Yet another plea for help with hwaccel

[lagnat]

Describe the problem you are having

Running a Beelink EQ13, Ubuntu 24 and docker compose. Frigate finds the GPU but my ffmpeg processes are still at 15-25% of the CPU. I've read in other places that ffmpeg should be closer to 2%.

Version

0.14.1-f4f3cfa

Frigate config file

mqtt:
  enabled: false

cameras:
  Garage:
    enabled: true
    detect:
      enabled: false
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
      - path: rtsp://xxx:[email protected]
        roles:
        - record
        - detect

  FrontDoor:
    detect:
      enabled: false
    enabled: true
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
      - path: rtsp://xxx:[email protected]
        roles:
        - record
        - detect

  BackStairs:
    detect:
      enabled: false
    enabled: true
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
      - path: rtsp://xxx:[email protected]
        roles:
        - record
        - detect
          
  Deck:
    detect:
      enabled: false
    enabled: true
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
      - path: rtsp://xxx:[email protected]
        roles:
        - record
        - detect

motion:
  enabled: false

record:
  enabled: true
  retain:
    days: 5
    mode: all

ffmpeg:
  output_args:
    record: preset-record-generic-audio-aac

version: 0.14

docker-compose file or Docker CLI command

version: "3.9"
services:
  frigate:
    container_name: frigate
    privileged: true
    restart: unless-stopped
    image: ghcr.io/blakeblackshear/frigate:stable
    shm_size: "160mb"
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - ./config:/config
      - /cams:/media/frigate
      - type: tmpfs
        target: /tmp/cache
        tmpfs:
          size: 2000000000
    ports:
      - "8971:8971"
      - "5000:5000" # Internal unauthenticated access. Expose carefully.
      - "8554:8554" # RTSP feeds
      - "8555:8555/tcp" # WebRTC over tcp
      - "8555:8555/udp" # WebRTC over udp
    environment:
      FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD: "password"

Relevant Frigate log output

frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:52.564541930  [INFO] Preparing Frigate...
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:52.566129612  [INFO] Preparing new go2rtc config...
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:52.569595675  [INFO] Starting NGINX...
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:52.581061510  [INFO] Starting Frigate...
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:52.583253440  [INFO] No TLS certificate found. Generating a self signed certificate...
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:52.881709793  [INFO] Starting go2rtc...
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:53.048540052  19:31:53.048 INF go2rtc platform=linux/amd64 revision=b2399f3 version=1.9.2
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:53.049989167  19:31:53.049 INF config path=/dev/shm/go2rtc.yaml
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:53.050391847  19:31:53.050 INF [api] listen addr=:1984
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:53.050730706  19:31:53.050 INF [rtsp] listen addr=:8554
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:53.051633618  19:31:53.051 INF [webrtc] listen addr=:8555/tcp
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:53.937457718  [2024-10-22 19:31:53] frigate.app                    INFO    : Starting Frigate (0.14.1-f4f3cfa)
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:53.937557002  [2024-10-22 19:31:53] frigate.util.config            INFO    : Checking if frigate config needs migration...
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:53.951094077  [2024-10-22 19:31:53] frigate.util.config            INFO    : frigate config does not need migration...
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:54.146455470  [2024-10-22 19:31:54] frigate.util.services          INFO    : Automatically detected vaapi hwaccel for video decoding
frigate  | s6-rc: info: service nginx successfully started
frigate  | s6-rc: info: service certsync: starting
frigate  | s6-rc: info: service certsync successfully started
frigate  | s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: starting
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:55.547155962  [INFO] Starting certsync...
frigate  | s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully started
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:59.129662498  [2024-10-22 19:31:59] peewee_migrate.logs            INFO    : Starting migrations
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:59.129797429  [2024-10-22 19:31:59] peewee_migrate.logs            INFO    : There is nothing to migrate
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:59.138023391  [2024-10-22 19:31:59] frigate.app                    INFO    : Recording process started: 405
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:59.143432844  [2024-10-22 19:31:59] frigate.app                    INFO    : Recording process started: 414
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:59.146198481  [2024-10-22 19:31:59] frigate.app                    INFO    : go2rtc process pid: 98
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:59.167206186  [2024-10-22 19:31:59] detector.cpu                   INFO    : Starting detection process: 433
frigate  | 2024-10-22 19:31:59.171306981  [2024-10-22 19:31:59] frigate.app                    INFO    : Output process started: 435

Relevant go2rtc log output

n/a

FFprobe output from your camera

Not readily available but I can get it if it would help.

Install method

Docker Compose

Object Detector

CPU (no coral)

Network connection

Wired

Camera make and model

Multiple HikVision cameras

Screenshots of the Frigate UI's System metrics pages

Any other information that may be helpful

There are several cameras. 3 of them are recording at 1080p, H264 and 1 of them is recording at 2560x1440. Note that I only want to record so if it's possible to further disable some features, I would do that.

[NickM-27]

You need to map the GPU into the container like the docs explain

[lagnat]

I said it wrong. What I was trying to say is that Frigate doesn't allow disabling the detect stream. For people that just want to record, there still has to be a detect stream. Some of my cameras don't have a sub stream which further complicates matters. I will play around with trying to use nullsrc with ffmpeg. Thanks for the replies. This helped a lot.

[NickM-27]

right, currently one stream has to be decoded. You can disable object and motion detection, but the decoding must still be used for the UI

[Cold-Lemonade]

@lagnat If your camera does not have a substream, I think you can rescale the your single high res stream using your GPU and Frigate's built-in go2rtc to "create" a separate substream that Frigate can use for detection. Check out the instructions from @NickM-27 here: #5984

[lagnat]

My issue really just ends up being my poor understanding of frigate. At the most basic level, if all I want to do is record it's not clear (at first) why there's so much load on the CPU. The ah-ha moment came when I pointed frigate at a fake, all black, sub-stream and subsequently observed the that UI was showing black video. From that I was able to connect the dots and understand that providing frigate with a low-res sub-stream allows the UI to function with little CPU overhead. Hope that helps somebody.

[hawkeye217]

Right. See the note in the official docs: https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/cameras/#setting-up-camera-inputs