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h264 hardware encoding on Pinephone? - Printable Version

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h264 hardware encoding on Pinephone? - vongillus - 02-13-2021

Hi

Is h264 hardware encoding available on the pinephone? I looked at the status of Cedrus driver and it seems to me that only hardware decoding is working not encoding.


Am I wrong?

Thanks


RE: h264 hardware encoding on Pinephone? - barray - 02-13-2021

The A64 CPU will for sure allow for H264/H265 encoding and decoding, so it's just kernel support...

I spent a while checking out Mali 400 kernel driver support, but I am not sure the Mali 400 even handles the encoding/decoding - this may actually be something done by some other part of the A64 - i.e. in the video engine: https://www.cnx-software.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Allwinner_A64_Block_Diagram.jpg

If the support matrix in project Cedrus is anything to go by, it seems only partial support is achieved: https://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus#Supported_codec_matrix

It seems like the work has been left in a nice place to pick up from though.


RE: h264 hardware encoding on Pinephone? - vongillus - 02-14-2021

(02-13-2021, 05:13 PM)barray Wrote: The A64 CPU will for sure allow for H264/H265 encoding and decoding, so it's just kernel support...

I spent a while checking out Mali 400 kernel driver support, but I am not sure the Mali 400 even handles the encoding/decoding - this may actually be something done by some other part of the A64 - i.e. in the video engine: https://www.cnx-software.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Allwinner_A64_Block_Diagram.jpg

If the support matrix in project Cedrus is anything to go by, it seems only partial support is achieved: https://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus#Supported_codec_matrix

It seems like the work has been left in a nice place to pick up from though.

Yes, it's what I noticed also, there was quite some work on this but things like h264 encoding or more features for the h264 decoding were not implemented.

Anyone is working on this? If all Pinephone owners would crowdfound these features it would be nice I think.


RE: h264 hardware encoding on Pinephone? - barray - 02-14-2021

(02-14-2021, 02:25 PM)vongillus Wrote:
(02-13-2021, 05:13 PM)barray Wrote: The A64 CPU will for sure allow for H264/H265 encoding and decoding, so it's just kernel support...

I spent a while checking out Mali 400 kernel driver support, but I am not sure the Mali 400 even handles the encoding/decoding - this may actually be something done by some other part of the A64 - i.e. in the video engine: https://www.cnx-software.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Allwinner_A64_Block_Diagram.jpg

If the support matrix in project Cedrus is anything to go by, it seems only partial support is achieved: https://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus#Supported_codec_matrix

It seems like the work has been left in a nice place to pick up from though.

Yes, it's what I noticed also, there was quite some work on this but things like h264 encoding or more features for the h264 decoding were not implemented.

Anyone is working on this? If all Pinephone owners would crowdfound these features it would be nice I think.

Not just PinePhone, but also PinkBook (not PineBook Pro) and PineTab use the A64 - which seems really only half implemented in terms of silicon support. If anything ever becomes of the PineCom, the expected processor to use would be the A64.

I really wonder what is involved in such an engineering effort and how it could be possible for people to pick up from where they left off? The boards for testing on seem pretty cheap anyway... https://pine64.com/product/pine-a64-1gb-board/?v=0446c16e2e66

If I could find out exactly where the current code is and how to work on it, could make for an interesting project.