Compile FFmpeg with Hardware Acceleration
FFmpeg is a collection of libraries and tools to process multimedia content such as audio, video, subtitles and related metadata. It is provided as an open-source project, and requires users to compile it on the target machine. When compiling on Raspberry Pi, there are some settings and libraries needed to enable OMX Hardware Acceleration for a faster encoding / decoding.
Last update: 2022-05-07
Table of Content
Pre-built FFmpeg in Raspberry Pi OS (Recommended)
The FFmpeg package in Raspberry Pi OS is built with H264 Hardware Acceleration already, just need to download it from the package manager:
sudo apt install -y ffmpeg
Manual compilation#
The below guide helps to compile FFmpeg from the latest source code to get new features or bug fixes.
This build guide is only tested on 32-bit Raspberry OS
Update the system#
Before starting to build, update system packages to the latest version may help to solve some issues which could happen due to the requirements from the latest source code of FFmpeg.
sudo apt update && \
sudo apt upgrade -y
Install build package#
To compile a source code, system needs to install build tools, including config parsers, compilers, dependent libraries.
Here is the command to install necessary packages:
sudo apt install -y \
autoconf automake build-essential \
cmake doxygen git graphviz imagemagick \
libasound2-dev libass-dev libavcodec-dev \
libavdevice-dev libavfilter-dev libavformat-dev \
libavutil-dev libfreetype6-dev libgmp-dev \
libmp3lame-dev libopencore-amrnb-dev libopencore-amrwb-dev \
libopus-dev librtmp-dev libsdl2-dev \
libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-net-dev \
libsdl2-ttf-dev libsnappy-dev libsoxr-dev \
libssh-dev libssl-dev libtool \
libv4l-dev libva-dev libvdpau-dev \
libvo-amrwbenc-dev libvorbis-dev libwebp-dev \
libx264-dev libx265-dev libxcb-shape0-dev \
libxcb-shm0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxcb1-dev \
libxml2-dev lzma-dev meson nasm \
pkg-config python3-dev python3-pip \
texinfo wget yasm zlib1g-dev libdrm-dev
Compile additional libraries#
There are some additional libraries required by FFmpeg, which are not pre-built and distributed in OS package manager.
Create a folder to get started:
mkdir ~/ffmpeg-libraries
AAC sound format (fdk-aac)#
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mstorsjo/fdk-aac.git ~/ffmpeg-libraries/fdk-aac \
&& cd ~/ffmpeg-libraries/fdk-aac \
&& autoreconf -fiv \
&& ./configure \
&& make -j$(nproc) \
&& sudo make install
AV1 video format (dav1d)#
git clone --depth 1 https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d.git ~/ffmpeg-libraries/dav1d \
&& mkdir ~/ffmpeg-libraries/dav1d/build \
&& cd ~/ffmpeg-libraries/dav1d/build \
&& meson .. \
&& ninja \
&& sudo ninja install
HEVC encoder (kvazaar)#
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ultravideo/kvazaar.git ~/ffmpeg-libraries/kvazaar \
&& cd ~/ffmpeg-libraries/kvazaar \
&& ./autogen.sh \
&& ./configure \
&& make -j$(nproc) \
&& sudo make install
VP8 and VP9 video codecs (LibVPX)#
git clone --depth 1 https://chromium.googlesource.com/webm/libvpx ~/ffmpeg-libraries/libvpx \
&& cd ~/ffmpeg-libraries/libvpx \
&& ./configure --disable-examples --disable-tools --disable-unit_tests --disable-docs \
&& make -j$(nproc) \
&& sudo make install
AP1 video codec (aom)#
git clone --depth=1 https://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1.git ~/ffmpeg-libraries/av1 \
&& cd ~/ffmpeg-libraries/av1/Build \
&& cmake .. -G"Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
&& make -j $(nproc) \
&& sudo make install
Image processing (zimg)#
git clone -b release-3.0.3 https://github.com/sekrit-twc/zimg.git ~/ffmpeg-libraries/zimg \
&& cd ~/ffmpeg-libraries/zimg \
&& sh autogen.sh \
&& ./configure \
&& make \
&& sudo make install
Link compiled libraries#
After installing new libraries, system needs to refresh link cache for new packages. This command ensures system won’t run into linking issues because the compiler can’t find a library.
