Hardware Acceleration H264 encoding

[fred-simard]

Hello everyone,

I need to upgrade the SBC that supports our product (startup). Our prototype was built using the RPi3, but we need something a bit tougher to support new functionalities. The biggest task running on the system: I need to convert, in real-time, a video stream (HDMI 2.0 1080p60) streaming over USB 3.0 to a 720p10fps mp4 (h.264). Rock64 is currently at the top of my list, but I need to investigate a bit deeper before making the move.

On the RPi3, I didn't do it real-time, but used the h264_omx hw encoder, with ffmpeg. It worked pretty well, besides the amount of time required.

My Questions:
1) Will I be able to do the same with the Rock64, running GNU/Linux? 
I found that gstreamer is available for that platform, but read diverging account as to whether hw accelerated encoding is available in GNU/Linux.

2) If not, will I be able to do something similar with Android/Linux?
I believe this is the safe shot, but  I would prefer to do it in GNU/Linux is because all my software is programmed in Linux. If needed, I'll move on to Android, that's not a major issue, but I need to know if it's possible before investing in this direction.

Now, I am not a beginner, but I am not 10+ years of experience with SBCs either.  If you can let me know about the level of difficulty to expect, that will help me plan the schedule accordingly.

Thank you,
Fred

[evilbunny]

On the RPi3, I didn't do it real-time, but used the h264_omx hw encoder, with ffmpeg. It worked pretty well, besides the amount of time required.

While there is hardware support for encoding, the software is lacking, you may want to consider the Rockpro64, although linux support is still being worked on at this point in time.

I make timelapse videos from an IPcam which gets a jpg every 20s, the r64 takes about 15minutes to complete, the rp64 only took 5 minutes. Once tweaks are in the performance should be even better.