what's the difference between gstreamer and multimedia api

Autonomous Machines Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson TX2
1

Hi,

We want to evaluate TX2’s video encode&decode efficiency and performance, as i know, gstreamer and multimeida api can both run video encode&decode test case, but what’s the difference between gstreamer and multimedia api?

Which one should I choose for video encode&decode, so that we can get a fairly test result.

2

Try both, and see which one performs better?

3

Hi Yugui, please pick your familiar one. Both are with same performance listed in [Software Features]
https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/dlc/l4t-documentation-24-2-1

4

Hi snarky,

I hope nvidia can explain more detail about the difference between these two video encode methods, so we will work this more efficiently.

5

Hi Yugui, what detail you would like to know is not in documentation?

6

Hi DaneLLL,

Thanks for your reply. From the documentation, I find no much information about their difference, but there is introduction for GStreamer:

GStreamer Framework:
Provides a higher-level Multimedia API. This framework provides a parallel capability to the collection of APIs in the Low-Level Multimedia API.
The GStreamer framework is installed with the download for the Jetson Driver. It is also installed by NVIDIA JetPack.

How to understand the “higher-level”, does it means GStreamer can performance better than Multimedia API?

7

Hi Yugui,
No, it does not mean it.

gstreamer app → gstreamer stack → omx-il stack → HW driver
Multimedia API app → v4l2 stack → HW drivers

A gstreamer app passes through more stacks.

8

Hi DaneLLL,

I get it, did you do some tests to compare their video codec performance? for example, for the same YUV input source, if I set fixQP QP=20 for H.265 encoder, is there any difference for their output stream?

By the way, where can I find GStreamer source code? I know Multimedia API source code is in Tegra_Multimedia_API_R27.1.0_aarch64.tbz2.

9

However, I’d rather use

apt search gstreamer

which returns smth. like:

gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-apps/xenial-updates,xenial-security,now 1.8.3-1ubuntu0.2 arm64 [installed,automatic]
  GStreamer helper programs from the "base" set

gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-dbg/xenial-updates,xenial-security 1.8.3-1ubuntu0.2 arm64
  GStreamer plugins from the "base" set

gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-doc/xenial-updates,xenial-security 1.8.3-1ubuntu0.2 all
  GStreamer documentation for plugins from the "base" set

gstreamer1.0-plugins-good/xenial-updates,xenial-security,now 1.8.3-1ubuntu0.4 arm64 [installed,automatic]
  GStreamer plugins from the "good" set

gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-dbg/xeni

and than apt-get install