habemus-papadum-nvenc 0.2.0

Zero-PyAV GPU H.264/HEVC encode (NVIDIA Video Codec SDK / NVENC) for pdum.rfb

habemus-papadum-nvenc (import pdum.nvenc)

GPU NV12 → H.264/HEVC Annex B via NVIDIA's Video Codec SDK encoder, with no PyAV and no host copy. The companion GPU encoder for pdum.rfb (PyPI: habemus-papadum-rfb); a uv workspace member of this repo. Full assessment: docs/nvenc_sdk_evaluation.md.

Why it exists:

1. Builds + runs on CPython 3.14. Upstream PyNvVideoCodec pins pybind11 2.10.0 (no 3.14) and ships no cp314 wheel/sdist; this package builds against pybind11 v3.0.4.
2. GPU-resident, PyAV-free. Encodes any __cuda_array_interface__ tensor (CuPy / PyTorch / Numba) directly, sidestepping the PyAV-18 requirement entirely.

What's ours vs NVIDIA's

src/cpp/nvenc_ext.cpp      OURS — the only hand-written C++; thin pybind11 binding +
                           all NVTX ranges. Wraps NvEncoderCuda; no NVIDIA edits.
src/pdum/nvenc/__init__.py OURS — Python surface + the ABI loader (picks 12.1/13.0).
CMakeLists.txt             OURS — pybind11 3.0.4 (the 3.14 fix), dual ABI, optional NVTX.
build-wheel.sh             OURS — self-contained wheel build (auditwheel).
third_party/               VERBATIM, UNMODIFIED NVIDIA SDK (MIT). See PROVENANCE.md.

The NVIDIA source under third_party/ is copied byte-for-byte from PyNvVideoCodec 2.1.0 with its MIT headers intact; we made zero edits to it.

Dual NVENC ABI

The wheel ships two extensions built from the same source — _nvenc_121 (NVENC SDK 12.1) and _nvenc_130 (13.0) — and pdum/nvenc/__init__.py loads whichever the host driver supports (newest first, via a cheap NvEncodeAPIGetMaxSupportedVersion probe), so one wheel works across old and new drivers.

Build & test (local, CMake)

cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DUSE_NVTX=OFF      # or -DUSE_NVTX=ON for profiling
cmake --build build -j

Build wheels (maintainer)

./build-wheel.sh                 # cp314 -> dist/habemus_papadum_nvenc-*.whl
./build-wheel.sh --nvtx          # profiling wheel (NVTX ranges on)
PYTHON_VERSIONS="3.12 3.13 3.14" ./build-wheel.sh

The wheel bundles its C/C++ runtime deps but not libcuda / libnvidia-encode — those come from the host NVIDIA driver, as they must. Publishing to PyPI is done by scripts/publish.sh (which calls this), not from CI.

Usage

import cupy as cp
from pdum.nvenc import NvencEncoder

enc = NvencEncoder(1920, 1080, codec="h264", preset="p3", tuning="ll", fps=30, gop=30)
nv12 = cp.empty((1080 * 3 // 2, 1920), dtype=cp.uint8)   # contiguous NV12
# ... render into nv12 ...
annexb = enc.encode(nv12, force_idr=True)                # bytes; H.264 Annex B
annexb += enc.flush()
enc.close()

NvencEncoder(cuda_context=0) retains the device primary context — the same one CuPy/PyTorch use — so device pointers are valid to NVENC with no cross-context copy.

NvencEncoder(extra_output_delay=0) (the default) is zero-latency: each frame's access unit is returned by its own encode() call (synchronous 1-in-1-out), which is what a low-latency stream wants. Raise it (NVIDIA's helper defaults to 3) to overlap encode with rendering for throughput, at a matching cost in frames of latency.

NVTX profiling

Built with --nvtx / -DUSE_NVTX=ON, the binding emits ranges at the Python boundary (pdum.encode, pdum.read_cai, pdum.copy_to_nvenc, pdum.submit, pdum.collect_output) and activates NVIDIA's internal ranges (EncodeFrame, DoEncode, MapResources, CopyToDeviceFrame_*). Profile with Nsight Systems: nsys profile -t nvtx,cuda python your_script.py.

Scope / caveats

• Fixed-resolution NV12 in, Annex B out, one encoder per instance. No reconfigure / SEI / EncoderBackend wiring yet — that's the pdum.rfb integration.
• Input uses GetNextInputFrame + CopyToDeviceFrame (one intra-GPU copy, no host round-trip). True zero-copy via NvEncoder::RegisterResource is a follow-up.