Re: [rtcweb] Platforms that support H264

[Justin Uberti <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:58 AM, Randell Jesup <[e-mail]>wrote:

>  On 11/5/2013 12:55 AM, Mo Zanaty (mzanaty) wrote:
>
> I’m serious. Name a device in mass production that is relevant to rtcweb
> but does not have H.264 hardware.
>
>
> Plenty have hardware is out there that might not be optimized (or usable)
> for the types of arbitrary-sized, realtime simultaneous h.264
> encode/decode.  Even just handling streaming decode on Android via OMX has
> been a year of pain for one of our engineers, because (especially before
> JB) the interfaces were unsupported, randomly modified/incompatible, and
> with lots of restrictions on what actually is supported.  Even with
> "perfect" API layers exposing them, the hardware layers (especially
> encoders) may not have the low-latency and other realtime characteristics
> needed, or knobs to tell them about things like packet loss reports that
> require IDR generation.  How many does this affect? who knows - and the API
> layers on top are inconsistent enough (or non-existent at the present) that
> it's especially hard to tell.
>
> And many of them can handle only a single stream at a time; which makes
> "hangout"/simulcast cases more fun (need to run HW and SW in parallel, or
> drop to SW only - makes capability signaling fun too; the LCD of the SW and
> HW codecs needs to be what you offer probably, unless you want real pain).
>

Exactly. Name a 3rd-party software application in wide use on any of
today's popular platforms that uses a H.264 HW encoder for rtcweb scenarios.

>
>
>
>  Your second point is valid; hardware is useless without supporting
> software. OS APIs to access codecs (both hardware and software, real-time
> and buffered) is an important issue. Android is the dominant OS on the
> planet. If you are not happy with its OS APIs, just change them; it’s open
> source like VP8 right?
>
>
> Not really.  You can't modify the underlying OS provided by the
> manufacturer (no rooting of phones to run webrtc should be required...)
> and even custom roms are going to get much harder or virtually impossible
> with kitkat.  And witness my comments about the pain of platform decoders
> on Android today.
>
>    Randell
>
>
>
>  Mo
>
>
>   On 11/5/13, 1:10 AM, cowwoc <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>
>     I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not...
>
>     In any case, I had a question regarding BlackBerry 10. Are you
> implying that every BlackBerry 10 phone includes an API for real-time
> encoding/decoding of H.264 video streams? If so, which API is it? I took a
> quick look but couldn't find it.
>
> Thanksm
> Gili
>
> On 04/11/2013 9:52 PM, Mo Zanaty (mzanaty) wrote:
>
> I think you meant *every* phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, set-top, camera…
>
>
>   On 11/2/13, 7:41 PM, Kaiduan Xie <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>   Every BlackBerry 10 phone has H.264 hardware encoder/decoder.
>
>  /Kaiduan
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 6:18 PM, Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>  On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 1:01 PM, Gili <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>> Martin,
>>>
>>>     I fully understand why Firefox would be happy but as someone who
>>> plan to integrate WebRTC into a non-browser application, especially on iOS,
>>> Cisco's solution simply does not work. I appreciate their contribution, but
>>> again, it simply doesn't help my use-case.
>>>
>>
>>  I haven't seen  you explain how your use case is different from that of
>> a browser. Could you please do so?
>>
>>  -Ekr
>>
>>
>>> Gili
>>>
>>>
>>> On 11/2/2013 11:02 AM, Martin Thomson wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2 November 2013 07:37, cowwoc <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>      I can't think of a single platform that supports real-time H.264
>>>>> encoding/decoding natively today.
>>>>>
>>>> That's a very strange way to put the question.
>>>>
>>>> Let me put another spin on it, and please excuse the example...
>>>>
>>>> Skype runs on more platforms than you might think.  Those platforms
>>>> can all support H.264 to the extent that Skype requires.
>>>>
>>>>  Cisco's generous offer opens almost the same capability to anyone,
>>>> with the caveat that some platforms currently remain closed.  Of
>>>> course, you could let your ideals get in the way of progress.  Me, I'm
>>>> a pragmatist.  This gift represents a great opportunity for people who
>>>> actually care about the practical outcomes.
>>>>
>>>> There's been a lot of mouth-gazing of gift horses on this list of
>>>> late.  I sure hope that this isn't representative of the real
>>>> sentiment of the community.  I'd like to think that people are better
>>>> than that.
>>>>
>>>> (BTW, I understand and respect Harald's position.  From where he sits,
>>>> I'm sure that his conclusion makes perfect sense.)
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> Randell [e-mail]
>
>
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