Dsp Video

[_VWV_]

That's exactly my thought. I would hope one of the possible accessories would be a cradle or dongle that connects to USB - and provides HDMI output.

I know it's not likely - but that would be awesome.

I hope someone will port drivers for a usb-vga-HDMI-whatever adapter.

 

[AireTamStorm]

Just so everyone knows; The Pandora's processor can playback 720p encoded in h.264 quite well, as was demonstrated by Koen Kool at LugRadio Live in the UK when they played a 720p encode of Big Buck Bunny.

Here's a shot of the show on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/koenkooi/2692388640/



So we have an actual demonstration of the Cortex doing it. Great, thanks for the link. Added to the beginning of the thread.

 

[Adventus]

QUOTE
So we have an actual demonstration of the Cortex doing it. Great, thanks for the link. Added to the beginning of the thread.
Kind of irrelevant, but there is a BDTI 480p H.264 benchmark of a SOC (DM6446) which has a C64x+.

http://www.bdti.com/bdtimark/sc_dm6446.htm

Keep in mind that this SOC has slower RAM and its making very little usage of the CPU (3-4% of ARM9@297 MHz). The article suggests that at ~300mhz the C64X+ can decode 480p H.264 @30fps.

 

[donny662]

That's exactly my thought. I would hope one of the possible accessories would be a cradle or dongle that connects to USB - and provides HDMI output.

I know it's not likely - but that would be awesome.

I hope someone will port drivers for a usb-vga-HDMI-whatever adapter.

I didn't think USB display adapters were even available, but low and behold, here one is.

Not HDMI, and not 1080i/p compatible. The high resolution unit only goes to 1600x1200. Also, no linux drivers available much less an open source driver (at least on their website).

 

[_VWV_]

Not HDMI, and not 1080i/p compatible. The high resolution unit only goes to 1600x1200. Also, no linux drivers available much less an open source driver (at least on their website).

Look here . The NSLU people have already worked out a solution. Someone should port the drivers and we're fine.

 

[AireTamStorm]

USB Display adapters are still, far from optimal. I doubt video would play smoothly on one, and forget emulators if they make use of OpenGL ES. Add to that, even the slowest bus commonly used for graphics adapters today (PCI) is a little over double the speed of USB 2.0. Expect such an adapter to be useful for web browsing or word processing, not gaming or multimedia.

From Wikipedia:
QUOTE
USB 2.0
Added higher maximum speed of 480 Mbit/s (60 MB/s) (now called Hi-Speed).
PCI Bus
...
peak transfer rate of 133 MB/s (133 million bytes per second) for 32-bit bus width (33.33 MHz × 32 bits ÷ 8 bits/byte = 133 MB/s)
...
AGP Buses
AGP 1x
66 MHz resulting in a maximum data rate of 266 megabytes per second (MB/s)
AGP 2x
133 MHz resulting in a maximum data rate of 533 MB/s;
AGP 4x
266 MHz resulting in a maximum data rate of 1066 MB/s (1 GB/s);
AGP 8x
533 MHz resulting in a maximum data rate of 2133 MB/s (2 GB/s)

PCI Express buses
In PCIe 1.1 each lane sends information at a rate of 250 MB/s (250 million bytes per second) in each direction.
PCIe 2.0 doubles this data rate.
Each PCIe slot carries either one(250 MB/s), two(500 MB/s), four(1000 MB/s), eight(2000 MB/s), sixteen(4000 MB/s) or thirty-two(8000 MB/s) lanes of data between the motherboard and the addin card.

 

[craigix]

Oh dear, I missed lug radio live. Damn. I'd have taken the Pandora along, hmm not even an invite this year I didn't even know it was time. Does not seem like a year since the last one at all.

We will however be at the Edinburgh interactive festival this month, if we can demo h.264 at 720p there is another matter.

 

[Game_over]

Awesome Craig. What's lug radio? Is it available in the states?

 

[_VWV_]

Expect such an adapter to be useful for web browsing or word processing, not gaming or multimedia.

