Add support linux aarch64 arch

[fyp711]

Currently, it only supports installation in a Linux x86_64 or Mac environment. Is it possible to support installation using pip in a Linux aarch64 environment?

[joeftiger]

Would be seriously great.

[gcanat]

video_reader-rs has support for aarch64 if you want to try it out.

[fyp711]

video_reader-rs has support for aarch64 if you want to try it out.

Sounds Great, how to migrate the code from decord to video_reader-rs? Could you give me some tools?

[fyp711]

@gcanat

[gcanat]

It's pretty similar to decord:

from video_reader import PyVideoReader

vr = PyVideoReader(filename)
frames = vr.get_batch(indice_list)

Checkout the README.

[Manamama]

Well it works in Droid, I have tried if so, out of curiosity. Took about three minutes:

1. Prooted Debian , for glibc, or glibc-runner, I guess.
2. Minute fixes as per below.
3. cmake and make and talking to e.g. gemini-cli about the resulting errors .
4. ~/downloads/decord# pip install -v ./python 👍🏽

results in:

adding 'decord/function/base.py'                                  adding 'decord-0.6.0.dist-info/METADATA'
  adding 'decord-0.6.0.dist-info/WHEEL'                             adding 'decord-0.6.0.dist-info/top_level.txt'
  adding 'decord-0.6.0.dist-info/RECORD'                            removing build/bdist.linux-aarch64/wheel
  Building wheel for decord (setup.py) ... done                     Created wheel for decord: filename=decord-0.6.0-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl size=2007905 sha256=e2cd4e42969eaa77d1da57d4921bfbc3d7f10f145001b3e868258f45b65eac13
  Stored in directory: /tmp/pip-ephem-wheel-cache-p7uqgubt/wheels/b4/05/1e/d0eebcc7ec62a27aeed8318a4190582583cf49d9aceaeb99c7
Successfully built decord                                         Installing collected packages: decord
Successfully installed decord-0.6.0

and:

pip show decord                Name: decord
Version: 0.6.0                                                    Summary: Decord Video Loader
Home-page: https://github.com/dmlc/decord                         Author:
Author-email:                                                     License: APACHE
Location: /usr/local/lib/python3.11/dist-packages                 Requires: numpy
Required-by:                                                      root@localhost:~/downloads/decord#

Yes, all on aarch64:

root@localhost
--------------                                                    OS: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) aarch64
Host: realme RMX3085                                              Kernel: 6.2.1-PRoot-Distro
Uptime: 2 mins                                                    Packages: 2114 (dpkg)
Shell: bash 5.2.15                                                Terminal: proot
CPU: MT6785V/CD (8) @ 1.733GHz                                    Memory: 3731MiB / 5638MiB

So, 'it works on my end' @joeftiger , @fyp711 , with two finger typing or 'fixing' in Termux itself, on 📲 GUI, no ssh even this time.

Third party (Gemini Pro) tips about the patches done:

========

Build Failure with FFmpeg 5.x and later

Problem Description

When attempting to build decord from source on a system with FFmpeg 5.x or newer (e.g., Debian 12 which ships with FFmpeg 5.1.x), the compilation process fails. This is due to breaking API changes introduced in newer versions of FFmpeg that the current decord codebase does not account for.

Errors Encountered

The build process terminates with two main errors:

1. unknown type name 'AVBSFContext'

The first error occurs during the compilation of src/audio/audio_interface.cc and other files that include src/video/ffmpeg/ffmpeg_common.h.

/root/downloads/decord/src/audio/../../include/decord/../../src/video/ffmpeg/ffmpeg_common.h:187:5: error: unknown type name 'AVBSFContext'

This error is caused by the AVBSFContext type not being found. In modern FFmpeg versions, this type is defined in the libavcodec/bsf.h header, which was not included.

2. no matching function for call to 'av_find_best_stream'

After resolving the first error, a second error appears during the compilation of src/video/video_reader.cc:

/root/downloads/decord/src/video/video_reader.cc:149:17: error: no matching function for call to 'av_find_best_stream'
...
note: candidate function not viable: no known conversion from 'AVCodec **' to 'const AVCodec **' for 5th argument

This error indicates that the signature for the av_find_best_stream function has changed. The fifth argument, which was previously AVCodec**, is now const AVCodec**.

Solution/Patches

The following two patches resolve the compilation errors and allow decord to build successfully with FFmpeg 5.x.

Patch 1: Include bsf.h for AVBSFContext

To fix the unknown type name 'AVBSFContext' error, include the necessary header in src/video/ffmpeg/ffmpeg_common.h.

