Big multimedia repository update (CUDA enablements, rebases, new software)

Merging of the Nvidia repository into Multimedia

The whole multimedia repository has been rebased with recent releases, and it now features FFmpeg 3.2 as the foundation. Most of the programs that suppport some Nvidia integration are now enabled and compiled with support for CUDA/NVENC/CUVID; leveraging the previous reorganization of CUDA 8 in the various subpackages.

This means that all the Nvidia packages are now included in the repository as well, so if you have an Nvidia card and you are interested in both repositories, you can just have the multimedia repository enabled. If you still just want the Nvidia stuff (as enabled in Fedora 25) then it’s still available as a separate repository; and that will not change.

Why all of this? Because I can’t keep them separated anymore. The Nvidia repository can exist on its own, but the multimedia one can’t, due to the dependencies and the constant rebases (also of main Fedora and CentOS/RHEL packages). You can use the Nvidia repository alone, if you just need that, or use the multimedia one if you need everything else.

The repository is now exposed also at this URL, and contains Delta RPM support:

https://negativo17.org/repos/multimedia

All repository files and configurations have been updated, so this means that in the future this would be the place where the metadata and repository information will be placed and any new installation will get the repository from there. If you are reading this blog post, you can switch now. I will add a negativo17-release package soon, along with a few mirrors; I’m sorting out the details now with the mirror owners.

FFmpeg and other CUDA enablements

To make proper use of the Nvidia hardware encode features (NVENC/CUVID) and CUDA kernel support (i.e. Blender GPU rendering) in the various programs you need the Nvidia driver installed (nvidia-driver-cuda), and for Nvidia Performance Primitives you require the CUDA driver and the NPP library package (cuda-npp).

This means that for most people NOT requiring CUDA support or not using an Nvidia video card, the following 2 packages will be installed anyway:

$ ls -alghs nvidia-driver-cuda-libs*.rpm cuda-npp*.rpm 
92M -rw-r--r-T. 1 mock 92M Nov 16 12:35 cuda-npp-8.0.44-6.fc25.x86_64.rpm
22M -rw-r--r-T. 1 mock 22M Nov 19 15:00 nvidia-driver-cuda-libs-375.20-1.fc25.x86_64.rpm

Both packages contain just libraries, and they will be on your system as much as other libraries for multimedia codecs you don’t actually need. Example, with most multimedia programs you will get Xvid libraries for opening Xvid files, even though the format is pretty much abandoned. Having them installed does not enable any unwanted feature in your system. Also, NPP libraries should decrease 50% in size in one of the next CUDA updates, being the monolithic version of the library being deprecated in favor of split functionality.

There are some patches being evaluated to make those libraries loadable at runtime, but they have not been merged yet and there’s no guarantee that they ever will. Also, they are available for FFmpeg but not for all the other programs where support has been enabled for; so depending on your installation, you might get them anyway.

As of today, from the Multimedia repository the following programs have been enabled with some Nvidia hardware enablement:

  • MPV (video decoding through CUVID)
  • FFmpeg (encoding through NVENC, decoding through CUVID and filtering through CUDA NPP)
  • Avidemux (encoding, through NVENC)
  • GStreamer (NVENC plugin)
  • Blender (GPU rendering)

VDPAU for decoding was already enabled where possible.
Of course anything that is using FFmpeg (like the GStreamer plugins) could theoretically benefit from the same enablements as in FFMpeg:

