H.264 Decoding

If you have an H.264 camera on the network with Mac OS X Server v10.6 are you able to directly capture and decode the camera feed into producer without any third part software or equipment? Could you create podcasts with just that comera and producer software?

OK, so I went to an Apple Store today and pretty much confirmed that the nVidia GPU is doing the H.264 video decoding on the new MacBook. This is a first for Apple. The way I confirmed this is as follows:
I found a new MacBook, 2GHz, and opened a 1080p video in Quicktime. I then opened the Activity Monitor and opened a floating CPU window which shows the activity in the CPU cores. I observed that the cores were running at around 25% on average, or thereabouts, when the video was running.
I did the exact same thing with the same video on an old MacBook (2.1GHz) in the store and observed the two cores to be running around 80%+ to play the same video. Pausing the video caused the activity monitors to drop substantially. Pausing the video on the new MB caused the CPU activity monitors to hardly drop at all.
This leads me to the conclusion that Apple has finally moved video decoding to where it better belongs, namely on the GPU. This should result in less heat, better video performance and longer battery life when watching videos.

Similar Messages

Accessing H.264 decoder on the IPAD

I am writing an application for the IPAD where I need to display H.264 video that is received via TCP from another machine.
I did some research and found some classes that allow playing a video from a file or HTTP address, but I cannot find any API calls that allow me to give my own data (pass in buffer pointers etc) and receive back a image that is decoded by the IPAD's hardware H.264 decoder.
Does such an API exist?
Thanks!

Here:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurlpagecontent?lp=fren&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.qtbridge.com%2fQTCodecs.html
It's being translated from French so it may take a few secs to load.

Very poor H.264 decoder in the Flash Player

I browse HD videos on YouTube and some (if not all) that have
a lot of motion are really slow and laggy. I have a Pentium 4 3,2
GHz HT and it can perfectly play almost any HD videos. For 1080p, I
use CoreAVC as it is the fastest decoder but for 720p, either
CoreAVC or even FFmpeg can play it flawlessly, using only about max
1/3 of the CPU. When I play 720p videos in the embedded YouTube
player (which is Flash Player 10.0.12.36), they are not really
smooth and the CPU is 75% to 100% loaded. And if I "rip" the same
YouTube video in a MPEG-4 conainer (not supposed to do it but to
prove my opinion..), I play it full-smooth and full-fps with
FFmpeg, and the CPU is only loaded about 1/3. That's a great
difference!
Is it poorly designed code or simply a bug? I hope that it
will be improved in the future releases. Programmers could inspire
from the well-made open-source FFmpeg.

Out of interest I install a new (not upgrade) installation of 10.6.2 (snow leopard) without Quicktime 7 on my Mac Book Pro. The HD h.264 movie again plays fine in Quicktime X but stutters in iTunes 9. Therefore I conclude that iTunes must come with a core of QT7 playback and doesn't use QTX at all. As such I will never be able to get this to play right via iTunes. This has implications for front row and potentially the Apple TV, which I was considering purchasing. I'll need to figure out a recode.
Cheers
LBJ

H.264 decoding cannot work with latest version FP

I report a bug of latest version of Adobe Flash Player ActiveX plugin(10.1.102.64).
After upgrading onto version 10.1.102.64, the H.264 stream decoding of 1080p/720p behaves discontinuously, so we have to uninstall it and find version 10.0.45.2 installed and the decoding goes back to work.
The H.264 stream is incapsulated by RTMP packet and streamed from FMS 3.5 server.
We think this bug will influence many applications and services over internet, please fix it ASAP in next version of Adobe Flash Player ActiveX plugin.
Nothing related to H/W acceleration, I checked it.

According to this http://forums.ni.com/t5/FieldPoint-Family/FP-1601-with-LabVIEW-7-1-upconvert-to-2012/td-p/2218918
LabVIEW 2011 is the last version that includes support for the FP-1601.
Better link Why Doesn't My FieldPoint FP-1600 Work with LabVIEW 2012 or Newer?

ATI Radeon HD 4870, support for quicktime using video card to decode h.264?

Does anyone know if Apple decided to use some of the fancy hardware in the new ATI RADEON HD 4870 to allow quicktime to shunt the h.264 decoding off to the video card?
I've got a 8 cores (and they don't seem all that busy). Even with the Perian quicktime plugin I still run into some HD movies that don't get a constant 24fps.

