FFmpeg optimizations and GPU support

[jmejco]

Background

I recently lifted my indi-allsky installation into my homelab workstation from my Raspberry Pi 5 and converted it into a remote indiserver setup. Since my workstation has a GPU, I wanted to try playing around with the FFmpeg options to see if I could improve the timelapse processing, and got some good results.

Timelapse Settings

FFmpeg upgrade

I am on Debian 12, and the default installation of ffmpeg is quite old at 5.1.7, so I installed jellyfin-ffmpeg instead and changed the symlink to point to it:

# Install jellyfin-ffmpeg7
sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://repo.jellyfin.org/debian/jellyfin_team.gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/jellyfin.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/jellyfin.gpg] https://repo.jellyfin.org/debian bookworm main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jellyfin.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y jellyfin-ffmpeg7

# Point default ffmpeg to use jellyfin-ffmpeg
sudo mv /usr/bin/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg.original         
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg

Indi Allsky Settings

FFMPEG Framerate: 30
FFMPEG Bitrate: 40000k
FFMPEG Scaling: No scaling
FFMPEG Codec: x264
FFMPEG Extra Options:

-c:v h264_nvenc -vf zscale=matrixin=709:rangein=full:matrix=709:range=limited,deflicker=mode=5:size=7,atadenoise=0a=0.03:0s=12,unsharp=7:7:1.0:5:5:0.5,minterpolate=fps=30:mi_mode=mci,format=yuv420p -preset p7 -tune hq -rc vbr -multipass fullres -cq 18 -maxrate 80M -bufsize 160M -bf 3 -b_ref_mode middle -rc-lookahead 32 -spatial_aq 1 -temporal_aq 1 -aq-strength 7 -g 300 -profile:v high -colorspace bt709 -color_trc bt709 -color_primaries bt709 -color_range tv -fps_mode cfr

I found out that if I include -c:v h264_nvenc, it will respect the precedence and use the GPU accelerated encoder instead of the default that gets set by indi. Some of the other options were just trial and error to improve the playback and reduce the flickering at the beginning and end of the timelapse.

Results

• Without all of the extra filters, a 1 min timelapse of 1500 frames (3008x3008) was rendered in 47 seconds compared to over 10 minutes on the Pi.
• With the filter set from above, it took just under 2 mins.
• The file size doubled though, from 230MB to 470MB. But this could also be because I disabled scaling when I had it configured to 2160p before.
• Before: August 20, 2025 - Night
• After: August 29, 2025 - Night

Specifications

• Indiserver running on a Raspberry Pi5 16GB, ZWO 533MC camera, and Laowa 7.5mm F2 lens.
• Indi-allsky running on a Debian 12 Proxmox LXC. Workstation is a Minisforum MS-A2 (AMD 9955X 16C/32T, 128GB RAM, 8TB SSD, Nvidia RTX 2000 ADA)

[aaronwmorris]

First, let me say, that is a fantastic image quality!

I have had a few others test accelerated encoding, but you are probably the first to test this on an Nvidia GPU. The Raspberry Pi can also do GPU accelerated encoding, but the resolution was always limited to FHD [1920x1080] in my testing.

I can add the Nvidia nvenc target to the indi-allsky dropdown, but the remaining settings, you would have to enter into the additional settings.

[aaronwmorris]

Merged #2355 with the new Nvidia and AMD options. These are not extensive changes, just basic options. I updated the timelapse wiki to include links related to upgrading ffmpeg.