DM6467 used to compress CMOS imager video for teleconferencing application

Derek Walters said:

First of all, I wonder if the DM6467 is able to encode up to 720p30fps or even 1080p15-20fps using H.264. Reading the H.264 encoder specs (on the website http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/tmdh264e.html) it shows only 720x480?

Second, I would need to be able to stream the content over PCI (possibly PCIe if a bridge is used). Is there enough horsepower in the DM6467 to encode data as well as spit it out over its PCI bus?

Lastly, I was wondering about the decoding side of the H.264. Assuming the DM6467 would encode the data, and spit it out over the PCI/PCIe bus, and another remote device (not a DM6467) would decode the data; would a standard H.264 software decoder program be compatible with TIs H.264 encoder?

1) We apologize for the confusion.  Because the website link you sent above applies to h.264 encoder in general (as it applies to many davinci products), it cites 720x480 (lowest common denominator) as we did not want customers using other platforms to expect 720p30fps capabilities.  For more specific information, you want to refer to the "H264 Base Profile Encoder v1.00 on DM6467 Data Sheet " which can be accessed from the site you sent ( http://focus.ti.com/lit/ml/sprs479/sprs479.pdf ).  As you can see from this document, we have posted test results conducted at 720p30fps so you should be ok in this front.

2) Please note that our PCI interface is a PCI Rev 2.3 compliant bus running at 33 MHZ (not a PCIe); however, it should have plenty of bandwidth to send a 720p30fps stream.  Also, because the encoding is done mostly on the DSP side, and the PCI transfers on the ARM side, you should not need to worry about having enough horsepower left while decoding; so long as you do not have too much else running on the ARM, I would not worry about this.  Finally, there is an App Note that shows you how to interface to PCIe via bridge as you suggested above (http://focus.ti.com/lit/an/sprab05/sprab05.pdf)

3) You should not have a problem with this either; h.264 encoder is a universal encoder and you should be able to decode it using an external software program (e.g. FFMPEG, ...)

Thanks Juan for the update,

I have been looking at several options, mainly between DSP only (DM6437), DSP/ARM (DM6467), and ARM (DM365). On the ARM side, we don't really know what is required in terms of dev tools and the like...

We really only have experience with DSP-only devices (C6205). For now, all we really need is a glue interface between the CMOS 12-bit interface and PCI. The media processor might do some simple image processing initially (anti-aliasing, interpolation, etc). Eventually we would be interested in doing full encoding of video (dynamically from 640x480 up to 720p) in H.264. The video will stream out the PCI interface (perhaps the HPI or EMAC). The encoding solution would be a phased approach, mainly because we would introduce the hardware into product as a basic camera first, and eventually merge our current encoding capability into the smart camera as our applications can be developed to support the full functionality of the hardware.

I have several questions about the DM6467. If we only wantd to use the DSP side to start out, would we be able to only use the DSP functionality initially and use the VPIF and other imaging peripherals? In this mode is it okay if the ARM is not running? Also, we currently download our DSP program from a PCI host. For example, we currently write our DSP programs into DSP P- and D-RAM via PCI and start our DSP via software. Is that possible with the DM6467, assuming we boot from PCI and that the ARM is initially disabled? If the DM6467 is not a good choice, would something like the DM6437 be better suited? What about the DM365?

Regards,

Derek