Hardware Transcoding stopped working

numetaler · 2025-08-12T09:53:24+00:00

Hello everyone, for some time now, I have been experiencing issues with hardware transcoding. I am uncertain if this is the appropriate forum, as I am using...

ukn_unknown

that is not good 🙁 ... I will be missing about two weeks, let's discuss when I will be back. We need to acquire Debug logs using settings from 14 Aug (picture). Frankly if you are not able to build the container ... is going to be very hard to figure out what is the problem. Please try to find out how to build it your self.

tvhkodiguy

Hello!

I experience problems with tvheadend since some weeks now and thought something is broken so reset my tvheadend data. Unfortunatley the problem is still there, but was working fine before getting newer container so it seems to be new bug in tvheadend.

When using amd64-26a14aa3-ls254 (tvh 4.3-2399~g26a14aa31 from https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/tvheadend/tags?name=ls254 ) everything is fine, recording works and web ui works fine.

However at every version after that, tvheadend complete breaks as soon recording (with transcoding/h264) is started.

I made a screenrecording of the issue with complete hanging web ui ~2 seconds after starting to record in latest verison.

Video link https://upload.disroot.org/r/SpmMA0cB#DBr5qBuSXtsptWDiGa3WwYe1Zl16w6oYO/YMLe0cnr8=

Is this the same bug being discussed here, or something else? Any fix insight?

robtor

The linuxserver image was updated yesterday:
linuxserver/docker-tvheadendtree/d4dff154-ls263

Today I tried this version but it still did not solve the problem, i still get the
libav: AVCodecContext: mmco: unref short failure
error,

ukn_unknown

Can anyone check what ffmpeg version is in the container? I was able to repro with ffmpeg 4.4 but I want to confirm this is the version available in the container.

numetaler

hello,in my ls.io container its:

root@tvheadend:/# ffmpeg -version
ffmpeg version 6.1.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 13.2.1 (Alpine 13.2.1_git20240309) 20240309
configuration: --prefix=/usr --disable-librtmp --disable-lzma --disable-static --disable-stripping --enable-avfilter --enable-gpl --enable-ladspa --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libdav1d --enable-libdrm --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libharfbuzz --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopus --enable-libplacebo --enable-libpulse --enable-librav1e --enable-librist --enable-libsoxr --enable-libsrt --enable-libssh --enable-libtheora --enable-libv4l2 --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxcb --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzimg --enable-libzmq --enable-lto=auto --enable-lv2 --enable-openssl --enable-pic --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --enable-shared --enable-vaapi --enable-vdpau --enable-version3 --enable-vulkan --optflags=-O3 --enable-libjxl --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libvpl
libavutil 58. 29.100 / 58. 29.100
libavcodec 60. 31.102 / 60. 31.102
libavformat 60. 16.100 / 60. 16.100
libavdevice 60. 3.100 / 60. 3.100
libavfilter 9. 12.100 / 9. 12.100
libswscale 7. 5.100 / 7. 5.100
libswresample 4. 12.100 / 4. 12.100
libpostproc 57. 3.100 / 57. 3.100`

ukn_unknown

The PR that we think will help was submitted 4h a go (tvheadend/tvheadendcommit/240d97377969898a6e68de8450b696558c645a91) ... please keep an eye on a new container release.
Let us know if the functionality was restored.

numetaler

Hello,

i just updated my container and on my first tests with the tvh client app on android it seems working again 🙂 Thank you for your hard work!

tvhkodiguy

Tried latest version available from docker. Can't confirm, recording still broken.

WebUI and whole tvheadend stops working as mentioned above with the Demo Video included. As soon recording is started, webui is loading forever and blank page.

ukn_unknown

ok ... so we have partial success.
@tvhkodiguy can you test if you watch a channel using a profile with transcoding; do you experience the same stuck problem? I am trying to separate if this problem is related only to transcoding or it requires some additional elements (from recording).
Please use a clean settings when you change containers (we already experienced some issues due to back and forth with settings: tvheadend/tvheadend1980 ) . Might not be related ... but we should rule it out.

numetaler

I testet again with kodi on android tv. Working like a charm 👍

tvhkodiguy

@ukn_unknown
Thanks for reply, transcode streaming also not works.

Most important error in log:


2025-11-11 13:33:50.525 [   INFO] libav: AVCodecContext: profile High, level 3.0, 4:2:0, 8-bit
2025-11-11 13:33:50.601 [  ERROR] libav: Eval: Undefined constant or missing '(' in 'nit'
2025-11-11 13:33:50.601 [  ERROR] libav: MPEGTS muxer: Unable to parse option value "nit"
2025-11-11 13:33:50.601 [  ERROR] libav: MPEGTS muxer: Error setting option mpegts_flags to value nit.
2025-11-11 13:33:50.601 [  ERROR] libav: Failed to write mpegts header
2025-11-11 13:33:50.601 [WARNING] webui: Stop streaming /tvheadend/stream/channelnumber/68?profile=x264-ts-CRF30, muxer reported errors

Logfile, starting at point where I started streaming with (profile=pass) which is working.... and afterwards same channel but with transcoding which fails:

log.txt

7kB

This is like above mentioned, Tvheadend 4.3-2513-g00abbbb05 (docker lscr.io/linuxserver/tvheadend:latest as of now)

ukn_unknown

tvhkodiguy
Please use the following settings for mpeg-ts container, for now:

I will investigate this problem.

tvhkodiguy

@ukn_unknown
Thank you very much!

I can confirm that both transcode-streaming and transcoding-recording seems to work with that.
BUT: It adds lagging / slow video & unmatching audio. Both in recording and stream. This might be hardware performance related, but at same time - transcode-recording worked normally before.

So while the flags lead to not breaking TVH anymore, I rather still go back to old version (lscr.io/linuxserver/tvheadend:amd64-26a14aa3-ls254) and disable the suggested flags.

robtor

I finally totally forgot to follow the discussion here, but last Sunday I pulled the new image and tested a bit by myself without knowing anything about the progress.
At first I had to limit the transcode settings to only use Intel hardware, uncondstrained did not work somehow even though only i915 hardware was present, and I tweaked a bit around with deinterlace settings and codec settings and by now I have stable h265 streaming with deinterlace.

Bur it was a bit fiddling with the settings, in between I had several situations where the whole server crashed, or I again got the mmco unref failure

Next weekend I maybe find the time to make some investigations and post a summary of what settings work in my setup and which cause trouble.

ukn_unknown

robtor

At first I had to limit the transcode settings to only use Intel hardware, uncondstrained did not work somehow even though only i915 hardware was present,

This is interesting ... I don't expect that unconstrained can fail while Intel works, unless, when you selected unconstrained you have some settings that are not available in your driver.
Can you post the error (preferably the debug logs with transcoding and libav enabled)?

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