Few weeks ago I posted some notes about using the Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 with Gstreamer. I have since ported the setup to the Beaglebone, effectively turning my Beaglebone into a streaming IP camera that can deliver constant bitrate H.264 video at full 1920x1080p30 resolution without breaking a sweat.
encoder
Gumstix Overo Water + eCAM32 camera demo
As promised in my last post, here is a quick demo of the eCAM32 3.2 megapixel camera connected to the Gumstix Overo Water. I am presenting two videos, one showing the setup where the eCAM32 camera board is mounted on top of the Gumstix Overo Water, the other one being a screen cast demonstrating some of the most common settings of the camera. I am using the Tobi expansion board because it has Ethernet interface allowing me to stream H.264 encoded video to a host PC running linux.
Video encoding using the DSP is working
I’m happy to report that I am now able to encode video on the Gumstix Overo Water using the DSP in the OMAP3530. It wasn’t difficult to make it work but it took several attempts at building the kernel before I got it right and, as you might know, cross compilation takes time.
Work continues on the OMAP3 VPU
A year has passed since we had a Gumstix Overo based video recorder onboard an amateur rocket and it is time to resume working on it. This time I will continue towards the original goal, namely live radio transmission of video encoded using the built-in DSP.
x264enc problem in GStreamer video switcher solved
Back in August 2010 I ran a brief experiment using GstInputSelector to switch between various video sources. You may have noticed that it was using Theora encoder while most of my other DVB experiments used H.264 encoder in MPEG-TS container. The reason for this was that I could not make x264enc work in the pipeline used for the video switcher.
High Definition Broadcasting Experiments
As you may know I have been flirting with live broadcasting on Ustream for a while now. While it is a great free service I was not particularly happy about the default webcam stream, which appears to be very low resolution, not much higher than 320×240. Ustream offers high quality streaming using their browser plugin and even high definition-like using the Flash Media Live Encoder from Adobe. Unfortunately, neither of these is available for anything else than Windows.
I wanted to try so much that I even tried the Flash Media Live Encoder under Vista. Well, it was a total fail… My computer froze after broadcasting a few seconds even at VGA-like resolutions. I think I spent a whole Sunday trying various configurations and setting but no luck. Slow computer? Buggy software? Probably both.
Few days ago I learned that Adobe is now in the process of making a Mac version of Flash Media Live Encoder. Hurray! In fact, it is already available for selected beta testers but no timeline for public release. Fortunately, I was able to find a kind soul who has shared the beta package for Mac with the rest of the world (thanks Google search for finding me this) and so I got the opportunity to become an unofficial beta tester.