sudo ldconfig
Compile FFmpeg#
Finally, FFmpeg can be compiled with settings to include additional libraries, and the feature omx-rpi. The command is quite large as it has a lot of options:
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg.git ~/FFmpeg \
&& cd ~/FFmpeg \
&& ./configure \
--extra-cflags="-I/usr/local/include" \
--extra-ldflags="-L/usr/local/lib" \
--extra-libs="-lpthread -lm -latomic" \
--arch=armel \
--enable-gmp \
--enable-gpl \
--enable-libaom \
--enable-libsvtav1 \
--enable-libass \
--enable-libdav1d \
--enable-libdrm \
--enable-libfdk-aac \
--enable-libfreetype \
--enable-libkvazaar \
--enable-libmp3lame \
--enable-libopencore-amrnb \
--enable-libopencore-amrwb \
--enable-libopus \
--enable-librtmp \
--enable-libsnappy \
--enable-libsoxr \
--enable-libssh \
--enable-libvorbis \
--enable-libvpx \
--enable-libzimg \
--enable-libwebp \
--enable-libx264 \
--enable-libx265 \
--enable-libxml2 \
--disable-mmal \
--enable-nonfree \
--enable-omx \
--enable-omx-rpi \
--enable-version3 \
--target-os=linux \
--enable-pthreads \
--enable-openssl \
--enable-hardcoded-tables \
&& make -j$(nproc) \
&& sudo make install
The compilation time is quite long, usually 5 hours on Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi Zero, so be patient.
Restart the system when the compilation ends, and check for the supported Hardware Acceleration codec:
ffmpeg -hide_banner -encoders | grep -E "h264|mjpeg"
V..... libx264 libx264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (codec h264)
V..... libx264rgb libx264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 RGB (codec h264)
V..... h264_omx OpenMAX IL H.264 video encoder (codec h264)
V..... h264_v4l2m2m V4L2 mem2mem H.264 encoder wrapper (codec h264)
VFS... mjpeg MJPEG (Motion JPEG)
Autobuild script#
This build guide is only tested on 32-bit Raspberry OS
The script#
There are many guides published on the internet but thanks to cdgriffith for the below awesome pi_streaming_setup script.
This script is designed to help automate turning a Raspberry Pi with a compatible camera into an MPEG-DASH / HLS streaming server.
The steps it will attempt to do:
- Install FFmpeg (or compile it before install) with H264 hardware acceleration and free libraries
- Install NGINX for DASH / HLS or install RTSP server if desired
- (DASH/HLS) Update rc.local to run required setup script on reboot
- (DASH/HLS) Create index.html file to view video stream
- Create a systemd service and enable it to start streaming
This script requires Python 3.6+
The usage of this script is simple and clear, but to compile FFmpeg only, we just need to add 2 options as below:
sudo python3 streaming_setup.py --compile-ffmpeg --compile-only --run-as pi
Run script#
Install git if not installed:
sudo apt install -y git
Clone the pi_streaming_setup repo from GitHub:
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/cdgriffith/pi_streaming_setup.git
Go into the script’s folder:
cd pi_streaming_setup
and finally, run the script with sudo and python3 as user pi:
sudo python3 streaming_setup.py --compile-ffmpeg --compile-only --run-as pi
This will take about 4~5 hours on an old and slow Raspberry Pi, such as a Pi Zero.
After the compilation finishes, reboot the Pi, and when it’s booted up, run below command to check the compiled tool:
ffmpeg -hide_banner -encoders | grep -E "h264|mjpeg"
and check the supported codecs:
V..... libx264 libx264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (codec h264)
V..... libx264rgb libx264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 RGB (codec h264)
V..... h264_omx OpenMAX IL H.264 video encoder (codec h264)
V..... h264_v4l2m2m V4L2 mem2mem H.264 encoder wrapper (codec h264)
VFS... mjpeg MJPEG (Motion JPEG)