Fesibility of having a H264 Software encoder on an 300MHZ embedded device

[AlexJ]

Hi All,

I would like to know if it would be feasible to run a software based H264 encoder to convert YUY2 or MJPG format video to H264 video in an embedded device having RISC CPU with speed of 300MHZ and a RAM size of 256MB??

Actually the idea behind this is to support video conferencing in an embedded device. An USB webcam would be connected to the embedded device, the webcam would input video in YUV2 or MJPG format to the embedded device, the device has to convert this to H264 video and transmit it in real time through IP network to another remote device which would display the video and at the same time the device would receive H264 video from the remote device which it would have to display using the a hardware decoder connected to the device.

Please provide your thoughts on this, also it would be nice if you could point me to some webpage where i could find CPU benchmark data for H264 software encoding in a RISC CPU...

Regards,
Alex.

[benwaggoner]

(03-05-2009 09:33 AM)AlexJ Wrote:  I would like to know if it would be feasible to run a software based H264 encoder to convert YUY2 or MJPG format video to H264 video in an embedded device having RISC CPU with speed of 300MHZ and a RAM size of 256MB??

Wow. What frame size? That's not really enough to decdode H.264 well, so any encode would have to be very highly simplified, like I-frame only. So the bitrate required for a given quality level would be much higher than is typical.

I have seem some ARM/MIPS devices able to do H.263 in software at low resolutions and frame sizes.

This is really the kind of thing best done with an ASIC in a mobile device.