[mythtv-users] Raspberry Pi now ships with 512MB RAM

tortise tortise at paradise.net.nz
Thu Oct 18 04:44:05 UTC 2012


On 18/10/2012 11:54 a.m., Nick Rout wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 9:29 AM, tortise <tortise at paradise.net.nz> wrote:
>> On 18/10/2012 6:59 a.m., Jay Ashworth wrote:

>>>
>>> Should I assume we have no way to utilize hardware assist to transcode,
>>> GPUs
>>> or the like?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> -- jra
>>
>>
>> Recalling the R'Pis also can encode H264, makes me wonder if a pi might be
>> recruited on a back end (?Lo power) to encode / transcode?
>>
>> If it were to be then I expect it would be best to interface via usb,
>> because in any event the Ethernet interface is connected internally on the
>> Pi thru USB.
>
>
> It's pretty clear from a bit of googling that the software to do h264
> encoding on the RPi is not particularly mature or stable, but the
> posts are also pretty confusing because many people are trying to
> encode from webcams, as opposed to a stream already encoded as
> something else.
>
> I don't think your USB idea is a runner, the RPi is a USB host AFAIK.
> A network socket accepting decoded YUV frames would be better I would
> have thought, but the bandwidth would be quite high.

My comment was intended to acknowledge that the Ethernet interface is 
hard wired thru USB to the Pi's CPU (according to wikipedia reference), 
meaning the USB may be a bottleneck and or it might be better to talk 
direct rather thru USB than thru the Ethernet intermediary that it is in 
this case, however that would not preclude interfacing via Ethernet.




> Or are you thinking of decoding AND encoding on the RPi?

No, at least not at the same time.  The context of this discussion has 
not included using the backend for front end use, which was not the 
context that my comment was intended.

However a pi might be recruited to do the the H264 et al decoding on a 
backend and effectively be its video card, perhaps not such a silly idea 
given it works and uses much less power (3.5 W) than an nvidia vdpau 
card would (50 + W)!




> But really, where is all this going? If you want to do mass
> transcoding of every dang file on your system, you are doing something
> wrong. Also what is the point of using one RPi to encode to h.264, and
> then another to render it on your screen? Far better IMHO to leverage
> a well powered backend and the maturing Services API of mythtv.

If everyone saw it that way this thread would almost certainly not be as 
long as it is...




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