Docs: add a headless / Apple Silicon macOS rendering guide (#9)#10
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Docs: add a headless / Apple Silicon macOS rendering guide (#9)#10Magnussmari wants to merge 1 commit into
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Adds guides/HeadlessRenderingMacOS.md covering headless melt on macOS: install, running with no display via the avformat consumer, -progress2 for scripts and CI, and headless title rendering. Leads with the qtext producer, which renders headless on macOS out of the box (Qt uses the cocoa platform, so the Linux DISPLAY abort that mlt#1069 addresses does not apply). Documents QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen as the portable form for cross-platform scripts, and pango as the zero-GUI-dependency fallback. Linked from developers/BuildTips.md under the existing macOS subsection, mirroring the Windows guide. Version-stamped for graceful aging. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
ddennedy
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| For a modern Apple Silicon walkthrough, including running `melt` headless for | ||
| batch and CI rendering, see the [Headless Rendering on macOS]({{ "/docs/headlessmacos/" | prepend: site.baseurl }}) page. | ||
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I am sorry, but I misunderstood what you asked in #9. I thought you were going to write about "building" MLT on macOS. You even linked to the new page from the BuildTips page. Howeverl, this is not about that. It is basically get it from homebrew plus this collection of tips for rendering headless. Seems more like personal notes you want to publish on the project web site. Change this to put the link on the "Miscellaneous" section of https://mltframework.org/docs/ and shorten the line: Headless Rendering. It has useful tips not just for macOS and putting "macOS" in the line will lead people to dismiss it, but there are many package repos for all OS that include MLT.
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Adds
guides/HeadlessRenderingMacOS.mdas discussed in #9: install on Apple Silicon, runningmeltheadless via theavformatconsumer,-progress2for scripts and CI, and headless title rendering. Linked fromdevelopers/BuildTips.mdunder the existing macOS subsection, mirroring the Windows guide.Thanks for the pointer to mlt#1069, it reshaped the guide. I tested it on this machine and the guide leads with
qtextas you suggested (it is richer), with one macOS-specific wrinkle worth having on record: #1069 fixes the LinuxDISPLAYabort, but on macOS Qt runs the cocoa platform, soqtextalready renders headless with no env var at all. The guide therefore presentsqtextas the default,QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreenas the portable form for cross-platform scripts and CI, andpangoonly as the fallback for daemon contexts with no window server (also the one text path left when a stock brew FFmpeg 8 has nodrawtextfilter).Verified on
melt 7.38.0/ FFmpeg 8.1.1 / Apple Silicon: valid 1080p renders withqtextboth with and without the offscreen var (text confirmed via luma),pangoheadless with no window server, and brew FFmpeg 8's missingdrawtextfilter. Front matter and Liquid link validated against the existing guides; I could not run a full local Jekyll build (thegithub-pagestoolchain does not install cleanly on the system Ruby here), so a CI or preview render is worth a glance.On the maintenance worry you raised: I should say I do not contribute to a spread of projects. I only send work to tools I actually use and think I can be of service to, and MLT is one of those. I run headless
meltdaily as the render engine of an automated pipeline, so this documents my production setup. I have dated the guide and I am glad to re-verify it against new MLT releases and take any macOS-doc issues you want to route my way. If you would prefer more discoverability I can add a pointer fromMltMelt.mdorDocumentation.md, but I kept the diff minimal to match the Windows guide's placement.