processor choice for mpeg encoding

I'm starting to look at a home project for creating a stand alone webcam server. What I'd like to do is have 3-4 usb inputs for webcams, convert the inputs into mpeg and send the data out an ethernet port. I want to be able to support real-time (or close to it) video processing and run a web server in the box also, as well as a few other housekeeping functions and bells and whistles. I'm looking at several options for the processor: the ADI Blackfin, the ADI Sharc and the Arm processor. I'm leaning towards the Blackfin most, but I'd like to know if it has the processing power needed (being 16 bit fixed point, rather than the Sharc 32 bit floating point) to handle 4 camera inputs.

I've done some work with DSPs before ( Freescale 56K series) so I'm not too worried about dealing with any of the procesors I mentioned. I just need some idea on handling the mpeg processing from multiple cam inputs. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Lee

Reply to
Lee Thalblum
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webcams,

If this is not a personal educational project, then every year at ISC (and probably year-round by mail-order too), Korean manufacturers are selling 4-head DVR cards for around $30. They will do almost everything you're talking about, in hardware, with four NTSC inputs.

Reply to
larwe

Well, it is a personal educational poject, but I'm still pretty flexible on the details at the moment. When you say everything, do you mean support of usb, ethernet, web server in hardware? Or just the MPEG conversion. If they do that in hardware, I certainly be interested in finding out what they use to do the conversion. If I can do that in hardware it would take a load of processing off the processor (whichever one I choose).

Lee

Reply to
Lee Thalblum

you

MPEG

The MPEG. They use ASICs (at least in the cards I've seen). Not much use to you :)

Reply to
larwe

Streaming MJPEG over 100BT? HTTP? I've just completed a video capture project (no CODECs or attempt at full video) because I could not find such a thing for less than several k$.

Reply to
Bryan Hackney

are

everything

project

The streaming is done by a PC running dedicated software, but the hard, processor-intensive part is done in the $30 card. This hardware is very common. Basically replacing time-lapse VCRs in the security industry.

Reply to
larwe

The DSP that seems to be getting a lot of attention now for broadcast quality apps is the TI 642 from the TMS320 series. They've just begun shipping the 720MHz version, and thew word is that it's pretty hot. Also, I have heard good things about the FFMPEG library on sourceforge.

Bill

Reply to
William Meyer

Bill,

The problem I have with the TI series is that they all come in BGA packages. As a home project I'm not set up to work with BGAs. I'm looking for something in a QFP or similar. That's also the reason a client of mine ( a small engineering manufacturer) won't consider TI DSPs. They're also not equipped to deal with BGAs in house.

Lee

William Meyer wrote:

not

just

sourceforge.

Reply to
Lee Thalblum

I think that answers the question, thanks. I wanted a capture card with an ethernet interface, not a PCI card. Sony makes something, Axis has a video server, and a few others, but these are expensive.

Reply to
Bryan Hackney

"Lee Thalblum" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

This is true for most smaller businesses I think. For one small project we decided to use two FPGAs in a TQFP package instead of one in BGA. Having them mounted is more expensive. We could also have used a single FPGA in PQFP-240 but these were 4 times more expensive then the two seperate FPGAs in TQPF together (and more difficult to solder by hand).

I'm wondering how this will end up in the future for small companies with BGA and QFN becoming more and more common.

Jeroen

Reply to
Jeroen

We have a demo board at work from wischip with some ARM CPU and their mpeg-4 encoder chip that I'm told does what you want - ntsc in and serves mpeg-4 streams from a web interface. I'm sure someone makes a production version of such a thing.

Reply to
Andrew Dyer

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