl --disable-libmfx --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdrm --enable-libiec61883 --enable-chromaprint --enable-frei0r --enable-ladspa --enable-libbluray --enable-libjack --enable-libpulse --enable-librabbitmq --enable-librist --enable-libsrt --enable-libssh --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libx264 --enable-libzmq --enable-libzvbi --enable-lv2 --enable-sdl2 --enable-libplacebo --enable-librav1e --enable-pocketsphinx --enable-librsvg --enable-libjxl --enable-shared
  libavutil      58. 29.100 / 58. 29.100
  libavcodec     60. 31.102 / 60. 31.102
  libavformat    60. 16.100 / 60. 16.100
  libavdevice    60.  3.100 / 60.  3.100
  libavfilter     9. 12.100 /  9. 12.100
  libswscale      7.  5.100 /  7.  5.100
  libswresample   4. 12.100 /  4. 12.100
  libpostproc    57.  3.100 / 57.  3.100
 DEV.L. av1                  Alliance for Open Media AV1 (decoders: libdav1d libaom-av1 av1 av1_cuvid av1_qsv) (encoders: libaom-av1 librav1e libsvtav1 av1_nvenc av1_qsv av1_vaapi)
 DEV.LS h264                 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (decoders: h264 h264_v4l2m2m h264_qsv h264_cuvid) (encoders: libx264 libx264rgb h264_nvenc h264_qsv h264_v4l2m2m h264_vaapi)
 DEV.L. hevc                 H.265 / HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) (decoders: hevc hevc_qsv hevc_v4l2m2m hevc_cuvid) (encoders: libx265 hevc_nvenc hevc_qsv hevc_v4l2m2m hevc_vaapi)

And here is a log snippet from MotionEye when motion is triggered:

[1:ml1:Camera1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_detected: Motion detected - starting event 1.
[1:ml1:Camera1] [DBG] [EVT] exec_command: Executing external command '/usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/motioneye/scripts/relayevent.sh "/etc/motioneye/motioneye.conf" start 1'
[1:ml1:Camera1] [INF] [EVT] event_ffmpeg_newfile: Source FPS 29
[1:ml1:Camera1] [NTC] [ENC] ffmpeg_set_codec_preferred: Using codec h264_nvenc
[1:ml1:Camera1] [INF] [ENC] ffmpeg_set_quality: h264_nvenc codec vbr/crf/bit_rate: 12
[1:ml1:Camera1] [INF] [ENC] ffmpeg_avcodec_log: Undefined constant or missing '(' in 'ultrafast'
[1:ml1:Camera1] [INF] [ENC] ffmpeg_avcodec_log: Unable to parse option value "ultrafast"
[1:ml1:Camera1] [INF] [ENC] ffmpeg_avcodec_log: Error setting option preset to value ultrafast.

According the Nvidia GPU matrix the Quadro P620 has one NVENC unit and supports 8 concurrent streams. It also supports everything except AV1.

Do I need to use a different version/build of FFMPEG? Is there an issue with the way MotionEye/Motion is invoking it? Is this a known issue, and if so, is there a fix?

[mattlazarowitz]

It looks like the issue is between motion and ffmpeg.
From Motion:
https://github.com/Motion-Project/motion/blob/8d69cbf27a1c2fcffd7ff0f5558f3e7de277b8d1/src/ffmpeg.c#L540

It sounds like the format for the presets was changed some time ago and 'ultrafast' is no longer a thing (in trying to look at ffmpeg's git logs, it seems like it was removed some time ago).

Is there a way for MotionEye to override the options Motion uses when it calls ffmpeg?
If so, can that be handled automatically int he future for the h.264 nvenc option?

[mattlazarowitz]

The root cause of the problem is motion. It's not set up to work with nvenc.
I've been hacking on Motion with a local build to get it working and have acceptable quality.
I'll go raise the issue over in the Motion repo.