Beginner looking for H264 advice

Hello everyone - I'm just learning about FPGA development and am looking for some general advice.

I'm looking to design an HDMI H264 video encoder/RTSP stream device (1080p30) utilizing FPGA hardware. Does anyone have a good recommendation for a development board that I should start with?

I was looking at the miniSpartan6+ (miniSpartan6+ | Scarab Hardware) as it is cheap but it lacks ethernet hardware.

Are there any specific boards that might make the development of this project easier?

I've started with the Leopardboard 368 (not FPGA) as it uses the TI DaVinci chip (built in H264 compression), but injecting video via HDMI is going to be really challenging.

Thanks for your input!

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johnbeetem over 10 years ago

I'm not familiar with the algorithms needed for H.264 video encoding, but I suspect that a chip like DaVinci with custom logic is going to be a lot more efficient than an FPGA. I think Raspberry Pi also supports H.264, but I think you need to buy a license for the IP.

I'd suggest searching for existing H.264 IP just to get an idea of how much FPGA is needed. For example, here's a quick search I did at Xilinx.com for "H.264 encoder": http://www.xilinx.com/products/intellectual-property/ip-keyword-search.html?searchKeywords=H.264+encoder

Or you can do a Google search for "H.264 Spartan-6" and get this: https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=H.264+Spartan-6

You might need the miniSpartan6+ with S6LX25 FPGA to have enough capacity. OTOH, you might be able to do the encoding much more efficiently than commercial IP.

For Ethernet, you can easily add an SPI-based Ethernet module, such as http://store.gadgetfactory.net/ethernet-wing/ or https://www.sparkfun.com/products/765.
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Former Member over 10 years ago

Hi Michael,

I might also suggest having a look at the avaialbility of open source IP available on opencores.org. It appears that there is encoder/decoder source available for H.264.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1ASRM_enUS540US540&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Aopencores.o…

Cheers.
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replaysmike over 10 years ago in reply to johnbeetem

John Beetem wrote:

I'm not familiar with the algorithms needed for H.264 video encoding, but I suspect that a chip like DaVinci with custom logic is going to be a lot more efficient than an FPGA. I think Raspberry Pi also supports H.264, but I think you need to buy a license for the IP.

I'm currently working with the Leopardboard 368 which uses the DaVinci chip, but the documentation is horrible and its been slow to gain any progress with it. Haven't got far enough to determine if the encode quality will suffice. The Pi I looked into as well, the licensing issue seems to be resolved however there is the problem of how to get HDMI video signals input into the device.

Thanks for the links - an SPI ethernet module would probably be the way to go with the spartan.

Thanks Michael, I will read up on the OpenCores project.. I wasn't aware of it! Great suggestions guys.
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