$ for i in encoders decoders filters; do
    echo $i:; ffmpeg -hide_banner -${i} | egrep -i "npp|cuvid|nvenc|cuda"
done
encoders:
 V..... h264_nvenc           NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... nvenc                NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... nvenc_h264           NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... nvenc_hevc           NVIDIA NVENC hevc encoder (codec hevc)
 V..... hevc_nvenc           NVIDIA NVENC hevc encoder (codec hevc)
decoders:
 V..... h263_cuvid           Nvidia CUVID H263 decoder (codec h263)
 V..... h264_cuvid           Nvidia CUVID H264 decoder (codec h264)
 V..... hevc_cuvid           Nvidia CUVID HEVC decoder (codec hevc)
 V..... mjpeg_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MJPEG decoder (codec mjpeg)
 V..... mpeg1_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MPEG1VIDEO decoder (codec mpeg1video)
 V..... mpeg2_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MPEG2VIDEO decoder (codec mpeg2video)
 V..... mpeg4_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MPEG4 decoder (codec mpeg4)
 V..... vc1_cuvid            Nvidia CUVID VC1 decoder (codec vc1)
 V..... vp8_cuvid            Nvidia CUVID VP8 decoder (codec vp8)
 V..... vp9_cuvid            Nvidia CUVID VP9 decoder (codec vp9)
filters:
 ... hwupload_cuda     V->V       Upload a system memory frame to a CUDA device.
 ... scale_npp         V->V       NVIDIA Performance Primitives video scaling and format conversion

I think this will be much appreciated for you users out there that are already using CUDA for deep learning and FFMpeg to process data 🙂

Rebases: FFmpeg, HandBrake, VLC, OpenH264, WebP (CentOS/RHEL), MPV.

A note on Blender: Blender with CUDA support is still at 2.78 built with CUDA 7.5, and not 2.78a built with CUDA 8; so no Nvidia Pascal GPU support. I’m working on it.

GNOME Software integration

Most of the graphical software is now enabled in GNOME software for Fedora 25, meaning that you can search stuff with a keyword and that if you have the repository enabled it will just pop-up:

gnome-software-handbrake

gnome-software-makemkv

gnome-software-vlc

There is still some packages that need AppStream metadata, but that will come.

As usual, feedback, bugs and comments are welcome.

Fedora 24 and CentOS/RHEL 7 repositories

Fedora 24 repositories have been available for quite some time now, but here is the official statement that everything should be supported out of the box.

As part of the repository availability, I would like to say that starting from Fedora 24, the repositories are self-sustained and do not require RPMFusion to be enabled. I try to preserve compatibility between the two, so if you step into any problem just open an issue to the specific package on Github, send me an email or drop a message in the comment section of the various pages. Please note that “compatible” means that actually you shouldn’t get any conflict when installing packages, and not that I will not overwrite/obsolete the packages provided in the other repositories.

CentOS/RHEL 7 repositories have been available stand alone since the beginning and do not require external repositories to be enabled. Again, if an RPMFusion (or whatever will be mainstream at the moment) CentOS/RHEL 7 repository will appear, I will try to be compatible with it.

Scope of support

My basic idea is to have what I’m using normally everyday as a package in Fedora, enabling software combinations that would be otherwise impossible to distribute in official repositories due to license/patent issues. This for example includes NVENC (Nvidia Encoder) FFMPeg enabled builds that I use almost everyday.

Being a daily CentOS/RHEL 7 user I also want to support the latest and gretest of the same software on that platform, which also means rebuilding some official CentOS/RHEL 7 packages like VP8/9, VDPAU and VA-API libraries.

Due to the various package builds being different (or simply containing newer software releases) from what the other repositories offer, I also try to be completely independent, you can basically install the operating system and just use my repositories.

Build system changes

The (internal at the moment) build system uses Github as its primary system for storing the package information. There is a Negativo17.org public organization where all the work goes, so if you want to look at the development or the SPEC files, just browse to Github. If you have an issue or proposed change as well, you’re welcome to open an issue or create a merge request in the specific package Git page.

Skype Web Pidgin plugin

skype

The Skype repository used to contain purple-skype for Fedora and CentOS/RHEL distributions which at the time required an installed Skype to work. Now, I helped a new Fedora contributor into integrating the newly developed Skype web plugin, which is based on the Skype web client. The package in Fedora obsoletes and provides correctly the skype4pidgin plugin and as such I don’t need to provide anything else in the repository.

The installation instructions have been updated to reflect this.

