Embedded MPEG4 encoder

Charlie246 · 5th February 2007, 12:54

Hi guys,

I have been toying with the idea of programming a microprocessor (arm 9 or similar) for real time video compression. Now I know the processor runs at about 200MIPS but I have no idea of how CPU hungry h264 and xvid are. I would like to encode CIF at 10 fps and have a 100kbps stream.

Is this possible or is the processor way underpowered for this?
Can anyone give me an idea how long the encoding would take on a pc?
Is there a better codec for this job?

Many thanks

akupenguin · 5th February 2007, 15:28

XviD CIF w/ minimal settings got 310fps here, on a Athlon64 2.2GHz (4340 bogomips according to /etc/cpuinfo). So 140 mips would be the absolute minimum for 10fps at fastest settings. But an x86 mip is not necessarily comparable to an arm mip, especially since XviD does not have arm mmx optimizations. So I'd guess your cpu is a few times too slow for current XviD, but just might be enough if you spent some some time on assembly optimizations.

On the same source, libavcodec mpeg4 at minimal settings got 450fps. And libavcodec does have some arm assembly, though I'm not sure how much.

You might think that mpeg2 would be a good idea if mpeg4 isn't fast enough, but it's not. mpeg2 is only worse quality than mpeg4, it's not significantly faster.

5th February 2007, 12:54	#1 \| Link
Charlie246 Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 1	Embedded MPEG4 encoder Hi guys, I have been toying with the idea of programming a microprocessor (arm 9 or similar) for real time video compression. Now I know the processor runs at about 200MIPS but I have no idea of how CPU hungry h264 and xvid are. I would like to encode CIF at 10 fps and have a 100kbps stream. Is this possible or is the processor way underpowered for this? Can anyone give me an idea how long the encoding would take on a pc? Is there a better codec for this job? Many thanks

5th February 2007, 15:28	#2 \| Link
akupenguin x264 developer Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 2,392	XviD CIF w/ minimal settings got 310fps here, on a Athlon64 2.2GHz (4340 bogomips according to /etc/cpuinfo). So 140 mips would be the absolute minimum for 10fps at fastest settings. But an x86 mip is not necessarily comparable to an arm mip, especially since XviD does not have arm mmx optimizations. So I'd guess your cpu is a few times too slow for current XviD, but just might be enough if you spent some some time on assembly optimizations. On the same source, libavcodec mpeg4 at minimal settings got 450fps. And libavcodec does have some arm assembly, though I'm not sure how much. You might think that mpeg2 would be a good idea if mpeg4 isn't fast enough, but it's not. mpeg2 is only worse quality than mpeg4, it's not significantly faster. Last edited by akupenguin; 5th February 2007 at 15:42.