FAQ Features and Fork Differences

FAQ — Features & Fork Differences

How this fork (gjrtimmer/jetson-ffmpeg) differs from upstream jocover and Keylost, and what is on the roadmap. The full provenance is in the Fork Analysis Results.

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Why this fork

• Widest FFmpeg matrix — 4.2 → 8.0 with an idempotent, auto-detecting patcher and committed per-version patches. See Compatibility.
• Memory-safety and crash fixes ported and regression-guarded by a per-feature hardware test suite.
• Tag-driven releases with prebuilt artifacts — see Release Process and releases.

Fixed in this fork

Area	What changed	Issue
Decoder memory safety	Ported cgutman fixes: EOS deadlock, delete[] mismatch, uninitialized pointers, close-hang	#2
Undefined behavior	Missing return in decoder/encoder capture-loop callbacks (segfault on GCC 11+)	#3
Encoder keyframe flag	Honor V4L2 KeyFrame metadata — stop flagging every packet as a keyframe	#4
H.265 global header	GLOBAL_HEADER support + bounded SPS/PPS/VPS NAL scan (buffer-overread guard)	#5
glibc ≥ 2.34	Vendored patched NvV4l2ElementPlane — fixes pthread_join segfault	#6
4K I-frames	Enlarge + bounds-check + make decoder CHUNK_SIZE configurable	#7
Decoder crash on exit	Drain and clean up queued DMA buffers in teardown	#8
Decode performance	setMaxPerfMode, optional DPB disable, poc-type=2 (up to ~6×)	#9
Low-delay decode	Blocking wait in get_frame for AV_CODEC_FLAG_LOW_DELAY	#10
Configurable pools	frame_pool_size / packet_pool_size / chunk_size AVOptions	#11
Pixel formats	YUVJ420P acceptance, NV12 I/O, P010 10-bit decode, XRGB32 converter fix, insert_vui	#12
Codec flush	avcodec_flush_buffers for decoder and encoder	#16
RTSP / out-of-band SPS/PPS	Hardened extradata priming at decoder init (zero-frames fix)	#1
FFmpeg ≥ 6.1 SIGABRT	Decode callback returned EAGAIN on input-feed failure	#28

Roadmap / in progress

Area	Goal	Issue
Hardware MJPEG decode	mjpeg_nvmpi via NvJPEGDecoder (phase 1)	#18
Hardware MJPEG encode	NvJPEGEncoder::encodeFromFd (phase 2)	#19
JPEG zero-copy	decode→encode DMA-fd passthrough (phase 3)	#20
Zero-copy GPU pipeline	dlopen, DMA-BUF/DRM_PRIME, hwcontext_nvmpi, VIC scaling, CUDA interop	#21
Encoder runtime control	dynamic bitrate, force-IDR, per-frame QP, lossless, ROI, CABAC/VUI/AUD	#13
Modern encode API	full send_frame/receive_packet with proper EOS drain	#15
Encoder -level	wire through to V4L2 setLevel for H.264/H.265	#14
AV1	hardware AV1 decode/encode on Orin-class modules	#23
Non-blocking encode	non-blocking encode mode	#31
Build system	CMake cflags quoting, JetPack 6 auto-detect, Yocto/sysroot cross-compile, CPack .deb, pkg-config	#22
Upstreaming	nvmpi codec support to FFmpeg mainline	#25

See all open issues for current status.