FFmpeg v4l2 recording - variable frame rate output

Question

I have a video device and an audio device I'm trying to record from, as below:

$ v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --list-formats-ext
ioctl: VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT
    Type: Video Capture

    [0]: 'MJPG' (Motion-JPEG, compressed)
        Size: Discrete 1280x720
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 960x540
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 848x480
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 640x480
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 640x360
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
    [1]: 'YUYV' (YUYV 4:2:2)
        Size: Discrete 640x480
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 640x360
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 424x240
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 320x240
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 320x180
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 160x120
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)

and

$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC289 Analog [ALC289 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I'm using ffmpeg, with the mjpeg input stream for the video, and hardware acceleration to encode it as h.265, along with flac encoding for the audio:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

input_framerate=30
input_resolution=hd720

v4l2_thread_queue_size=32
alsa_thread_queue_size=8192

ffmpeg -init_hw_device vaapi=my_intel_gpu:/dev/dri/renderD128 \
       -f v4l2 -c:v mjpeg -input_format mjpeg -video_size "${input_resolution}" -r "${input_framerate}" -thread_queue_size "${v4l2_thread_queue_size}" -hwaccel vaapi -hwaccel_device my_intel_gpu -hwaccel_output_format yuv420p -i /dev/video0  \
       -f alsa -thread_queue_size "${alsa_thread_queue_size}" -i hw:0 \
       -vf 'format=nv12,hwupload' -c:v hevc_vaapi -rc_mode ICQ -qp 24 \
       -af 'aresample=async=1000' -c:a flac -compression_level:a 3 \
       "file:output.mkv"

This works well in a well-lit environment, but if I don't have sufficient light, the framerate drops on the camera, but not in the resulting video: the output still plays at the input framerate, speeding up and giving a 'Benny Hill'-style effect.

How do I ask ffmpeg to output a 'constant-speed'/'variable frame rate' recording? I've tried doing video on its own, excluding audio, as well as using unaccelerated hevc, but these suffer from the same issue.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I've since resolved this; the key was replacing the -r "${input_framerate}" in the second line of the ffmpeg invocation with -framerate "${input_framerate}".

The differences between these options is nicely described within this answer.