Skype is available only in 32 bit format, so on a 64 bit a 32 bit client will always be installed. Since the merging with MSN, the HTML welcome screen requires a 32 bit WebKit GTK build to start. This is not included in the 64 bit only CentOS/RHEL 7 repositories; so for this reason, if you are running CentOS/RHEL 7, it requires the multimedia repository to be enabled and have the dependency solved. This used to be self-contained in the Skype repository, but this is no longer feasible for me to mantain considering there is a different rebuild of WebKit GTK in the Multimedia repository.

Spotify Client

spotify-client

The Spotify repository used to contain FFMpeg for CentOS/RHEL distributions and a requirement on FFMpeg’s RPMFusion as a Fedora dependency. FFMpeg is no longer included in the CentOS/RHEL 7 repositories so the multimedia repository has to be enabled to have the dependency solved. As for Skype, this no longer feasible for me to mantain considering there is a different rebuild of WebKit GTK in the Multimedia repository.

Here as well the installation instructions have been updated to reflect the change.

aKMOD kernel module packages

The kernel binary module packages generated by aKMOD are now compressed with XZ, like in the original Fedora kernel packages that contain kernel modules. I’ve become a DKMS contributor, so, as time permits, I will add the same functionality to DKMS for Fedora distributions.

At the moment, this applies to Nvidia and X-Pad kernel modules.

Gstreamer plugins and multimedia libraries

The Multimedia repository now provides GStreamer (1.0) plugins for Bad, Ugly, libAV and VA-API plugin bundles with all options enabled. This is split into the following GStreamer runtime packages:

  • gstreamer1-plugins-bad
  • gstreamer1-plugins-ugly
  • gstreamer1-vaapi
  • gstreamer1-libav
  • gstreamer1-plugins-bad-fluidsynth (pulls in the whole FluidSynth distribution)
  • gstreamer1-plugins-bad-nvenc (x86_64 only, pulls in the Nvidia binary driver; and at the moment it does not work properly)

They all have an Epoch of “1”, due to the various reasons explained at the top. They are not yet available for CentOS/RHEL 7 due to time constraints; I will try to prepare them in the next weeks.

Fedora 24 OpenH264 repository

A note on the Fedora 24 OpenH264 repository. As described in its wiki page, there is an extra repository that can be enabled directly in Fedora 24 that allows you to install OpenH264, its relevant Gstreamer 1.0 plugin and a Mozilla plugin for Firefox. Following the same logic, at the moment the same Gstreamer 1.0 plugin is provided/obsoleted (in newer form) by the gstreamer1-pluings-bad package. There is a conflict for the OpenH264 binaries which I will address soon.

HandBrake, MakeMKV, FFMpeg and Skype available for CentOS/RHEL 7

The multimedia and Skype repositories now contain all components and libraries to have the same “experience” as in Fedora 23. This includes HandBrake, MakeMKV, Skype and the same FFMPeg build with the same options that are enabled in the Fedora 23 build; including Intel Quick Sync Video and the Nvidia Encoder.

handbrake-1.0-centos7

To enable this, new build roots with CentOS/RHEL i686 images have been used. This way all dependencies have been correctly built from the same CentOS/RHEL 7 packages and not with cross-compilation or using the Fedora 19 buildroots.

Converged multimedia repository with restricted codecs and binaries

As most of you have noticed, the HandBrake repository has been integrating more and more multimedia packages that are not related to HandBrake itself or to its supporting programs. The latest additions to it are the CUDA/FFMpeg enabled Blender package and some additional encoding options for FFMPeg.

This definitely puts a nail in the coffin of the “CUDA programs” repository that was previously treated as a separate repository. I’m not able to provide separate repositories for them as either you have a full blown multimedia collection with each component strictly tied to each other (Blender requires FFMPeg and Nvidia drivers, FFMpeg requires restricted multimedia libraries and Nvidia drivers, HandBrake requires the same restricted multimedia libraries of FFMPeg, etc.) or you just have the plain Fedora repositories with no license/patent encumbered options.