Yeah I know that. I do understand the limitations but the benefits are of far grater value for me. I'll plug a USB-VGA adapter into a projector and use the P for presentations (though there are wi-fi projectors - might also be nice). As others have pointed out VGA connector is the only thing we're gona miss in this beautiful device. An external VGA adapter could partially compensate the missing connector but the major drawback here is price. Those USB-to-VGA things cost a lot .

 

[CyruzDraxs]

even the slowest bus commonly used for graphics adapters today (PCI) is a little over double the speed of USB 2.0.

The USB device is not a graphics card--it is a video output. a graphics card has to have a high transfer bus because it needs to be able to transfer large volumes of high resolution texture data. It is not uncommon for a game to load 50+ textures exceeding 1024x1024 resolution and render them onto the screen.

The USB device, however; only has the end result screen buffer to display, which is just ONE texture of whatever resolution size you select.

The transfer volume of that, in a lossless pass, would be width * height * bit depth * refresh rate, which will relatively easily exceed 480Mbits/s, however; USB video converters like that use video compression techniques that would bring a 1080p signal bandwidth to as low as 7000kbps for low-motion (most computer usage) and about 30,000kbps for high-motion (like gaming).

You may have already noticed the downside to these USB-to-video devices--yes; it uses on-the-fly encoding, which likely wouldn't work too well on a lower performance processor, like the OMAP3530.

 

[AireTamStorm]

I'll plug a USB-VGA adapter into a projector and use the P for presentations (though there are wi-fi projectors - might also be nice).

I look forward to those epic office moments.

A
The USB device, however; only has the end result screen buffer to display, which is just ONE texture of whatever resolution size you select.
B
The transfer volume of that, in a lossless pass, would be width * height * bit depth * refresh rate, which will relatively easily exceed 480Mbits/s, however; USB video converters like that use video compression techniques that would bring a 1080p signal bandwidth to as low as 7000kbps for low-motion (most computer usage) and about 30,000kbps for high-motion (like gaming).
C
You may have already noticed the downside to these USB-to-video devices--yes; it uses on-the-fly encoding, which likely wouldn't work too well on a lower performance processor, like the OMAP3530.

A: Of course, very well aware of that. That still doesn't mean that the amount of data going over the bus even at 60Hz is any small amount, as you suggested in B.

B: Refer to C. After compression and other techniques to pipe that data through the USB bus, you don't know if you'll have a reasonable amount of CPU power left to run whatever you're doing. Thus, games (specifically OpenGL ES games will be impossible) will have a hard time an video will of course need to be decoded on that same processor. Perhaps you could offload some work to the c64+.

Plus, the only X Server that has been suggested we will have at launch is kdrive, which as far as I know, will only support the SGX due to how the options are compiled into the binary. I really hope we get a fully functional / configurable X server as well as kdrive for the default UI.

 

[CyruzDraxs]

I'll plug a USB-VGA adapter into a projector and use the P for presentations (though there are wi-fi projectors - might also be nice).

I look forward to those epic office moments.

A
The USB device, however; only has the end result screen buffer to display, which is just ONE texture of whatever resolution size you select.
B
The transfer volume of that, in a lossless pass, would be width * height * bit depth * refresh rate, which will relatively easily exceed 480Mbits/s, however; USB video converters like that use video compression techniques that would bring a 1080p signal bandwidth to as low as 7000kbps for low-motion (most computer usage) and about 30,000kbps for high-motion (like gaming).
C
You may have already noticed the downside to these USB-to-video devices--yes; it uses on-the-fly encoding, which likely wouldn't work too well on a lower performance processor, like the OMAP3530.

A: Of course, very well aware of that. That still doesn't mean that the amount of data going over the bus even at 60Hz is any small amount, as you suggested in B.

B: Refer to C. After compression and other techniques to pipe that data through the USB bus, you don't know if you'll have a reasonable amount of CPU power left to run whatever you're doing. Thus, games (specifically OpenGL ES games will be impossible) will have a hard time an video will of course need to be decoded on that same processor. Perhaps you could offload some work to the c64+.

Plus, the only X Server that has been suggested we will have at launch is kdrive, which as far as I know, will only support the SGX due to how the options are compiled into the binary. I really hope we get a fully functional / configurable X server as well as kdrive for the default UI.