If the MAc Pro 2.66 comes with Snow Leopard, why would I have to upgrade my OS?
OK. So, if got the MAc version, it would work A-OK without overheating?
Thanks for your input!

H.264 DirectShow decoding in WEC2013

We are developing a WEC2013 device based on the i.MX6 processor family.
I need to be able to playback H.264 encoded video, but I can see from
this page that the BSP does not support H.264. Does anyone know of any third parties that will provide H.264 support for the i.MX6 and WEC2013?
And if no third parties provide that support, where would one get started (documentation) to write a DirectShow filter that would use the on board H.264 decoder?

Someone asked me for an update via email so I just realized that I forgot to post as I promised. It's working out pretty good. I can play 1080p h264 movies using mplayer with only about 10-30% use of my 3.0 P4 HT CPU using VDPAU. I wasn't able to get it (x.264 GPU decoding) to work with vlc or the system ffmpeg though. At least when I set this up many months ago. So if anyone is just looking to be able to play 1080p h264 videos I definitely would give a VDPAU capable PCI card a shot if you have no other viable choices for your old hardware. Using mplayer with VDPAU properly configured I don't experience any stuttering at all on my old hardware, believe it or not.
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G98 [GeForce 8400 GS] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Device 19f1:0a5e
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
Memory at fb000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at ec00 [size=128]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at fafe0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nvidia, nouveau, nvidiafb
Last edited by davidm (2010-10-28 20:07:36)

[Solved] h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?

It's harder for those of us with older hardware because all the new recommendations are useless to us. Especially when you use Linux as it seems everything is talking about directX and Vista or Windows 7 which mean nothing to me.
AGP 8x
will be doing h.264 decoding and occasional editing
1920 x 1080 resolution LCD (dvi or hdmi)
dual head would be a plus for later but not vital.
Not a gamer at all.
Needs to work well with Linux, of course.
I'm running on an old P4 3.0 Ghz so if I can get the encoding/decoding offloaded (especially for flash) on to the GPU this would be a huge help.
Price < $70 on Amazon or Newegg (possibly more if it's really worth it)
I've been looking at a Radeon 2400 Pro 512MB Agp on Amazon but wanted to see if anyone had a better suggestion before I pull the trigger so to speak.
[06/17/2010 - changed subject from "Which AGP Video card would you recommend?" to "h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?"]
Last edited by davidm (2010-06-19 17:41:56)

Someone asked me for an update via email so I just realized that I forgot to post as I promised. It's working out pretty good. I can play 1080p h264 movies using mplayer with only about 10-30% use of my 3.0 P4 HT CPU using VDPAU. I wasn't able to get it (x.264 GPU decoding) to work with vlc or the system ffmpeg though. At least when I set this up many months ago. So if anyone is just looking to be able to play 1080p h264 videos I definitely would give a VDPAU capable PCI card a shot if you have no other viable choices for your old hardware. Using mplayer with VDPAU properly configured I don't experience any stuttering at all on my old hardware, believe it or not.
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G98 [GeForce 8400 GS] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Device 19f1:0a5e
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
Memory at fb000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at ec00 [size=128]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at fafe0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nvidia, nouveau, nvidiafb
Last edited by davidm (2010-10-28 20:07:36)

