• Docs >
  • Accelerated Video Decoding with NVDEC
Shortcuts

Accelerated Video Decoding with NVDEC

This tutorial shows how to use Nvidia’s hardware video decoding (NVDEC)† with TorchAudio.

NOTE

This tutorial is authored in Google Colab, and is tailored to Google Colab’s specifications.

Please check out this tutorial in Google Colab.

If you install FFmpeg following this tutorial, please adjust the build configuration accordingly.

To use NVDEC with TorchAudio, the following items are required.

  1. Nvidia GPU with hardware video encoder.

  2. FFmpeg libraries compiled with NVDEC support.

  3. PyTorch / TorchAudio with CUDA support.

TorchAudio’s binary distributions are compiled against FFmpeg 4 libraries, and they contain the logic required for hardware-based decoding.

In the following sections, we build FFmpeg 4 libraries with NVDEC support and enable hardware acceleration through TorchAudio’s StreamReader API. We then compare the time it takes to decode the same MP4 video with CPU and NVDEC.

† For details on NVDEC and FFmpeg, please refer to the following articles.

Check the available GPU

[1]:
!nvidia-smi
Thu Jun  2 04:14:27 2022
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 460.32.03    Driver Version: 460.32.03    CUDA Version: 11.2     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  Tesla T4            Off  | 00000000:00:04.0 Off |                    0 |
| N/A   56C    P8     9W /  70W |      0MiB / 15109MiB |      0%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Update PyTorch and TorchAudio with nightly builds

Until TorchAudio 0.12 is released, we need to use the nightly builds of PyTorch and TorchAudio.

[2]:
!pip3 uninstall -y -q torchaudio torch
!pip3 install --progress-bar off --pre torch torchaudio --extra-index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cu113 2> /dev/null
Looking in indexes: https://pypi.org/simple, https://us-python.pkg.dev/colab-wheels/public/simple/, https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cu113
Collecting torch
  Downloading https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cu113/torch-1.13.0.dev20220601%2Bcu113-cp37-cp37m-linux_x86_64.whl (2102.2 MB)

Collecting torchaudio
  Downloading https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cu113/torchaudio-0.12.0.dev20220601%2Bcu113-cp37-cp37m-linux_x86_64.whl (3.8 MB)

Requirement already satisfied: typing-extensions in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages (from torch) (4.2.0)
Installing collected packages: torch, torchaudio
Successfully installed torch-1.13.0.dev20220601+cu113 torchaudio-0.12.0.dev20220601+cu113

Build FFmpeg libraries with Nvidia NVDEC support

Install NVIDIA Video Codec Headers

To build FFmpeg with NVDEC, we first install the headers that FFmpeg uses to interact with Video Codec SDK.

[3]:
!git clone https://git.videolan.org/git/ffmpeg/nv-codec-headers.git
!cd nv-codec-headers && sudo make install
Cloning into 'nv-codec-headers'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 808, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (808/808), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (688/688), done.
remote: Total 808 (delta 436), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (808/808), 154.86 KiB | 396.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (436/436), done.
sed 's#@@PREFIX@@#/usr/local#' ffnvcodec.pc.in > ffnvcodec.pc
install -m 0755 -d '/usr/local/include/ffnvcodec'
install -m 0644 include/ffnvcodec/*.h '/usr/local/include/ffnvcodec'
install -m 0755 -d '/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig'
install -m 0644 ffnvcodec.pc '/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig'

Download FFmpeg source code

Next we download the source code of FFmpeg 4. Any version later than 4.1 should work. We use 4.4.2 here.

[4]:
!wget -q https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/archive/refs/tags/n4.4.2.tar.gz
!tar -xf n4.4.2.tar.gz
!mv FFmpeg-n4.4.2 ffmpeg

Install FFmpeg build and runtime dependencies

In the later test, we use H264-encoded MP4 video streamed over HTTPS protocol, so we install the libraries for them here.

