AMD AV1 Encoding

[conor]

I've an AMD Ryzen 7 8745H w/ Radeon 780M Graphics. This is an RDNA 3 GPU which supports AV1 encoding.

However Jellyfin-ffmpeg is showing AV1 encoding as unsupported.

As I understand it the driver should be provided by jellyfin-ffmpeg, so is that where the issue likely is?

Code:

sudo /usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/vainfo --display drm --device /dev/dri/renderD128
Trying display: drm
libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/lib/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_22
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.22 (libva 2.22.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 24.0.9 for AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi, gfx1103_r1, LLVM 16.0.6, DRM 3.49, 6.1.0-27-amd64)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main              : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High              : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain              : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain10            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain10            : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline          : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile0            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile2            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileAV1Profile0            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                  : VAEntrypointVideoProc

[TheDreadPirate]

While AMD's documentation states that VCN4/RDNA3 supports AV1 encoding, apparently there are TWO flippin' varieties of VCN4.

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit...142452a9b7

Code:

static const struct amdgpu_video_codec_info vcn_4_0_0_video_codecs_encode_array_vcn0[] = {
    {codec_info_build(AMDGPU_INFO_VIDEO_CAPS_CODEC_IDX_MPEG4_AVC, 4096, 2304, 0)},
    {codec_info_build(AMDGPU_INFO_VIDEO_CAPS_CODEC_IDX_HEVC, 4096, 2304, 0)},
    {codec_info_build(AMDGPU_INFO_VIDEO_CAPS_CODEC_IDX_AV1, 8192, 4352, 0)},
};
static const struct amdgpu_video_codec_info vcn_4_0_0_video_codecs_encode_array_vcn1[] = {
    {codec_info_build(AMDGPU_INFO_VIDEO_CAPS_CODEC_IDX_MPEG4_AVC, 4096, 2304, 0)},
    {codec_info_build(AMDGPU_INFO_VIDEO_CAPS_CODEC_IDX_HEVC, 4096, 2304, 0)},
};

It is possible that your hardware does support it, but the AMD drivers are not reporting accurately. But there isn't much we can do about that.

[TheDreadPirate]

Circling back, it could also be your kernel.

The kernel on your system was released prior to your CPU's release so it likely does not properly support all the CPU/GPU's capabilities.

Update to a newer kernel and check the output of vainfo again.

---

Confirmed that kernel 6.1 does not support AV1 encoding for AMD GPUs. That was first added in kernel 6.3.

[conor]

I had thought the kernel could be an issue but all other encoding on the GPU works fine and the driver is coming from jellyfin-ffmpeg.

I might try to install a bookworm-backports kernel.

[TheDreadPirate]

The driver is coming from Mesa.

Code:

vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 24.0.9 for AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi, gfx1103_r1, LLVM 16.0.6, DRM 3.49, 6.1.0-27-amd64)

And the way that AMD handles things like codecs is to hard code it into the Linux kernel instead of in the Mesa driver. So kernel version does matter for AMD GPUs and codec support.

So you will need to install a BPO kernel.

[gnattu]

The AV1 encoding capability first appeared in linux 6.3 kernel and yours is 6.1. You need a more recent kerenl.

[conor]

The backports kernel has made AV1 encoding available, thanks.