H.264 Web based Encoder Demo

Hi,
before some weeks ago i red a newsletter that adobe has include a h.264 encoder in FP 11.
Well, here we go i thought and start to develope a web based h.264 encoder for our CDN. Here is a first version that i want to share with you developers.
Onlinelib Web Encoder Version 0.2:
http://onlinelib.de/labs.html
Please do not use this in serious projects. You will need also a RTMP Server for testing and of course a web-player. I will include a player option inside the encoder for internal testing.
There are a lot of features missing, but the basic h.264 encoding is working on my Mac Pro and our CDN.
What i found out during the development:
Please correct me if i post something wrong.
Contra:
- AAC Encoding for Audio is missing. Without AAC we cant product ipad / iphone compatbile streams. Flash iOS cross-compiler supports CPU native speex decoding, same for nellymoser, but you cant mix them cause native h.264 decoding in iOS is also not working and you cant send the iOS native quicktime player a bytearray for decoding h.264.We can have access to the raw micro data, but its useless cause you cant transmux the packets to the camera stream. I think a native AAC encoder in AS3 or alchemy is possible but without more access to the encoder its useless.
- No Stereo Encoding. That is really a big minus point. I study all docs and cant find if its possible to encode 2 channels.
- No access to compressed frames for video or audio. Without getting access to the compressed frames we cant use HTTP streaming, packing for the new HTTP protocol that is accessable sinse FP 10.1. In times of hacks and security its important that we developer can protect our streams with own encryption technologies. Not possible right now. RTMP(e) is a option, but this encryption is really useless (my 2 cent mind). A DES is stronger than the hole RTMP(e).We also are not able to calculate our own bandwidth alogs.
- I thought that adobe will include VP8 Encoder / Decoder in FP11. I hope they will do this.
Pro:
- I think the encoder is based on MainConcept SDK, works for me. Baseline and Main is fast enought toDo realtime. I cant find a way to set motionVectors, bframes that can be used in mainprofile. I saw that in some level(s) profile h2.64 the encoder makes some strange colorspace effects (false colors).
-We can change cameras, micro, bitrate, fps during a streaming-sessions. That´s cool and not possbile with Flash Media Desktop (FME) Encoder. You have to disconnect the FME first, then set the changes re-connect again.
- p2p is also working and you can mix server and p2p. We port the rtmfp protocol to an embedded device:
http://walyou.com/img/world-smallest-pc-space-cube-4.jpg
The p2p option in the public encoder is not useable cause adobe has patent-rights on the rtmfp protocol. If i have time i will inlcude a cirrus service.
Best,
Gary
http://onlinelib.de

Thanks for the input. What do you mean by encoding it as H.264 not mp4 - which setting affects that?
Maybe I already has it?
here is what I have now:
Video compression setting
Compression type: H.264
Frame rate: current fps
Key frames: every 24 frames
Frame Reordering: Yes
Compressor quality: High
Encoding: Best Quality (Multi-pass)
Data rate: Restrict to 800 kbits/sec
Optimized for: Download
Sound
Format: AAC
Channels: mono
Rate: 44.1 kHz
Show advanced setting: yes
Render setting:
- quality: normal
MPEG 4 AAC LC Encoder Settings:
- Encoding stratey: Average bit rate
- Target bit rate: 96 kbps
Inspector panel
File format: Quicktime Movie
Extension: mp4
Allow job segmenting: yes
Video setting: Enabled
Audio setting: enabled
Streaming: none

.mp4 H.264 not playing correctly in Quicktime Pro

Here is all my information:
Format: H.264 Decoder, 720x480 Millions AAC, Mono, 48.000 kHz
FPS: 23.98
Data Size: 1.86 GB
Data Rate: 2695.08 kbits/sec
Normal Size: 640 x 480 pixels (this is the current size too)
The Problem: I have perfect audio, but the video seems extremely choppy and lags. I wanted to do simple editing of some video and I thought that the Quicktime Pro may help this file play better, so I just bought Quicktime Pro to see that it does not help the file play any better. Could there be a setting that I'm missing somewhere? My roommate has Quicktime Pro on Windows and the file plays for him perfectly. The file also plays fine on VLC... So I thought it must be a setting that I am missing. Thanks.

Jim Simon wrote:
It depends on which version of Windows Media Player they're using. If they're still on XP, it's very possible it won't work. Anyone using Windows 7 or 8 should have no problem. (And perhaps it does need to be said, but everyone should be using either 7 or 8 by now.)
At least one of them was on Windows 7.
Is there a better format I should be using for PP export other than H.264?

Export/Convert to h.264 results in jerky video in WMP

System: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 EN
In Premiere Pro CS4 and Adobe Media Encoder CS4 I have problems exporting video to h.264.
Please download the sample file here:
http://www.tsxn.com/storage/transfer/premiere_h264.zip
Source:
H.264 HDTV Testvideo (e.g. "01-TestVideo_Original_h264.MOV")
Profile: 1920x1080 fps 30, square pixel, progressive
Destination:
For Testing purpose, just converting the original within the Adobe Media Encoder
Profile: same as Source
1) The original source file plays fine using any player, so the hardware of my test systems (3 computers) is ok
2) When exporting the Video to H.264 (e.g. "02-TestVideo_Convert_h264.mp4") the resulting video is jerky in Windows Media Player and Quicktime
3) Strange: When converting the jerky result video again (e.g. "03-TestVideo_ConvertAgain_wmv.wmv") , but now into WMV, it plays fine again
Can anyone confirm this problem on his system?
It seems to me that Windows Media Player and Quicktime enforce their own h.264 decoder which has problems playing Premiere Exports. VLC Media Player and the Adobe media player for example seems to have no problem at all.
Any help is highly appreciated!
Thank you
Chris