None of these packages can be distributed inside the main Fedora/RPMFusion repositories as they are presented here with current build options; mainly due to patent and licensing issues or simply because they are coupled with non open source software resulting in dubious licensed binaries.

Some of the packages might have hard dependencies on Nvidia components or libraries, while some other have a weak dependency on them. Whether you can enable support for those it’s usually just a matter of adding or not the Nvidia repository and the multimedia (HandBrake) repository at the same time.

Not all distributions are on par regarding features and packages, let’s say most of the development goes on to the latest Fedora release due to it being my daily desktop.

To install the CUDA enabled Blender, HandBrake, MakeMKV or the fully fledge FFMpeg binary just go to the appropriate page and follow the instructions.

I will probably also rename the repository into something more generic compared to what is currently called now; so suggestions are welcome!

Screenshot from 2015-12-11 19-20-27

Fedora 23 packages now live

All the repositories have been updated for Fedora 23, so if you trigger an update, everything should update properly. CUDA enabled programs are still building.

A few notes:

  • HandBrake has been updated to a pre-release of 1.0 for Fedora 23. Updated x264/x265/FFmpeg libraries should give a speed bost to all encoding operations.
  • The Spotify 0.9.x repository has been removed. It will never receive updates anymore, and now the 1.x builds are on feature parity, including 32 bit support. If you haven’t upgraded, just do it now.
  • Nvidia drivers version 358.09 do not yet support X.org driver ABI 20, so you’re probably going to have some lock ups or random issues.
  • The SteamOS and X-Box replacement driver have been updated to the latest upstream.

Please let me know if you have any upgrade issue.

BluRay playback and ripping on Fedora (AACS, BD+, BD-J)

There are multiple ways that one can try to make BluRay decryption and playback in Linux. Of course, after some googling and fiddling around, you can see that is quite simple even if not the different instructions are quite confused as they span across multiple iterations of software development.

First of all a brief introduction. It is all explained here in great detail on the BluRay Wikipedia page, this is just an extract.

There are two different types of encryption:

  • AACS, performed using keys)
  • BD+, performed using a small embedded Java VM that executes programs and decrypts contents

And one type of “enhanced” java embedded menu (even small apps, like internet connected browsers, etc.) that can run on the BluRay player:

  • BD-J, using a GEM standard Java VM that includes also BDlive, for internet access

If any of these is implemented in a disk you own, the thing you need to do is simply insert a disk and run the bd_info command (from the libbluray-utils package) against your BD/DVD device.

Screenshot from 2015-08-27 10-59-57

This, of course, does work if you have the proper decryption keys or software installed on your system. That is, by default, nothing. 🙂

So, to enable decryption of the discs, you can proceed in two different ways, one using only open source software (not really, as you need anyway keys and a JVM dump of a BluRay Player) or going through commercial software (free at the moment while in beta).

Unfortunately none of my BluRays worked with open source tools on my system. I was not even able to get the required keys with the aacskeys program; so the proprietary software is my current choice.

Required repositories

In both cases, first of all enable the RPMFusion and the HandBrake/MakeMKV repository. Most of the keys required can be fetched from labDV, where you can also contribute back yours.

For the following examples I’m taking VideoLan as the main player, as it has good support (and a nice interface) to fiddle around with the various settings and is already available in RPMFusion.

Open Source AACS/BD+ decryption

First of all install libaacs and libbdplus from RPMFusion:

dnf install libaacs libbdplus

Then put the required AACS keys in a place, so that your AACS client can find them. For example:

mkdir -p ~/.config/aacs
wget -c http://www.labdv.com/aacs/KEYDB.cfg -O ~/.config/aacs/KEYDB.cfg

Now, VLC, using libbluray, should dynamically load the library if it finds it on the system and then decrypt the AACS protected content if the key for the specific disc is available.

