View Single Post
Old 19th January 2010, 03:20   #1  |  Link
MuTPu4
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 6
Looking for multi-stream SD H.264 encoding hardware

Hello,

I am working on software component for realtime encoding of a bunch of synthesized video streams. Full requirements on target system component are as follows:

Input: 50+ uncompressed (YUV or RGB) video streams of SD quality (640x480, 25fps). May be represented as memory buffers, socket streams or whatever.

Output: AVC-encoded (preferably main profile) video streams of low (like x264 ultrafast preset) or medium (like x264 fast preset) quality. Target bandwidth is about 512 - 1024 kbps. Low latency (< 500 ms) is preferred but may be considered as a trade-off for other requirements. Output representation may vary but RTP streaming seems to be the most convenient way.

I have developed a reference implementation spawning slave VLC process for each stream with x264 as encoder. Quality and other requirements are roughly fulfilled so the main concern is an overall system cost and reliability. I haven't done all necessary testing yet but it seems we need something like one or more multi-processor Xeon PCs (roughly estimating 2 low quality streams per 1 core). Reliability of VLC is also questionable.

I am wondering if there is a hardware solution meeting my specification which may reduce cost or improve other properties of VLC-based solution. The best solution I can imagine is a bunch of PCI/PCIE cards capable of multi-stream SD encoding. I have found feature-rich encoding servers from HaiVision, Hivionics, ATEME, AdvancedDigital, TANDBERG, Elecard etc capable of multi-stream encoding but all of them seems heavy-weight and far to expensive.

Can somebody give me a hint on searching cost-effective solution for my problem?

Thanks.
MuTPu4 is offline   Reply With Quote