Jim, thanks for testing.
My concerns are about a)distribution and general b)compatibility.
a) When videos are distributed most of the users will probably try to open the files with Windows Media Player. So it is not a good start to have fresh exported h.264 videos which won't run fine with the 'main' player on windows
b) I am wondering if the Problems with Windows Media Player may also be a sign of a general compatibility issue of the h.264 video itself
At least in case b) Adobe would have to look into this.
Here is another test video:
http://www.tsxn.com/storage/transfer/Serenity.zip
Thank you
Chris

What chokes H.264 footage: data rate or video dimensions?

I apologize for posting in here but this board is SO much better than the Quicktime or Compressor boards, and it's all the same workflow anyhow!
What I'm wondering is what chokes H.264 videos. Is it low bit rates? High bit rates? Big dimensions? I have an 854x480 video at 500kbps and it looks great, but even on my PowerMac there is slight stuttering, and some alpha tester feedback I've gotten tells me that a lot of slower computers are choking on the video badly.
The file size is ridiculously small, so if increasing the data rate makes it easier to decode, that would be nice.

It's neither - or either, if you will. H.264 achieves unprecedented levels of compression, which means that it's a lot more CPU-intensive to play back in real time. It simply doesn't play well on older hardware. Even slower G5s for example have problems playing back full HD H.264, particularly if it's progressive. It also depends on your GPU - certain GPUs support H.264 decoding, thus significantly offloading the CPU.
One general rule, though: the higher your data rate at any given frame size and frame rate, the less work the decoder needs to do. I'd try to go for approx. 800 kbps at your chosen frame size and see if that helps.
HTH,
Ron

Windows 7 x64 - Encode h.264 results in jerky video in WMP 12

Windows 7 x64 - Encode h.264 results in jerky video in Windows Media Player (WMP) 12
System: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 EN, Adobe Master Collection CS 4 Win En
Please download the sample file here:
http://www.tsxn.com/storage/transfer/Serenity.zip
Source:
H.264 HDTV Testvideos
Profile: 1280x720 fps 30, square pixel, progressive
Destination:
For Testing purpose, just converting the original within Adobe Media Encoder.
Profile: same as Source
1) The original source files play fine using any player, so the hardware of my test systems (3 computers) is ok
2) When exporting the Video to H.264 the resulting video is jerky in Windows Media Player and Quicktime
3) When converting the jerky result video again, but now into WMV, it plays fine
The problem can be reproduced on all 3 machines.
It seems to me that Windows Media Player and Quicktime enforce their own h.264 decoder which has problems playing Premiere Exports.
These Players seem to play the file properly:
- VLC Media Player
- Media Player Classic Home Cinema
- Adobe media player
So how can one be sure that the Premiere h.264 exports are just fine and the only problem is on decoder side? However, I feel very uncomfortable not being able to play the h.264 files within Windows Media Player 12, which has uses the built-ind Windows 7 h.264 decoder.
Any help is highly appreciated!
Thank you
Chris

Hello Harm,
let me add my comment of another discussion:
My concerns are about a)distribution and general b)compatibility.
a) When videos are distributed most of the users will probably try to open the files with Windows Media Player. So it is not a good start to have fresh exported h.264 videos which won't run fine with the 'main' player on windows
b) I am wondering if the Problems with Windows Media Player may also be a sign of a general compatibility issue of the h.264 video itself
At least in case b) Adobe would have to look into this.
And in general there maybe a bug in the MS h.264 decoder.
Thank you
Chris

H.264 Blu Ray will play in most players, H.264 will not. Is this true?