[5]:
!apt -qq update
!apt -qq install -y yasm libx264-dev libgnutls28-dev

... Omitted for brevity ...

Setting up libx264-dev:amd64 (2:0.152.2854+gite9a5903-2) ...
Setting up yasm (1.3.0-2build1) ...
Setting up libunbound2:amd64 (1.6.7-1ubuntu2.4) ...
Setting up libp11-kit-dev:amd64 (0.23.9-2ubuntu0.1) ...
Setting up libtasn1-6-dev:amd64 (4.13-2) ...
Setting up libtasn1-doc (4.13-2) ...
Setting up libgnutlsxx28:amd64 (3.5.18-1ubuntu1.5) ...
Setting up libgnutls-dane0:amd64 (3.5.18-1ubuntu1.5) ...
Setting up libgnutls-openssl27:amd64 (3.5.18-1ubuntu1.5) ...
Setting up libgmpxx4ldbl:amd64 (2:6.1.2+dfsg-2) ...
Setting up libidn2-dev:amd64 (2.0.4-1.1ubuntu0.2) ...
Setting up libidn2-0-dev (2.0.4-1.1ubuntu0.2) ...
Setting up libgmp-dev:amd64 (2:6.1.2+dfsg-2) ...
Setting up nettle-dev:amd64 (3.4.1-0ubuntu0.18.04.1) ...
Setting up libgnutls28-dev:amd64 (3.5.18-1ubuntu1.5) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2ubuntu0.1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.27-3ubuntu1.3) ...
/sbin/ldconfig.real: /usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/ideep4py/lib/libmkldnn.so.0 is not a symbolic link

Configure FFmpeg build with Nvidia CUDA hardware support

Next we configure FFmpeg build. Note the following:

  1. We provide flags like -I/usr/local/cuda/include, -L/usr/local/cuda/lib64 and --enable-nvdec to enable NVDEC. Please check out the Transcoding Guide† for the detail.

  2. We also provide NVCC flags with compute capability 37. This is because by default the configuration script verifies NVCC by compiling sample code targeting compute capability 30, which is too old for CUDA 11.

  3. Many features are disabled to reduce the compilation time.

  4. We install the library in /usr/lib/, which is one of the active search path of the dynamic loader. Doing so allows the resulting libraries to be found without requiring a restart of the current session. This might be an undesirable location, e.g. when one isn’t using a disposable VM.

† NVIDIA FFmpeg Transcoding Guide https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-ffmpeg-transcoding-guide/

[6]:
# NOTE:
# When the configure script of FFmpeg 4 checks nvcc, it uses compute
# capability of 30 (3.0) by default. CUDA 11, however, does not support
# compute capability 30.
# Here, we use 37, which is supported by CUDA 11 and both K80 and T4.
#
# Tesla K80: 37
# NVIDIA T4: 75

%env ccap=37

# NOTE:
# We disable most of the features to speed up compilation
# The necessary components are
# - demuxer: mov
# - decoder: h264
# - gnutls (HTTPS)

