full-duplex simultaneous encode & decode using DSP evaluation development board

Corby,

You've already done good amount of analysis on the platforms. For your questions 

Corby Sable said:

1. My application is to perform full-duplex encode and decode simultaneously in 2-way communications using an evaluation board for development. 
2. 1080P 60 video & audio live streaming video
3. two (or possible three) ethernet ports are required on the evaluation board.  
4.  raw video data from a CCD sensor/commercial camera will connect directly to one port on the evaluation board and then the data is H.264 encoded.  Its encoded data will be sent to an I/O port (to the network) to location "B".
5. the second port on the board will input H.264 audio/video from location "B" and then decode it.  This 2nd data stream arrives from location "B" through the network.  Following this decode, the video will be displayed on a LCD screen at the camera (location "A")
6. The end result is 2-way video full duplex video processing. 
7. Real time processing
8. H.264 video streams sent out from the camera - location "A" is 1-10 megabits per second.  
9. The video coming from location "B" (from the network) to the camera (location "B" is 1-5 megabits per second. 

10.Frame rate is 15-60 frames per second in either direction - inbound or outbound.

11.I would like the evaluation board to scale the video from (location "A" to location "B"0 on-the-fly.  

12.After development is complete with the evaluation board, I prefer to use a commercially available board ( off-the-shelf board) or OEM board with only necessary one TMS chip, two I/O ethernet ports/interface/memory to perform only the decode.  This OEM board is a smaller version of the eval board.

13.The 2nd OEM board with same requirements will perform only the H.264  encode and scaling.

14.  I want to download the proven software from the eval  development board to 2 smaller boards - as products - approx. the size of 50mm X 50mm -

15.Linux operating system

Netra(DM8168) can support all these. Netra has dual ethernet ports also.

Corby Sable said:

16.And please recommend a WI-FI 802.11 b/g/n board which connects to the the 2 smaller encode & decode boards.  Does TI make these smaller type boards?

You can choose Murata COM6M module for the same. But connecting to EVM might be tough. Needs to explore the schematics. 

Corby Sable said:

17.A camera sensor is not needed on the eval board.  An external CCD sensor will be used in all cases.

18.Which port is best used to input external CCD data into the eval board...so that the ethernet ports (RJ-45) connections can be used for output?

19.What is the max input data rate into the ports on a DM816X, or C6816x, or other recommended TI processor?

If its Netra you can only connect the sensors to HDVPSS VIP[0]/[1] ports. If its DM8148 you can connect to ISS also.

I'm not sure about maximum data rate of HDVPSS port(need to read the doc) but 1080p60 is supported for sure.

Corby Sable said:

20.Which interface is best used for control of the board's functions?  To start/stop/pause, etc?

You can use GPIO based keypad for this. 

Corby Sable said:

21.I could not find data for the Netra or Centaurus boards.  Please advise.

You can get the required info about Netra from 

http://www.ti.com/product/tms320dm8168

http://www.spectrumdigital.com/product_info.php?cPath=37_118&products_id=253&osCsid=ed94d511a07354dd7023e6d558aa90d5

Hope I could answer most of  your queries.In fact Netra is used by most of the Video Conferencing products these days. This is a proven product.

Thank you for taking your time to answer my application questions.  In consider the boards you suggested, the (EVN per the link above) is very large for my use.  I require a small board size, say, approximately 40X40 mm to 60x60 mm.

What is the maximum data rate inputted to the ports you mentioned above?

Why did you suggest the 8168 based processor as opposed to the C6678 processor?

Which Linux version has been proven to work with the smaller board size above?  Do you have any experience with Wind River?

Do you have any experience with the TI C6678 processors operating on Advantech's  DSPC 8682 PCI express boards, which uses eight  C6678 processor cores?  NOTE:  Advantech is a partner with TI since they use the TI  C6678 processor.

Can the TI processor perform simultaneous encode and decode?  Where encoode and decode are separate operations performed at the same time in real time.

Will this small board perform scaling?  This means that the board will, i.e., scale down the format from HD to SD or scale down the bitrate.

Is there a Linux routine available from download that will perform the scaling?  Is there an example?

See attached Advantech DSPC-8682 board with specs.

Please let me know.

Thank You,

Corby

Corby,

Corby Sable said:

Why did you suggest the 8168 based processor as opposed to the C6678 processor?

First let me explain why I preferred DM8168 or C6678. If you go through the architecture, you can see that DM8168 has hardware accelerated video engine called IVA-HD. Each DM8168 has three IVA-HDs inside it. Each IVA-HD is capable of doing 1080p60 encode. Whereas if you see each C6678 can do only 1080p30. So you would need two c6678 to do 1080p60. Also the H.264 encoder has to changed for this. This is the reason why I recommended DM8168. 

Similar to the C6678 based solution, Advantech has a quad-Netra based solution.

http://www.advantech.com/products/DSPC-8662-PCXE/mod_42AFEC65-9AE1-46F4-82AD-57EA4956B396.aspx

Also you can check the Z3-technologies module which has two 1080p60 inputs and outputs. 

http://z3technology.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Z3-DM8168-VI-RPS1.pdf

Corby Sable said:

What is the maximum data rate inputted to the ports you mentioned above?

The maximum data rate for two capture ports in DM8168 is 1080p60 x 2. 

Corby Sable said:

Which Linux version has been proven to work with the smaller board size above?  Do you have any experience with Wind River?

Linux 2.6.37 kernel is available from TI for DM816x platform. We've experience in Wind river platform. 

Corby Sable said:

Can the TI processor perform simultaneous encode and decode?  Where encoode and decode are separate operations performed at the same time in real time.

We can do simultaneous 1080p60 encode decode using DM8168. Its perfect for your use case. 

Corby Sable said:

Will this small board perform scaling?  This means that the board will, i.e., scale down the format from HD to SD or scale down the bitrate.

Yes, it can do scaling. What is the bitrate requirements. H.264 gives pretty good bitrate on DM8168. 

Corby Sable said:

Is there a Linux routine available from download that will perform the scaling?  Is there an example?

It available as part of the EZSDK package from TI. You can download and checkout the same.

Corby Sable said:

Thank you for taking your time to answer my application questions.  In consider the boards you suggested, the (EVN per the link above) is very large for my use.  I require a small board size, say, approximately 40X40 mm to 60x60 mm.

I feel that it will be tough to achieve 40x40 - 60x60 as the SoC itself is 25x25mm. 

If you need more information or discuss the detailed requirements, please send an email to me. My email is given in my E2E profile.