Packman x264/x265 codec issues

English Multimedia
1

Just a note that since March 2018 there is a problem with the x264 and x265 binaries being distributed by Packman, widely advertised here as a solution to the non-support of x254/5 codecs in the default SuSe repos.
What looks like an innocuous comment in the recent updates (e.g. x264-152, x265-151), is a major problem in reality:

- Conditionally BuildRequire nasm for current versions of
  openSUSE and pass conditional --disable-asm to openSUSE Leap 43.3
  and SLE-12

Without use of an assembler (was YASM, now NASM), there are no MMX or SSE instructions used - the machine will likely use 100% CPU, may overheat or not be able to encode/decode some material at all. The clue is in the detailed log output, which looks like this:

"x265 [info]: using cpu capabilities: none!"

NASM can be easily installed (in main OSS repo) and you can build the packages yourself to restore expected functionality, not sure why Packman doesn’t do this.

For the future, I think SuSe should look at a better way of dealing with this long-standing licensing issue, such self-inflicted wounds will do nothing to help the distro’s popularity.

2

this has been reported and a fix is on it’s way (for x264)
http://lists.links2linux.de/pipermail/packman/2018-March/015586.html

3

There is no distro making contributing so easy as openSUSE. We’re a community distro, anyone can step up and do whatever they want. Report bugs, help out fixing them, building better packages, Feel welcome to help find a solution or at least report a bug if you’re convinced this is one .

4

To build from sources for 42.3, these small fixes work for me.
For x265 and libx264 replace lines in the .spec file as follows:

before the “BuildRequires: nasm”

## enable NASM! %if 0%{?suse_version} >=1500
%if 0%{?sle_version} == 120300 && 0%{?is_opensuse}

Additionally for libx264 before

–disable-asm \

 
## enable NASM! %if 0%{?suse_version} < 1500
%if 0%{?suse_version} < 1000
5

afaik current packman builds are compiled with nasm I don’t encode that much but I did view an HD h265 video with software decoding (my gpu doesn’t support h265) and the playback was smooth
if you haven’t already just do an update

zypper up
6

Yes. From the libx264 package changelog:

* Fri Mar 23 2018 enzokiel@kabelmail.de
- Build with nasm >= 2.13 for openSUSE Leap 42.3 and SLE-12.

libx265:

* Thu Mar 01 2018 zaitor@opensuse.org
- Update to version 2.7:
...
  - Moved from YASM to NASM assembler. Supports NASM assembler
    version 2.13 and greater.
...
- Replace yasm with nasm BuildRequires following upstreams changes.

The real problem was that Leap 42.3 comes with a too old nasm though (version 2.10.09), i.e. it actually was not possible to build x264/x265 with nasm in the first place anymore.
This has been “fixed” by adding nasm 2.13 to Packman as well.

7

'fraid not
X264 is fixed, but as of today x265 (V2.7.2.2 from Packman, built Fri 23 Mar 2018 18:06:40 GMT) still not using SSE or MMX instructions.

x265 [info]: build info [Linux][GCC 4.8.5][64 bit][noasm] 8bit
8

Well, better report this to Packman then:
http://lists.links2linux.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/packman

9

x265 should be “fixed” since the latest update as well:

$ rpm -q --changelog libx265-151
* Fri May 04 2018 zaitor@opensuse.org
- Build with nasm >= 2.13 for openSUSE Leap 42.3 and SLE-12, since
  new enough nasm is now available for them.

...