!cd ffmpeg && ./configure \
  --prefix='/usr/' \
  --extra-cflags='-I/usr/local/cuda/include' \
  --extra-ldflags='-L/usr/local/cuda/lib64' \
  --nvccflags="-gencode arch=compute_${ccap},code=sm_${ccap} -O2" \
  --disable-doc \
  --disable-static \
  --disable-bsfs \
  --disable-decoders \
  --disable-encoders \
  --disable-filters \
  --disable-demuxers \
  --disable-devices \
  --disable-muxers \
  --disable-parsers \
  --disable-postproc \
  --disable-protocols \
  --enable-decoder=aac \
  --enable-decoder=h264 \
  --enable-decoder=h264_cuvid \
  --enable-demuxer=mov \
  --enable-filter=scale \
  --enable-protocol=file \
  --enable-protocol=https \
  --enable-gnutls \
  --enable-shared \
  --enable-gpl \
  --enable-nonfree \
  --enable-cuda-nvcc \
  --enable-libx264 \
  --enable-libnpp \
  --enable-nvenc \
  --enable-nvdec
env: ccap=37
install prefix            /usr/
source path               .
C compiler                gcc
C library                 glibc
ARCH                      x86 (generic)
big-endian                no
runtime cpu detection     yes
standalone assembly       yes
x86 assembler             yasm
MMX enabled               yes
MMXEXT enabled            yes
3DNow! enabled            yes
3DNow! extended enabled   yes
SSE enabled               yes
SSSE3 enabled             yes
AESNI enabled             yes
AVX enabled               yes
AVX2 enabled              yes
AVX-512 enabled           yes
XOP enabled               yes
FMA3 enabled              yes
FMA4 enabled              yes
i686 features enabled     yes
CMOV is fast              yes
EBX available             yes
EBP available             yes
debug symbols             yes
strip symbols             yes
optimize for size         no
optimizations             yes
static                    no
shared                    yes
postprocessing support    no
network support           yes
threading support         pthreads
safe bitstream reader     yes
texi2html enabled         no
perl enabled              yes
pod2man enabled           yes
makeinfo enabled          no
makeinfo supports HTML    no

External libraries:
alsa                    libx264                 lzma
bzlib                   libxcb                  zlib
gnutls                  libxcb_shape
iconv                   libxcb_xfixes

External libraries providing hardware acceleration:
cuda                    cuvid                   nvdec
cuda_llvm               ffnvcodec               nvenc
cuda_nvcc               libnpp                  v4l2_m2m

Libraries:
avcodec                 avformat                swscale
avdevice                avutil
avfilter                swresample

Programs:
ffmpeg                  ffprobe

Enabled decoders:
aac                     hevc                    vc1
av1                     mjpeg                   vp8
h263                    mpeg1video              vp9
h264                    mpeg2video
h264_cuvid              mpeg4

Enabled encoders:

Enabled hwaccels:
av1_nvdec               mpeg1_nvdec             vp8_nvdec
h264_nvdec              mpeg2_nvdec             vp9_nvdec
hevc_nvdec              mpeg4_nvdec             wmv3_nvdec
mjpeg_nvdec             vc1_nvdec

Enabled parsers:
h263                    mpeg4video              vp9

Enabled demuxers:
mov

Enabled muxers:

Enabled protocols:
file                    tcp
https                   tls

Enabled filters:
aformat                 hflip                   trim
anull                   null                    vflip
atrim                   scale
format                  transpose

Enabled bsfs:
h264_mp4toannexb        null                    vp9_superframe_split

Enabled indevs:

Enabled outdevs:

License: nonfree and unredistributable

Build and install FFmpeg

[7]:
!cd ffmpeg && make clean && make -j > /dev/null 2>&1
!cd ffmpeg && make install
INSTALL libavdevice/libavdevice.so
INSTALL libavfilter/libavfilter.so
INSTALL libavformat/libavformat.so
INSTALL libavcodec/libavcodec.so
INSTALL libswresample/libswresample.so
INSTALL libswscale/libswscale.so
INSTALL libavutil/libavutil.so
INSTALL install-progs-yes
INSTALL ffmpeg
INSTALL ffprobe

Check FFmpeg installation

Let’s do a quick sanity check to confirm that the FFmpeg we built works.

