blog/archive/2022/04/04.rss

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
   2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from April 2022</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from April 2022</description>
   6                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>geteltorito make CD firmware upgrades a breeze</title>
  11                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/geteltorito_make_CD_firmware_upgrades_a_breeze.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/geteltorito_make_CD_firmware_upgrades_a_breeze.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2022 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I wanted to upgrade the firmware of my thinkpad, and
  15 located the firmware download page from Lenovo (which annoyingly do
  16 not allow access via Tor, forcing me to hand them more personal
  17 information that I would like).  The
  18 &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.lenovo.com/no/en/search?query=thinkpad firmware bios upgrade iso&amp;SearchType=Customer search&amp;searchLocation=Masthead&quot;&gt;download
  19 from Lenovo&lt;/a&gt; is a bootable ISO image, which is a bit of a problem
  20 when all I got available is a USB memory stick.  I tried booting the
  21 ISO as a USB stick, but this did not work.  But genisoimage came to
  22 the rescue.&lt;/p&gt;
  23
  24 &lt;P&gt;The geteltorito program in
  25 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tracker.debian.org/cdrkit&quot;&gt;the genisoimage binary
  26 package&lt;/a&gt; is able to convert the bootable ISO image to a bootable
  27 USB stick using a simple command line recipe, which I then can write
  28 to the most recently inserted USB stick:&lt;/p&gt;
  29
  30 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  31 geteltorito -o usbstick.img lenovo-firmware.iso
  32 sudo dd bs=10M if=usbstick.img of=$(ls -tr /dev/sd?|tail -1)
  33 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  34
  35 &lt;p&gt;This USB stick booted the firmware upgrader just fine, and in a few
  36 minutes my machine had the latest and greatest BIOS firmware in place.&lt;/p&gt;
  37 </description>
  38         </item>
  39
  40         <item>
  41                 <title>Playing and encoding AV1 in Debian Bullseye</title>
  42                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Playing_and_encoding_AV1_in_Debian_Bullseye.html</link>
  43                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Playing_and_encoding_AV1_in_Debian_Bullseye.html</guid>
  44                 <pubDate>Sat, 16 Apr 2022 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
  45                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Inspired by the recent news of
  46 &lt;a href=&quot;https://slashdot.org/story/22/04/03/2039219/intel-beats-amd-and-nvidia-with-arc-gpus-full-av1-support&quot;&gt;AV1
  47 hardware encoding support from Intel&lt;/a&gt;, I decided to look into
  48 the state of AV1 on Linux today.  AV1 is a
  49 &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160618103850/http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free
  50 and open standard&lt;/a&gt; as defined by Digistan without any royalty
  51 payment requirement, unlike its much used competitor encoding
  52 H.264.  While looking, I came across an 5 year
  53 &lt;a href=&quot;https://askubuntu.com/questions/1061908/how-to-encode-and-playback-video-with-the-av1-codec-on-bionic-beaver-18-04&quot;&gt;old
  54 question on askubuntu.com&lt;/a&gt; which in turn inspired me to check out
  55 how things are in Debian Stable regarding AV1.  The test file listed
  56 in the question (askubuntu_test_aom.mp4) did not exist any more, so I
  57 tracked down a different set of test files on
  58 &lt;a href=&quot;https://av1.webmfiles.org/&quot;&gt;av1.webmfiles.org&lt;/a&gt; to test them
  59 with the various video tools I had installed on my machine.  I was
  60 happy to discover that AV1 decoding and playback worked with almost
  61 every tool I tested:
  62
  63 &lt;table align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;
  64 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;mediainfo&lt;/td&gt;       &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  65 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;dragonplayer&lt;/td&gt;    &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  66 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;ffmpeg / ffplay&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  67 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;gnome-mplayer&lt;/td&gt;   &lt;td&gt;fail&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  68 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;mplayer&lt;/td&gt;       &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  69 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;mpv&lt;/td&gt;           &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  70 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;parole&lt;/td&gt;        &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  71 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;vlc&lt;/td&gt;           &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  72 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;firefox&lt;/td&gt;         &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  73 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;chromium&lt;/td&gt;        &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  74 &lt;/table&gt;
  75
  76 &lt;p&gt;AV1 encoding is available in Debian Stable from the aom-tools
  77 version 1.0.0.errata1-3 package, using the aomenc tool.  The encoding
  78 using the package in Debian Stable is quite slow, with the frame rate
  79 for my 10 second test video at around 0.25 fps.  My 10 second video
  80 test took 16 minutes and 11 seconds on my test machine.&lt;/p&gt;
  81
  82 &lt;p&gt;I tested by first running ffmpeg and then aomenc using the recipe
  83 provided by the askubuntu recipe above.  I had to remove the
  84 &#39;--row-mt=1&#39; option, as it was not supported in my 1.0.0 version.  The
  85 encoding only used a single thread, according to &lt;tt&gt;top&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  86
  87 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  88 ffmpeg -i some-old-video.ogv -t 10 -pix_fmt yuv420p video.y4m
  89 aomenc --fps=24/1 -u 0 --codec=av1 --target-bitrate=1000 \
  90   --lag-in-frames=25 --auto-alt-ref=1 -t 24 --cpu-used=8 \
  91   --tile-columns=2 --tile-rows=2 -o output.webm video.y4m
  92 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  93
  94 &lt;p&gt;As version 1.0.0 currently have several
  95 &lt;a href=&quot;https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/aom&quot;&gt;unsolved
  96 security issues in Debian Stable&lt;/a&gt;, and to see if the recent
  97 backport &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/aom&quot;&gt;provided in
  98 Debian&lt;/a&gt; is any quicker, I ran &lt;tt&gt;apt -t bullseye-backports install
  99 aom-tools&lt;/tt&gt; to fetch the backported version and re-encoded the
 100 video using the latest version.  This time the &#39;--row-mt=1&#39; option
 101 worked, and the encoding was done in 46 seconds with a frame rate of
 102 around 5.22 fps.  This time it seem to be using all my four cores to
 103 encode.  Encoding speed is still too low for streaming and real time,
 104 which would require frame rates above 25 fps, but might be good enough
 105 for offline encoding.&lt;/p&gt;
 106
 107 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to see AV1 playback working so well with the
 108 default tools in Debian Stable.  I hope the encoding situation improve
 109 too, allowing even a slow old computer like my 10 year old laptop to
 110 be used for encoding.&lt;/p&gt;
 111
 112 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 113 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 114 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 115 </description>
 116         </item>
 117
 118         </channel>
 119 </rss>