File: src/video/ffmpeg/ffmpeg_common.h
Change:

--- a/src/video/ffmpeg/ffmpeg_common.h
+++ b/src/video/ffmpeg/ffmpeg_common.h
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@
 extern "C" {
 #endif
 #include <libavcodec/avcodec.h>
+#include <libavcodec/bsf.h>
 #include <libavformat/avformat.h>
 #include <libavformat/avio.h>
 #include <libavfilter/avfilter.h>

Patch 2: Update av_find_best_stream Call Signature

To fix the no matching function error, the type of the dec variable passed to av_find_best_stream must be updated to const AVCodec*.

File: src/video/video_reader.cc
Change:

--- a/src/video/video_reader.cc
+++ b/src/video/video_reader.cc
@@ -147,8 +147,8 @@
 
 void VideoReader::SetVideoStream(int stream_nb) {
     if (!fmt_ctx_) return;
-    AVCodec *dec;
-    int st_nb = av_find_best_stream(fmt_ctx_.get(), AVMEDIA_TYPE_VIDEO, stream_nb, -1, &dec, 0);
+    const AVCodec *dec;
+    int st_nb = av_find_best_stream(fmt_ctx_.get(), AVMEDIA_TYPE_VIDEO, stream_nb, -1, &dec, 0);
     // LOG(INFO) << "find best stream: " << st_nb;
     CHECK_GE(st_nb, 0) << "ERROR cannot find video stream with wanted index: " << stream_nb;
     // initialize the mem for codec context

With these changes, decord compiles and runs correctly with modern FFmpeg versions.

ver. 1.1, typos fixed.

[Manamama]

Also a two 🤞 update: the same works on Termux itself, yay. Not sure how so actually, as it should not (glibc), maybe running that make first under Debian worked the trick? Hm:

...
adding 'decord/data/base_action.py'
  adding 'decord/data/dataloader.py'
  adding 'decord/data/kinetics/__init__.py'
  adding 'decord/data/kinetics/kinetics400_action.py'
  adding 'decord/data/transforms/__init__.py'
  adding 'decord/data/transforms/action.py'
  adding 'decord/function/__init__.py'
  adding 'decord/function/base.py'
  adding 'decord-0.6.0.dist-info/METADATA'
  adding 'decord-0.6.0.dist-info/WHEEL'
  adding 'decord-0.6.0.dist-info/top_level.txt'
  adding 'decord-0.6.0.dist-info/RECORD'
  removing build/bdist.linux-aarch64/wheel
  Building wheel for decord (setup.py) ... done
  Created wheel for decord: filename=decord-0.6.0-cp312-cp312-linux_aarch64.whl size=2015149 sha256=6c224c7449345b8cc146c40b2c3a910cef9f257f6b9ce1b54300a29af7d07b25
  Stored in directory: /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/tmp/pip-ephem-wheel-cache-bdrz6d01/wheels/65/e9/8d/242272f9e06443b9294aa40882341f9701ed1ed21f3011bc60
Successfully built decord
Installing collected packages: decord
Successfully installed decord-0.6.0
[1]+  Done                    updatedb  (wd: ~)
(wd now: ~/downloads/decord)
~/downloads/decord $ neofetch -off

------
Operating System: Android 11 aarch64
Kernel: 4.14.186+
Shell: /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/bash 5.2.37
Python: 3.12.11
------
Display Manager
Display Server:
Desktop Environment theme: Magna-Dark-GTK [GTK3]
Icons theme: Adwaita [GTK3]
------
Packages: 142 (pacman), 856 (dpkg), 1 (pkg)
System Font: Adwaita Sans 11 [GTK3]
------

yes in Termux:

~/downloads/decord $ pip show decord
Name: decord
Version: 0.6.0
Summary: Decord Video Loader
Home-page: https://github.com/dmlc/decord

Update:
If one wants to install it from scratch in Termux (not Debian first), one needs to:

• rm -rf dmlc-core in the third party folder
• git clone https://github.com/dmlc/dmlc-core and compile the same, to avoid some weird 'big vs little endianness' problem in default endian.h file, not sure why so
• Fix yet other set of nasty ffmpeg smth patches, this time bespoke to Termux, see attached.
• Use those made files for the regular pip install -v ./python stage.

The presumed patches, for the record, also by Gemini (Flash even this time) found and fixed, under a minute, attached, unseen. Long live AI-cli...

patches.md

Update: Gemini made lots of other fixes in the test files (took it some 15 mins this time, too many to report here), recompiled with tests on, ran them, checked against an .mp4 file and it works, too.

Ver. 2.2