Compiling ffmpeg for tvai? (Linux)

Topaz Video AI Video AI Beta
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Figured I’d post this in beta since Linux is only available in beta

I’m using the Ubuntu GUI version and it only has VP9 and FFV1 encoders available. I really don’t want to use either of these and having to re-compress videos after TVAI is a waste of time and energy. After looking around I realize why Topaz isn’t including H265 but I really don’t know why only VP9 and FFV1 are included.

It’s not a big deal if I can recompile ffmpeg as is mentioned but I want to be able to access the encoders from within the GUI like I can on Windows. I don’t see the point in using command line with video editing stuff.

I’ve tried compiling ffmpeg using this guide and the Topaz sources.
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/CompilationGuide/Ubuntu
https://github.com/TopazLabs/FFmpeg/tree/topaz/develop

It’ll compile fine without the tvai option but I keep getting “–enable-tvai: command not found” when compiling with --enable-tvai in configure options (I saw this mentioned in another thread). Can somebody tell me how to compile this for tvai? A general guide would be nice since I assume this will affect more than just Linux users. Also can somebody explain how to make the encoder options available in the GUI? I know there’s a video-encoder.json file in the models directory but I’m not sure how that works or if that’s the ticket.

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May be somewhat outdated as the encoder entry formats have changed, but close enough:

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Thanks, I’ll dig through that after I figure out how to compile ffmpeg for tvai.

…Or maybe the Topaz guys can provide the encoders.json file? I doubt there’s a problem as long as you aren’t providing the encoder itself. Would be easier than me putzing with that json file.

Right now I have 2 options using Topaz Linux with GUI. FFV1 is an extremely large file with low overhead, and VP9 is an inconsistent file size with huge overhead, like I can render 2 processes @ about 23fps each with FFV1 or 3-6fps each with VP9. I don’t recall the hardware H265 encoder in Windows slowing anything down so it would be nice to get H265 NVENC working in Ubuntu.

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Hello!

We’ve just added support for NVENC and ProRes encoders to the Linux version of Video AI. This will be available in our next beta release tomorrow (Friday, October 6th).

Editing the video-encoders.json file located in “/opt/TopazVideoAIBETA/models/” will also allow you to add custom entries by setting the “os:” value to “windows|linux”

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I did manage to get some NVENC encoders to work on the beta, No problems with them at all on this end. There’s this odd extended time period at the end of the export that appears to be an encoding phase but I don’t think it has anything to do with the encoders themselves. This wasn’t something I ever noticed with earlier Windows versions at all. It just seems odd because it’s out of sync with the progress bar/display and there’s no message on the UI informing what’s happening.

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I’d be interested to see if you have high disk utilization during that step. Is this happening on previews too? Are live previews enabled?

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Yes live previews are enabled. That’s a good point about disk usage, I’ll try to catch it when I can. I installed Ubuntu on a SATA SSD that I’m running over USB3, mostly just to test it as I haven’t heard anyone really post about the Ubuntu GUI version. I was running Windows on a Gen3x4 NVME so big difference.

Edit: Actually I mispoke there, I installed Ubuntu on an NVME but I’m exporting to a SATA/USB3 SSD, so it still could be something to do with disk speed.

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