[8]:
!ffprobe -decoders
ffprobe version 4.4.2 Copyright (c) 2007-2021 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 7 (Ubuntu 7.5.0-3ubuntu1~18.04)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/ --extra-cflags=-I/usr/local/cuda/include --extra-ldflags=-L/usr/local/cuda/lib64 --nvccflags='-gencode arch=compute_37,code=sm_37 -O2' --disable-doc --disable-static --disable-bsfs --disable-decoders --disable-encoders --disable-filters --disable-demuxers --disable-devices --disable-muxers --disable-parsers --disable-postproc --disable-protocols --enable-decoder=aac --enable-decoder=h264 --enable-decoder=h264_cuvid --enable-demuxer=mov --enable-filter=scale --enable-protocol=file --enable-protocol=https --enable-gnutls --enable-shared --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-cuda-nvcc --enable-libx264 --enable-libnpp --enable-nvenc --enable-nvdec
  libavutil      56. 70.100 / 56. 70.100
  libavcodec     58.134.100 / 58.134.100
  libavformat    58. 76.100 / 58. 76.100
  libavdevice    58. 13.100 / 58. 13.100
  libavfilter     7.110.100 /  7.110.100
  libswscale      5.  9.100 /  5.  9.100
  libswresample   3.  9.100 /  3.  9.100
Decoders:
 V..... = Video
 A..... = Audio
 S..... = Subtitle
 .F.... = Frame-level multithreading
 ..S... = Slice-level multithreading
 ...X.. = Codec is experimental
 ....B. = Supports draw_horiz_band
 .....D = Supports direct rendering method 1
 ------
 V....D av1                  Alliance for Open Media AV1
 V...BD h263                 H.263 / H.263-1996, H.263+ / H.263-1998 / H.263 version 2
 VFS..D h264                 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10
 V..... h264_cuvid           Nvidia CUVID H264 decoder (codec h264)
 VFS..D hevc                 HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding)
 V....D mjpeg                MJPEG (Motion JPEG)
 V.S.BD mpeg1video           MPEG-1 video
 V.S.BD mpeg2video           MPEG-2 video
 VF..BD mpeg4                MPEG-4 part 2
 V....D vc1                  SMPTE VC-1
 VFS..D vp8                  On2 VP8
 VFS..D vp9                  Google VP9
 A....D aac                  AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)
[9]:
!ffprobe -hide_banner "https://download.pytorch.org/torchaudio/tutorial-assets/stream-api/NASAs_Most_Scientifically_Complex_Space_Observatory_Requires_Precision-MP4_small.mp4"
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'https://download.pytorch.org/torchaudio/tutorial-assets/stream-api/NASAs_Most_Scientifically_Complex_Space_Observatory_Requires_Precision-MP4_small.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : mp42
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: mp42iso2avc1mp41
    encoder         : Lavf58.76.100
  Duration: 00:03:26.04, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1294 kb/s
  Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 960x540 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 1156 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 30k tbn, 59.94 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : ?Mainconcept Video Media Handler
      vendor_id       : [0][0][0][0]
  Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : #Mainconcept MP4 Sound Media Handler
      vendor_id       : [0][0][0][0]

Benchmark NVDEC with TorchAudio

Now that FFmpeg and the resulting libraries are ready to use, we test NVDEC with TorchAudio. For the basics of TorchAudio’s streaming API, please refer to Streaming API tutorial.

Note

If you rebuild FFmpeg after importing class StreamReader, you’ll need to restart the session to activate the newly built FFmpeg libraries.

[10]:
import torch
import torchaudio

print(torch.__version__)
print(torchaudio.__version__)

from torchaudio.io import StreamReader
1.13.0.dev20220601+cu113
0.12.0.dev20220601+cu113
[11]:
!pip3 install --progress-bar off boto3 2> /dev/null
Looking in indexes: https://pypi.org/simple, https://us-python.pkg.dev/colab-wheels/public/simple/
Collecting boto3
  Downloading boto3-1.24.1-py3-none-any.whl (132 kB)

Collecting botocore<1.28.0,>=1.27.1
  Downloading botocore-1.27.1-py3-none-any.whl (8.8 MB)

Collecting s3transfer<0.7.0,>=0.6.0
  Downloading s3transfer-0.6.0-py3-none-any.whl (79 kB)

