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• The First Problem

  19 janvier 2011, par Multimedia Mike — HTML5

  A few years ago, The Linux Hater made the following poignant observation regarding Linux driver support :

  Drivers are only just the beginning... But for some reason y’all like to focus on the drivers. You know why lusers do that ? Because it just happens to be the problem that people notice first.

  And so it is with the HTML5 video codec debate, re-invigorated in the past week by Google’s announcement of dropping native H.264 support in their own HTML5 video tag implementation. As I read up on the fiery debate, I kept wondering why people are so obsessed with this issue. Then I remembered the Linux Hater’s post and realized that the video codec issue is simply the first problem that most people notice regarding HTML5 video.

  I appreciate that the video codec debate has prompted Niedermayer to post on his blog once more. Otherwise, I’m just munching popcorn on the sidelines, amused and mildly relieved that the various factions are vociferously attacking each other rather than that little project I help with at work.

  Getting back to the "first problem" aspect— there’s so much emphasis on the video codec ; I wonder why no one ever, ever mentions word one about an audio codec. AAC is typically the codec that pairs with H.264 in the MPEG stack. Dark Shikari once mentioned that "AAC’s licensing terms are exponentially more onerous than H.264′s. If Google didn’t want to use H.264, they would sure as hell not want to use AAC." Most people are probably using "H.264" to refer to the entire MPEG/H.264/AAC stack, even if they probably don’t understand what all of those pieces mean.

  Anyway, The Linux Hater’s driver piece continues :

  Once y’all have drivers, the fight will move to the next layer up. And like I said, it’s a lot harder at that layer.

  A few months ago, when I wanted to post the WebM output of my new VP8 encoder and thought it would be a nice touch to deliver it via a video tag, I ignored the video codec problem (just encoded a VP8/WebM file) only to immediately discover a problem at a different layer— specifically, embedding a file using a video tag triggers a full file download when the page is loaded, which is unacceptable from end user and web hosting perspectives. This is a known issue but doesn’t get as much attention, I guess because there are bigger problems to solve first (c.f. video codec issue).

  For other issues, check out the YouTube blog’s HTML5 post or Hulu’s post that also commented on HTML5. Issues such as video streaming flexibility, content protection, fullscreen video, webcam/microphone input, and numerous others are rarely mentioned in the debates. Only "video codec" is of paramount importance.

  But I’m lending too much weight to the cacophony of a largely uninformed internet debate. Realistically, I know there are many talented engineers down in the trenches working to solve at least some of these problems. To tie this in with the Linux driver example, I’m consistently stunned these days regarding how simple it is to get Linux working on a new computer— most commodity consumer hardware really does just work right out of the box. Maybe one day, we’ll wake up and find that HTML5 video has advanced to the point that it solves all of the relevant problems to make it the simple and obvious choice for delivering web video in nearly all situations.

  It won’t be this year.

• How would I assign multiple MMAP's from single file descriptor ?

  9 juin 2011, par Alex Stevens

  So, for my final year project, I'm using Video4Linux2 to pull YUV420 images from a camera, parse them through to x264 (which uses these images natively), and then send the encoded stream via Live555 to an RTP/RTCP compliant video player on a client over a wireless network. All of this I'm trying to do in real-time, so there'll be a control algorithm, but that's not the scope of this question. All of this - except Live555 - is being written in C. Currently, I'm near the end of encoding the video, but want to improve performance.

  To say the least, I've hit a snag... I'm trying to avoid User Space Pointers for V4L2 and use mmap(). I'm encoding video, but since it's YUV420, I've been malloc'ing new memory to hold the Y', U and V planes in three different variables for x264 to read upon. I would like to keep these variables as pointers to an mmap'ed piece of memory.

  However, the V4L2 device has one single file descriptor for the buffered stream, and I need to split the stream into three mmap'ed variables adhering to the YUV420 standard, like so...

  buffers[n_buffers].y_plane = mmap(NULL, (2 * width * height) / 3,
  
                                      PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED,
  
                                      fd, buf.m.offset);
  
  buffers[n_buffers].u_plane = mmap(NULL, width * height / 6,
  
                                      PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED,
  
                                      fd, buf.m.offset +
  
                                      ((2 * width * height) / 3 + 1) /
  
                                      sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE));
  
  buffers[n_buffers].v_plane = mmap(NULL, width * height / 6,
  
                                      PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED,
  
                                      fd, buf.m.offset +
  
                                      ((2 * width * height) / 3 + 
  
                                      width * height / 6 + 1) / 
  
                                      sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE));

  Where "width" and "height" is the resolution of the video (eg. 640x480).

  From what I understand... MMAP seeks through a file, kind of like this (pseudoish-code) :

  fd = v4l2_open(...);
  
  lseek(fd, buf.m.offset + (2 * width * height) / 3);
  
  read(fd, buffers[n_buffers].u_plane, width * height / 6);

  My code is located in a Launchpad Repo here (for more background) :
  http://bazaar.launchpad.net/ alex-stevens/+junk/spyPanda/files (Revision 11)

  And the YUV420 format can be seen clearly from this Wiki illustration : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yuv420.svg (I essentially want to split up the Y, U, and V bytes into each mmap'ed memory)

  Anyone care to explain a way to mmap three variables to memory from the one file descriptor, or why I went wrong ? Or even hint at a better idea to parse the YUV420 buffer to x264 ? :P

  Cheers ! ^^

• Availability of WebM (VP8) Video Hardware IP Designs

  10 janvier 2011, par noreply@blogger.com (John Luther)

  Hello from the frigid city of Oulu, in the far north of Finland. Our WebM hardware development team, formerly part of On2 Technologies, is now up-to-speed and working hard on a number of video efforts for WebM.
  

  • VP8 (the video codec used in WebM) hardware decoder IP is available from Google for semiconductor companies who want to support high-quality WebM playback in their chipsets.
  • The Oulu team will release the first VP8 video hardware encoder IP in the first quarter of 2011. We have the IP running in an FPGA environment, and rigorous testing is underway. Once all features have been tested and implemented, the encoder will be launched as well.

  WebM video hardware IPs are implemented and delivered as RTL (VHDL/Verilog) source code, which is a register-level hardware description language for creating digital circuit designs. The code is based on the Hantro brand video IP from On2, which has been successfully deployed by numerous chipset companies around the world. Our designs support VP8 up to 1080p resolution and can run 30 or 60fps, depending on the foundry process and hardware clock frequency.

  The WebM/VP8 hardware decoder implementation has already been licensed to over twenty partners and is proven in silicon. We expect the first commercial chips to integrate our VP8 decoder IP to be available in the first quarter of 2011. For example, Chinese semiconductor maker Rockchip last week demonstrated full WebM hardware playback on their new RK29xx series processor at CES in Las Vegas (video below).
  

  
  Note : To view the video in WebM format, ensure that you’ve enrolled in the YouTube HTML5 trial and are using a WebM-compatible browser. You can also view the video on YouTube.

  Hardware implementations of the VP8 encoder also bring exciting possibilities for WebM in portable devices. Not only can hardware-accelerated devices play high-quality WebM content, but hardware encoding also enables high-resolution, real-time video communications apps on the same devices. For example, when VP8 video encoding is fully off-loaded to a hardware accelerator, you can run 720p or even 1080p video conferencing at full framerate on a portable device with minimal battery use.

  The WebM hardware video IP team will be focusing on further developing the VP8 hardware designs while also helping our semiconductor partners to implement WebM video compression in their chipsets. If you have any questions, please visit our Hardware page.

  Happy New Year to the WebM community !

  Jani Huoponen, Product Manager
  Aki Kuusela, Engineering Manager