remote-ffmpeg-docker-mod

A docker image 'mod' for LinuxServer.io docker images which allows any call to the containers' ffmpeg installation to be commandeered and ran in a remote execution environment with very little effort. Once the mod is enabled on the container, the remote machine need only be running a supported Linux distribution with sshfs installed, and an SSH key for authentication.

The intended use case is to allow the container to take advantage of extra compute resources of a remote machine (such as discrete graphics), or within a Virtual Machine on the same host, but without the need to resort to complicated setups like GPU passthrough in order to take advantage of hardware transcoding.

Setup

Simply add the required entry to the containers DOCKER_MODS environment variable, and then the additional variables for SSH authentication:

services:
  jellyfin:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/jellyfin:latest
    container_name: jellyfin
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - JELLYFIN_PublishedServerUrl=http://192.168.0.5 #optional
      - DOCKER_MODS=ghcr.io/ben-pearce/remote-ffmpeg-docker-mod:jellyfin
      - REMOTE_FFMPEG_USER=root
      - REMOTE_FFMPEG_HOST=renderer.host
      - REMOTE_FFMPEG_FORWARD_HOSTS=8080:some-other-container:8080
    volumes:
      - /path/to/jellyfin/library:/config
      - /path/to/tvseries:/data/tvshows
      - /path/to/movies:/data/movies
    ports:
      - 8096:8096
      - 8920:8920 #optional
      - 7359:7359/udp #optional
      - 1900:1900/udp #optional
    restart: unless-stopped

Generate an SSH key, and place the private key within the /config/.ssh directory of your container.

Environment variables

• REMOTE_FFMPEG_USER - The SSH user to login to the remote host as, must have sufficient privileges to run chroot. (default: root)
• REMOTE_FFMPEG_HOST - The hostname or IP address of the remote host where execution takes place. (default: '')
• REMOTE_FFMPEG_FORWARD_HOSTS - Comma seperated list of port forwards to enable (TCP only). Allows traffic to flow from the remote exeuction environment to the container. (Syntax: local_port:remote_address:remote_port). (default: '')
• REMOTE_FFMPEG_SSH_KEY_PATH - Override the SSH key path. (default: /config/.ssh/id_*)
• REMOTE_FFMPEG_BINARY - Override the container ffmpeg path. (default: $(which ffmpeg))

Supported tags

In theory, all LinuxServer.io images are supported, the mod will search for the ffmpeg binary using which. For some images / applications, this is not sufficient, so additional flavors of the mod are provided to assist with setup.

• :latest - Version for use with all LinuxServer.io containers.
• :jellyfin - Version for use specifically with Jellyfin media server.

Planned functionality

• Local FFMPEG failover
• Round robin load balancing with multiple remote hosts
• Automatic retrying when remote is unavailable with configurable timeouts.
• Manipulation of ffmpeg flags on a per-host basis, using regex replacements.