Hardware assist MPEG2 & MPEG4 encoder

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson TX2
1

When I look at the available hardware codecs for the X2, I see there is no MPEG2/4 encode plugin:
omx: nvoverlaysink: OpenMax Video Sink
omx: nvhdmioverlaysink: OpenMax HDMI Video Sink
omx: omxvp9enc: OpenMAX VP9 Video Encoder
omx: omxvp8enc: OpenMAX VP8 Video Encoder
omx: omxh265enc: OpenMAX H.265 Video Encoder
omx: omxh264enc: OpenMAX H.264 Video Encoder
omx: omxwmvdec: OpenMAX WMV Video Decoder
omx: omxmpeg2videodec: OpenMAX MPEG2 Video Decoder
omx: omxvp9dec: OpenMAX VP9 Video Decoder
omx: omxvp8dec: OpenMAX VP8 Video Decoder
omx: omxh265dec: OpenMAX H.265 Video Decoder
omx: omxh264dec: OpenMAX H.264 Video Decoder
omx: omxmpeg4videodec: OpenMAX MPEG4 Video Decoder

The documentation says:
The multi-standard video encoder enables full hardware acceleration of various encoding standards. It performs high quality
video encoding operations for mobile applications such as video recording and video conferencing. The encode processor is
designed to be extremely power efficient without sacrificing performance.
The following video standards are supported:
§ H.265 Main Profile: I-frames and P-frames (No B-frames)
§ H.264 Baseline/Main/High Profiles: IDR/I/P/B-frame support
§ MVC
§ WEBM: VP8,VP9
§ MPEG4 (ME only)
§ MPEG2 (ME only)
§ VC1 (ME only): No B frame, no interlaced

Does the X2 have another plugin that does hardware MPEG2/4 encoding?

Thx,
K-

2

Hi kunice, MPEG2 and MPEG4 are not supported on both gstreamer and MMAPIs. Right now there is no plan for adding MPEG2/4 encoding functions.
We don’t have MPEG2/MPEG4 HW encoders on TX1/TX2.

3

DaneLL,

Thanks for the reply. We have a strong requirement for MPEG2/4 encoding. Is NVidia open to supporting us (documentation, sample code, some Q&A, etc.) developing the encoders?

K-

4

MPEG2/4 are subsets of the H.264 specification. Since NVidia has a hardware H.264 encoder, does it expose the ability to disable features such that one could encode to the MPEG2/4 standard?

5

Hi kunice, this is not in roadmap now. What is your use cases/products requiring the functionality? Can h265 or vp9 be a substitute?

6

We have legacy systems that use MPEG2/4. My previous comment asked if there was a way to configure H.264 to do MPEG2/4, that would solve our problem. Since H.264 is a superset of MPEG2/4, that would be a way for us to fit our requirements.

7

Hi kunice, do you use gstreamer or MM APIs in your system?

8

DaneLLL,

Right now we are using gstreamer to evaluate the video CODECs. We can switch to MM APIs, but that would take some time and direction change.

K-

9

Hi All,

I would like to voice my support here for NVIDIA to support MPEG-4 encoding via the MM API.

Thanks,

Chris Richardson

10

Hi,
My previous comment is not correct. We don’t have MPEG2/MPEG4 HW encoders on TX1/TX2.

11

DaneLLL,

Can you comment on:
"MPEG2/4 are subsets of the H.264 specification. Since NVidia has a hardware H.264 encoder, does it expose the ability to disable features such that one could encode to the MPEG2/4 standard? "

Thanks,
K-

12

Hi kunice, it is not supported.