Collecting jmespath<2.0.0,>=0.7.1
  Downloading jmespath-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl (23 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: python-dateutil<3.0.0,>=2.1 in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages (from botocore<1.28.0,>=1.27.1->boto3) (2.8.2)
Collecting urllib3<1.27,>=1.25.4
  Downloading urllib3-1.26.9-py2.py3-none-any.whl (138 kB)

Requirement already satisfied: six>=1.5 in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages (from python-dateutil<3.0.0,>=2.1->botocore<1.28.0,>=1.27.1->boto3) (1.15.0)
Installing collected packages: urllib3, jmespath, botocore, s3transfer, boto3
  Attempting uninstall: urllib3
    Found existing installation: urllib3 1.24.3
    Uninstalling urllib3-1.24.3:
      Successfully uninstalled urllib3-1.24.3
Successfully installed boto3-1.24.1 botocore-1.27.1 jmespath-1.0.0 s3transfer-0.6.0 urllib3-1.26.9
[12]:
import time

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
import boto3
from botocore import UNSIGNED
from botocore.config import Config

print(boto3.__version__)

pd.set_option('display.max_rows', None)
pd.set_option('display.max_columns', None)
1.24.1
[13]:
!wget -q -O input.mp4 "https://download.pytorch.org/torchaudio/tutorial-assets/stream-api/NASAs_Most_Scientifically_Complex_Space_Observatory_Requires_Precision-MP4_small.mp4"

First, we define the functions we’ll use for testing.

Funcion test decodes the given source from start to end, and it reports the elapsed time, and returns one image frmae as a sample.

[14]:
result = torch.zeros((4, 2))
samples = [[None, None] for _ in range(4)]


def test(src, config, i_sample):
  print("=" * 40)
  print("* Configuration:", config)
  print("* Source:", src)
  print("=" * 40)

  s = StreamReader(src)
  s.add_video_stream(5, **config)

  t0 = time.monotonic()
  num_frames = 0
  for i, (chunk, ) in enumerate(s.stream()):
    if i == 0:
      print(' - Chunk:', chunk.shape, chunk.device, chunk.dtype)
    if i == i_sample:
      sample = chunk[0]
    num_frames += chunk.shape[0]
  elapsed = time.monotonic() - t0

  print()
  print(f" - Processed {num_frames} frames.")
  print(f" - Elapsed: {elapsed} seconds.")
  print()

  return elapsed, sample

Decode MP4 from local file

For the first test, we compare the time it takes for CPU and NVDEC to decode 250MB of MP4 video.

[15]:
local_src = "input.mp4"

cpu_conf = {
    "decoder": "h264",  # CPU decoding
}
cuda_conf = {
    "decoder": "h264_cuvid",  # Use CUDA HW decoder
    "hw_accel": "cuda:0",  # Then keep the memory on CUDA:0
}

i_sample = 520

CPU

[16]:
elapsed, sample = test(local_src, cpu_conf, i_sample)
========================================
* Configuration: {'decoder': 'h264'}
* Source: input.mp4
========================================
 - Chunk: torch.Size([5, 3, 540, 960]) cpu torch.uint8

 - Processed 6175 frames.
 - Elapsed: 45.752042501000005 seconds.

[17]:
result[0, 0] = elapsed
samples[0][0] = sample

CUDA

[18]:
elapsed, sample = test(local_src, cuda_conf, i_sample)
========================================
* Configuration: {'decoder': 'h264_cuvid', 'hw_accel': 'cuda:0'}
* Source: input.mp4
========================================
 - Chunk: torch.Size([5, 3, 540, 960]) cuda:0 torch.uint8

 - Processed 6175 frames.
 - Elapsed: 7.458571206999977 seconds.

[19]:
result[0, 1] = elapsed
samples[0][1] = sample

Decode MP4 from network

Let’s run the same test on the source retrieved via network on-the-fly.