Similar to AACS, put the required BD+ JVM dump in the appropriate folder, so that your BD+ client can find them. For example:

mkdir -p ~/.config/bdplus/
wget -c http://www.labdv.com/aacs/libbdplus/bdplus-vm0.bz2 -O ~/bdplus-vm0.bz2
tar -xvjf ~/bdplus-vm0.bz2 -C ~/.config/

Again, now libbluray should dynamically load the library if it finds it on the system and then decrypt the BD+ protected content using the VM dump in your personal folder.

Do not forget to update the AACS keys and the VM dump every once in a while!

Moving keys and dumps in a system wide location

This is required if you have multiple user for the system and you want to avoid each user into maintaining its own set of keys and dumps.
After installing everything in your personal folder, you will end up with a structure like the following:

$ find .config/bdplus .config/aacs | sort
.config/aacs
.config/aacs/KEYDB.cfg
.config/bdplus
.config/bdplus/vm0
.config/bdplus/vm0/aes_keys.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/device_discovery_1.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/device_discovery_2.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/device_discovery_3.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/device_discovery_4.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/device_discovery_5.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/ecdsa_keys.txt
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_area_02.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_area_03.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_area_04.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_area_05.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_area_06.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_area_07.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_free.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/memory.map
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_player_executable.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_player_name.bin
.config/bdplus/vm0/mem_player_version.bin

To move up everything to a common location, just performs the following commands:

sudo mv ~/.config/{aacs,bdplus} /etc/xdg
sudo chown -R root:root /etc/xdg/{aacs,bdplus}

That’s it!

Proprietary AACS/BD+ decryption

This is done through MakeMKV, available from the HandBrake/MakeMKV repository, with the registration key available publicly from their forum. The software is fast, works really well, and although not open source is the only way to properly get access to your disks.

Support for external decoders has been added in libbluray some time ago, and allows you to specify different libraries than libaacs/libbdplus for decrypting content.

To proceed, remove the libaacs/libbdplus libraries if you have them installed, and install MakeMKV:

dnf remove libaacs libbdplus
dnf install libbdplus

As explained in the repository page, the MakeMKV package sets up environment variables that override the default libraries using for decryption and just uses MakeMKV’s libmmbd to launch a hidden MakeMKV instance for decryption in the background. To load the environment, logoff and login again, so it is picked up by any program starting.

After logging in, check that the environment is loaded with the following command:

$ env | egrep "LIBAACS_PATH|LIBBDPLUS_PATH"
LIBBDPLUS_PATH=/usr/lib64/libmmbd.so.0
LIBAACS_PATH=/usr/lib64/libmmbd.so.0

Then start VLC, select to open a BluRay disc, with or without the menus. Both will smoothly work as long as it is not a BD-J, as you can see in the pictures below. Menu is navigable, reactive to selections and clickable.

menus

Now also the command bd_info works fine, using the same mechanism.

BD-J Java menus

BD-J support is still in its infancy, at the moment of writing, with the latest libbluray 0.8.1 I am able to get part of the menus working. Most of the time I just got a video loop where the menu should be but not the actual menu. This is much better than having just VideoLan crashing, though. 🙂

Support for this is enabled by installing the libbluray-bdj package. The package puts an OpenJDK compiled Java Archive inside the classpath of the Java VM, so no further configuration is required. To install the package, just do:

dnf install libbluray-bdj

After this, in VideoLan you can just select “Open Disc”, “Blu-Ray” as the source and deselect “No disc menus”. As I said, support is not perfect, in the screnshot below I was able to see the menus but not click on them and in the background I was having a lot of errors.

bdj

I’m tracking the upstream project, so if the library can be rebuilt without breaking compatibility with the additional Fedora packages, I will add it to the repository along with MakeMKV. Before version 0.8.1 I was not even able to open a BD-J enabled BluRay disc with VideoLan.

One final curiosity

All my BD-J enabled discs have a Playstation 3 firmware update on the disc. Don’t know why, but probably because Sony owns the BluRay format so they can do as they please. Meh!

As always, feedback is welcome.