I was told that the H.264 is a universal format, but to make it play to Blu-Ray standards for players you must use H.264 Blu-ray. If not, it may not play in all Blu- Ray type players . The same goes for MPEG-2 Vs. MPEG-2 DVD.
Is this true?
Thanks in advance
Premiere Pro CS 5.5
Encore 5.5
Media Encoder 5
Power Mac Intel Xeon
10GB RAM

to phrase the answer another way...
h.264 for Bluray is a subset of the full h.264 standard.
Why? Because it has constrictions on it so that the bluray player's silicon-chip h.264 decoder doesn't have to be overly complicated (thus cheaper)..
So, while a non bluray h.264 stream MAY play on a bluray player, it isn't EXPECTED too.
As an example - if you compare the h.264 to the h.264 bluray columns you'll see that h.264 has "Levels" 3.0...5.2 but BR only has a subset of those. Likewise for the "Profile" and Screen Resolutions @ specific FrameRates.
Note that both are h.264/AVC encodings, it's just that the BD version is allows far less combinations of settings.
http://www.x264pro.com/?page_id=10
Tech Specs
Output
x264 PROBD
x264PRO
Video
H.264 AVC Elementary Stream (.264)
H.264 AVC Elementary Stream (.264)
Audio
Linear PCM (.wav)
Linear PCM (.wav)
Advanced Audio Codec (.aac)
Multiplexer
MPEG-4 Video (.m4v)
MPEG-4 Video and Audio (.mp4) (AAC only)
Quicktime (.mov)
Supported standard
Blu-ray
H.264
Encoding Method
CBR/VBR 1 pass encoding/VBR 2 pass encoding/Constant Quality
Video codec
H.264 AVC
H.264 AVC
AVC Profile
Main, High
Baseline, Main, High
Supported level
High 4.0, 4.1
Main 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 4.0, 4.1
3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2
Resolution Frame Rate
1920x1080x29.97i, 25i (16:9)
1920x1080x24p, 23.976p (16:9)
1440x1080x59.94i, 50i (16:9)
1440x1080x24p, 23.976p (16:9)
1280x720x59.94p, 50p (16:9)
1280x720x24p, 23.976p (16:9)
720x480x59.94i (4:3/16:9)
720x576x50i (4:3/16:9)
Variable (16×16 – 4096×2304)
Frame rate : 12, 12.5, 15, 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 48, 50, 59.94, 60, 120
Bit rate
1Kbps – 40Mbps
1Kbps – 300Mbps
Audio codec
Linear PCM
Linear PCM
Advanced Audio Codec
Audio channels
Mono, Stereo, 5.1
Mono, Stereo, 5.1
Audio bit depth
8, 16, 24, 32bit (LPCM)
8, 16, 24, 32bit (LPCM)
Audio bit rate
n/a
56 – 320kbps (AAC)
Sampling rate
8, 16, 32, 44.1, 48, 96KHz
8, 16, 32, 44.1, 48, 96KHz

New MBP's: H.264 acceleration?

So the new MBPs have this spiffy nVidia card (8600M GT) that does full H.264 decode acceleration in hardware. Does anybody know if this hardware is supported in OS X at all? Playing 1080P trailers from apple.com/trailers in quicktime player seems to still use considerable CPU, and I see the same results when playing them in mplayer or vlc (except mplayer and vlc do a better job of keeping audio in sync)...
MacBook Pro 2.2GHz LED Mac OS X (10.4.10)

H.264 is much slower codec than many other ones.
And, at those giant frame sizes, it wouldn't
surprise me to see such long encode times.
More than six hours ago, I took four short (six minutes or so each) Flash video files to Compressor 3 and sent this batch to transcode to H.264. The first clip went off merrily and the Activity Monitor showed 145% activity of the CPU. It was done in 13 minutes, the second ckip took 14 minutes and the remaining two clips are still there with very little progress in transcoding. The Activity Monitor shows from five to 10 per cent Compressor usage of the CPU.
This is definitely not due to "giant frame sizes". Somewhere along the way Compressor 3 slowed down dramatically.

Need codec pack for h.264 to play .mp4

I bought a motor sports camera that records HD format that doesn't seem to work with any media player I have!
I quote from their website under the trouble shooting section:
"+If using Windows Media Player or Movie Maker, make sure you download the latest HD-capable version and also download a H.264 decoder to update media or movie maker. CoreCodec CoreAVC is one company that offers a codec pack for h.264.+
+VLC media player is another video media player program that you can download for free, which supports .mp4 h.264 files+"
I don't use PC, I am using my MacBook Pro and I have iTunes, iMovie, VLC, QuickTime Pro, DivX and Real Player but none can run the recorded movies.
Any help would be appreciated. And thanks in advance to all.

Thanks to nobody as I see nobody jumped in... but it turned out to be a problem with the camera itself. Shipped it back and got it replaced. And the problem disappeared.

H.264 Decoding

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