Fixing ffmpeg and failing hardware NVenc/dec following software upgrade

If you find that ffmpeg is no longer able to use your NVidia's card for hardware decode/encode after an OS or software upgrade, ensure your running X11/NV driver and the CUDA libraries are compatible otherwise you will get cryptic error messages:

$ ffmpeg -y -hwaccel cuda -hwaccel_output_format cuda \ -c:v h264_cuvid -i 201231-163836.mkv \ -c:a copy \ -vf scale_npp=-1:720 \ -rc vbr_hq -c:v h264_nvenc \ -b:v 3M -minrate 500k -maxrate 12M \ output.mp4 ... failed call to cuInit: CUDA_ERROR_UNKNOWN: unknown error Unable to create device No device available for decoder: device type cuda needed for codec h264

Game Emulation Options on Linux

Emulation for old games, particularly on Linux, can be a bit of a difficult area to navigate. Whilst there are nice standalone setups like retropie, it does need a Raspberry Pi and a display. For those looking to run emulation on their normal OS will have the option of programs like Retroarch, mame and FB Neo. But where to start?

Fedora 28: fixing mpv and libOpenCl.so.1: no version info and hardware acceleration

One of the great benefits of Linux is that it can run on a whole host of legacy components and still perform well. Re-purposing an old Dell E520 with a 32bit Intel Core2 Duo cpu, a PCI via vt6321a based IDE raid card, for Fedora 28 install was straight forward until we started to look at hardware accelerated mpv for watching movies files: libOpenCL.so.1: no version information available (required by /lib/libavfilter.so...

ffmpeg and Nvidia GTX hardware encoding

ffmpeg video processing on an old linux/machine, like a i7 860, running Fedora26 can be painful if you only rely on the CPU. With a recent Nvidia card supporting NVENC (GeForce 6/7/8/10.x) ffmpeg can be compiled directly to support these cards.

Upgrading an Ancient FC14 to Fedora 24

Having successfully completed a recent Fedora 23 installation to an aging netbook, I started to grow frustrated with my ~6 year old aging Fedora Core 14 installation from 2010. The annoyances I faced with my 2010 desktop installation was the lack of upgrade paths for many of the useful daily software components and the aging desktop environment.

With the ease and painless install of Fedora 23, I wondered if the FC14 system could also be easily replaced. Obviously there were some complications.

Improving render performance Sony MovieStudio 13 with Nvidia GPU Acceleration

Currently using Sony MovieStudio 13 Platinum (SMS13P) to cut video files together but have been looking for increased performance on final (mp4/h264) rendering and found this isn’t so simple for the initiated. To put some context: video rendering is processor intensive but over recent years some rendering (to file) tasks can be taken up by the graphics card GPU as well being done by the CPU. Whilst this may seem counterinteritive at first, the CPU has a limited set of (typically of consumer systems, 4 to 8) cores but a GPU may have cores numbering in 1000s (a high end consumer Nvidia GTX Titan has over 3000 cores) and the GPU can be more efficient on simple repetitive tasks.