Re: [rtcweb] There are no legacy WebRTC devices (Was: Comment on Straw Poll replies)

[Randell Jesup <[e-mail]>]

On 1/14/2014 9:47 AM, Ron wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 09:15:28AM -0500, cowwoc wrote:
>> I stand corrected:
>> http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html
>>
>> Both H.264 and VP8 encoder/decoders are supported. Thanks for catching that.
>>
>> I'm still curious if anyone has seen a public API for hardware
>> encoding/decoding of video outside of Android...
> The more interesting question to me would be if someone could give us an
> estimate of what proportion of Android devices actually have either ASIC
> hardware support for both of these, or sufficiently capable CPUs to do
> them in software?

Note that "an encoder" != "a useful realtime interactive encoder". 
(Though many may be - but how do you tell?)  Encoders are almost 
required for local camera video capture and recording, but those don't 
need to have the sort of controls or options that a realtime interactive 
codec does.  Since these are standard blocks, they may have all the 
right knobs, but how well is that tested?  (Obviously this applies to 
all HW codecs, except that no one is using VP8 for camera video currently.)

Another caveat: HW encoders/decoders may have a limit on the number of 
streams they can process (and that limit may well be 1).  That means 
that simulcast and multi-stream conference reception might need to use 
SW codecs for some streams.  (Or so I've been told by people working 
with OMX; I assume I understood correctly.)

-- 
Randell Jesup -- rjesup a t mozilla d o t com