[20]:
network_src = "https://download.pytorch.org/torchaudio/tutorial-assets/stream-api/NASAs_Most_Scientifically_Complex_Space_Observatory_Requires_Precision-MP4_small.mp4"
i_sample = 750

CPU

[21]:
elapsed, sample = test(network_src, cpu_conf, i_sample)
========================================
* Configuration: {'decoder': 'h264'}
* Source: https://download.pytorch.org/torchaudio/tutorial-assets/stream-api/NASAs_Most_Scientifically_Complex_Space_Observatory_Requires_Precision-MP4_small.mp4
========================================
 - Chunk: torch.Size([5, 3, 540, 960]) cpu torch.uint8

 - Processed 6175 frames.
 - Elapsed: 40.36345302500001 seconds.

[22]:
result[1, 0] = elapsed
samples[1][0] = sample

CUDA

[23]:
elapsed, sample = test(network_src, cuda_conf, i_sample)
========================================
* Configuration: {'decoder': 'h264_cuvid', 'hw_accel': 'cuda:0'}
* Source: https://download.pytorch.org/torchaudio/tutorial-assets/stream-api/NASAs_Most_Scientifically_Complex_Space_Observatory_Requires_Precision-MP4_small.mp4
========================================
 - Chunk: torch.Size([5, 3, 540, 960]) cuda:0 torch.uint8

 - Processed 6175 frames.
 - Elapsed: 4.222158643999933 seconds.

[24]:
result[1, 1] = elapsed
samples[1][1] = sample

Decode MP4 directly from S3

Using file-like object input, we can fetch a video stored on AWS S3 and decode it without saving it on local file system.

[25]:
bucket = "pytorch"
key = "torchaudio/tutorial-assets/stream-api/NASAs_Most_Scientifically_Complex_Space_Observatory_Requires_Precision-MP4_small.mp4"

s3_client = boto3.client("s3", config=Config(signature_version=UNSIGNED))
i_sample = 115

Defining Helper class

StreamReader supports file-like objects with read method. In addition to this, if the file-like object has seek method, StreamReader attempts to use it for more reliable detection of medi formats.

However, the seek method of boto3’s S3 client response object only raises errors to let users know that seek operation is not supported. Therefore we wrap it with a class that does not have seek method. This way, StreamReader won’t try to use the seek method.

Note

Due to the nature of streaming, when using file-like object without seek method, some formats are not supported. For example, MP4 formats contain metadata at the beginning of file or at the end. If metadata is located at the end, without seek method, StreamReader cannot decode streams.

[26]:
# Wrapper to hide the native `seek` method of boto3, which
# only raises an error.
class UnseekableWrapper:
  def __init__(self, obj):
    self.obj = obj

  def read(self, n):
    return self.obj.read(n)

  def __str__(self):
    return str(self.obj)

CPU

[27]:
response = s3_client.get_object(Bucket=bucket, Key=key)
src = UnseekableWrapper(response["Body"])
elapsed, sample = test(src, cpu_conf, i_sample)
========================================
* Configuration: {'decoder': 'h264'}
* Source: <botocore.response.StreamingBody object at 0x7fecbfcb5c90>
========================================
 - Chunk: torch.Size([5, 3, 540, 960]) cpu torch.uint8

 - Processed 6175 frames.
 - Elapsed: 40.16508613600001 seconds.

[28]:
result[2, 0] = elapsed
samples[2][0] = sample

CUDA

[29]:
response = s3_client.get_object(Bucket=bucket, Key=key)
src = UnseekableWrapper(response["Body"])
elapsed, sample = test(src, cuda_conf, i_sample)
========================================
* Configuration: {'decoder': 'h264_cuvid', 'hw_accel': 'cuda:0'}
* Source: <botocore.response.StreamingBody object at 0x7fecbfc70390>
========================================
 - Chunk: torch.Size([5, 3, 540, 960]) cuda:0 torch.uint8

 - Processed 6175 frames.
 - Elapsed: 4.510979067999983 seconds.

