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External input stream instance is null... stopping process

Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2023 5:51 am
by richtr8
Hi,

I'm using UMS on arch. Not sure why, but it seems like ffmpeg is totally busted on my setup. Not sure what to try.
I was trying to set up hardware acceleration. I compiled ffmpeg from source with git clone, make & then sudo make install - now everything's busted. I tried sudo make uninstall, no luck.

The usual files are attached.

Thanks in advance!

Re: External input stream instance is null... stopping process

Posted: Fri Apr 28, 2023 11:41 am
by mik_s
I'm not that familiar with either building FFmpeg or with linux so I'm not 100% sure what the problem is but it may be that UMS is using a version of FFmpeg that is already on your system and not the version you are compiling. If this is the case then you can set which one to use by editing UMS.conf to point to the right one.

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# Path to ffmpeg (absolute or relative from project.binaries.dir)
# Example: /usr/bin/ffmpeg
# Default:
#     Win: win32/ffmpeg.exe
#     Mac: osx/ffmpeg
#     Linux: ffmpeg + system PATH
ffmpeg_path =
It could also be that the version UMS relies on is from a different fork with extra features.

From what I can tell the reason it is failing is that your FFmpeg does not understand the -preset option

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Reading option '-preset' ...Unrecognized option 'preset'.
Checking your version of FFmpeg with what my system is using shows different versions:

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Yours - ffmpeg version  N-110395-g2f8690c5d4 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers
Mine  - ffmpeg version 2022-12-25-git-eeb280f351-essentials_build-www.gyan.dev Copyright (c) 2000-2022 the FFmpeg developers
As far as I know the version used by UMS already has support for hardware encoding using the GPU so you should not need to build it yourself unless there is something specific you need. I would suggest using the version that is installed with UMS.
FFmpeg_GPU.jpg
FFmpeg_GPU.jpg (137.23 KiB) Viewed 1920 times

Re: External input stream instance is null... stopping process

Posted: Fri Apr 28, 2023 12:30 pm
by mik_s
I think the answer is in this thread.
The ffmpeg version included in UMS is a large file with support for xvid, x264 and x265 built in.
root root 50848812 Sep 6 09:20 /opt/ums/ums/linux/ffmpeg

The ffmpeg version with Gentoo Linux is a much smaller file and extra packages (eg: xvid, x264 and x265) have to be installed separately.
root root 289772 Nov 21 13:00 /usr/bin/ffmpeg