If you have a good computer USB-to-video converters work great--but on something like the Pandora it's rather impractical unless you just want the UMPC features that would leave the DSP free to do encoding.

 

[cbp]

Sorry to bump this old thread, but with two weeks to go before pre-ordering begins, I'd love to see some actual footage of video running at 720p/x.264. All we have right now is a picture of such a thing.

From what I understand VLC (VideoLan)/MPlayer/SMPlayer can be ported to Pandora.

Can some of the developers show us some demos of HD video running on the Pandora?
i.e. popular tv series in 720p, or some anime h.264 mkv's.

I'd be interested to see how embedded or soft subtitles look on such small screen. I know that VLC's does not anti-alias subtitles and they lack the smoothness that for example CCCP offers.

Some nice short videos of this would be fun.

 

[_VWV_]

Sorry to bump this old thread, but with two weeks to go before pre-ordering begins, I'd love to see some actual footage of video running at 720p/x.264. All we have right now is a picture of such a thing.

From what I understand VLC (VideoLan)/MPlayer/SMPlayer can be ported to Pandora.

Can some of the developers show us some demos of HD video running on the Pandora?
i.e. popular tv series in 720p, or some anime h.264 mkv's.

I'd be interested to see how embedded or soft subtitles look on such small screen. I know that VLC's does not anti-alias subtitles and they lack the smoothness that for example CCCP offers.

Some nice short videos of this would be fun.

Ok, please tell us, how exactly you would show a 720p video on a andora1: ?

 

[icurafu]

I'd be satisfied with 480P

What would people be happy with? 4 Mbps?

 

[WizardStan]

Ok, please tell us, how exactly you would show a 720p video on a andora1: ?

He means take an existing HD video, and prove that the Pandora can decode, scale, and display it properly, without having to reencode that HD video to a correct resolution.

 

[cbp]

Ok, please tell us, how exactly you would show a 720p video on a andora1: ?

He means take an existing HD video, and prove that the Pandora can decode, scale, and display it properly, without having to reencode that HD video to a correct resolution.
What WizardStan said.

I don't want to spend my time re-encoding, resizing, fixing audio, synchronizing subtitles of a video every time I want to watch something. This is the reason I didn't buy a pmp player.


And don't tell me you wouldn't want to see an actual footage of x.264/720p video playback? :blink:


At the beginning, I will mostly use the Pandora as a PMP if all is good.
Since we have to wait for games to be ported, video playback can be among the first things that can actually run on Pandora, in direct competition with other portable devices.

 

[_VWV_]

I don't want to spend my time re-encoding, resizing, fixing audio, synchronizing subtitles of a video every time I want to watch something. This is the reason I didn't buy a pmp player.

And don't tell me you wouldn't want to see an actual footage of x.264/720p video playback? :blink:


At the beginning, I will mostly use the Pandora as a PMP if all is good.
Since we have to wait for games to be ported, video playback can be among the first things that can actually run on Pandora, in direct competition with other portable devices.


I now see your Idea. I've expressed the same elsewhere and still waiting.

 

[CyruzDraxs]

Just a minor note for anime fans; 720p h.264 anime encodes might not be very smooth as most translation groups tend to use Main Profile with way too many B-Frames. If it's Baseline Profile it should work perfectly, but Main Profile can be very process intensive if the B-Frame count is too high. The Pandora might be able to handle it acceptably with some optimizations and DSP decoding, but I'm not expecting anything.

 

[cbp]

Just a minor note for anime fans; 720p h.264 anime encodes might not be very smooth as most translation groups tend to use Main Profile with way too many B-Frames. If it's Baseline Profile it should work perfectly, but Main Profile can be very process intensive if the B-Frame count is too high. The Pandora might be able to handle it acceptably with some optimizations and DSP decoding, but I'm not expecting anything.

Exactly why some developers should test around with videos and give us some benchmarks. And if they can optimize the player to work with any encoding, the andora1: will beat everybody's arse, from Archos, Cowon to $3k umpcs. Think of the marketing that can be pulled out of this? HD with super long battery and portability. Sold.