[30]:
result[2, 1] = elapsed
samples[2][1] = sample

Decoding and resizing

In the next test, we add preprocessing. NVDEC supports several preprocessing schemes, which are also performed on the chosen hardware. For CPU, we apply the same kind of software preprocessing through FFmpeg’s filter graph.

[31]:
cpu_conf = {
    "decoder": "h264",  # CPU decoding
    "filter_desc": "scale=360:240",  # Software filter
}
cuda_conf = {
    "decoder": "h264_cuvid",  # Use CUDA HW decoder
    "decoder_option": {
        "resize": "360x240",  # Then apply HW preprocessing (resize)
    },
    "hw_accel": "cuda:0",  # Then keep the memory on CUDA:0
}

i_sample = 1085

CPU

[32]:
elapsed, sample = test(local_src, cpu_conf, i_sample)
========================================
* Configuration: {'decoder': 'h264', 'filter_desc': 'scale=360:240'}
* Source: input.mp4
========================================
 - Chunk: torch.Size([5, 3, 240, 360]) cpu torch.uint8

 - Processed 6175 frames.
 - Elapsed: 18.506949264000013 seconds.

[33]:
result[3, 0] = elapsed
samples[3][0] = sample

CUDA

[34]:
elapsed, sample = test(local_src, cuda_conf, i_sample)
========================================
* Configuration: {'decoder': 'h264_cuvid', 'decoder_option': {'resize': '360x240'}, 'hw_accel': 'cuda:0'}
* Source: input.mp4
========================================
 - Chunk: torch.Size([5, 3, 240, 360]) cuda:0 torch.uint8

 - Processed 6175 frames.
 - Elapsed: 4.9442481019999605 seconds.

[35]:
result[3, 1] = elapsed
samples[3][1] = sample

Results

The following table summarizes the time it took to decode the same media with CPU and NVDEC. We see significant speedup with NVDEC.

[36]:
res = pd.DataFrame(
    result.numpy(),
    index=["Decoding (local file)", "Decoding (network file)", "Decoding (file-like object, S3)", "Decoding + Resize"],
    columns=["CPU", "NVDEC"],
)
print(res)
                                       CPU     NVDEC
Decoding (local file)            45.752041  7.458571
Decoding (network file)          40.363453  4.222158
Decoding (file-like object, S3)  40.165085  4.510979
Decoding + Resize                18.506948  4.944248

The following code shows some frames generated by CPU decoding and NVDEC. They produce seemingly identical results.

[37]:
def yuv_to_rgb(img):
  img = img.cpu().to(torch.float)
  y = img[..., 0, :, :]
  u = img[..., 1, :, :]
  v = img[..., 2, :, :]

  y /= 255
  u = u / 255 - 0.5
  v = v / 255 - 0.5

  r = y + 1.14 * v
  g = y + -0.396 * u - 0.581 * v
  b = y + 2.029 * u

  rgb = torch.stack([r, g, b], -1)
  rgb = (rgb * 255).clamp(0, 255).to(torch.uint8)
  return rgb.numpy()
[38]:
f, axs = plt.subplots(4, 2, figsize=[12.8, 19.2])
for i in range(4):
  for j in range(2):
    axs[i][j].imshow(yuv_to_rgb(samples[i][j]))
    axs[i][j].set_title(
        f"{'CPU' if j == 0 else 'NVDEC'}{' with resize' if i == 3 else ''}")
plt.plot(block=False)
[38]:
[]
_images/hw_acceleration_tutorial_64_1.png

Conclusion

We looked at how to build FFmpeg libraries with NVDEC support and use it from TorchAudio. NVDEC provides significant speed up.

Docs

Access comprehensive developer documentation for PyTorch

View Docs

Tutorials

Get in-depth tutorials for beginners and advanced developers

View Tutorials

Resources

Find development resources and get your questions answered

View Resources