Raspberry Pi Forums

Is the new Raspberry Pi 4 capable to play H.264 4K or only to play H.264 1080P (as specified in the specification)?

I want to play videos from DJI Osmo Action camera (4K H.264). Is it possible? Is it running smoothly in Raspbian or do I have to install LibreELEC? I prefer to use Raspbian instead LibreELEC but will it work smoothly?

I'm talking about 4K H.264 and not about 1080P H.264.

The H264 decoder is the same as before so limited to 1080p60.

Kodi is currently the only way to play back H265, which in turn is the only HW decoder capable of 4k.

Thanks for your quick response.

Is there a plan to update omxplayer or other to handle 4k/HEVC?

paulhothersall wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 24, 2019 11:59 pm

Is there a plan to update omxplayer or other to handle 4k/HEVC?

No. The HW for hevc works completely differently than the other codecs. There are other plans though, will investigate.

jamesh wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 25, 2019 6:55 am

paulhothersall wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 24, 2019 11:59 pm

Is there a plan to update omxplayer or other to handle 4k/HEVC?

No. The HW for hevc works completely differently than the other codecs. There are other plans though, will investigate.

Slight offtopic, but whilst waiting for the post to show up with the Shiny new Pi4 .. I have prepping a buster image on a 3+. On that, ffmpeg (installed from repo ) decodes through MMAL just fine, but hangs on trying to encode with OMX. This is 1080p source, to 1080p output, using good old big buck bunny even as a sample file. This is NOT an issue on Stretch.

Specifically h264_omx (using OMX.broadcom.video_encode

What is the best way to flag this error / have anyone else test this?

paulhothersall wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:09 am

Slight offtopic, but whilst waiting for the post to show up with the Shiny new Pi4 .. I have prepping a buster image on a 3+. On that, ffmpeg (installed from repo ) decodes through MMAL just fine, but hangs on trying to encode with OMX. This is 1080p source, to 1080p output, using good old big buck bunny even as a sample file. This is NOT an issue on Stretch.

Specifically h264_omx (using OMX.broadcom.video_encode

What is the best way to flag this error / have anyone else test this?

Generally create a new thread reporting the issue rather than hiding it on an unrelated thread, however I've seen it now so will have a quick look.

6by9 wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:19 am

paulhothersall wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:09 am

Slight offtopic, but whilst waiting for the post to show up with the Shiny new Pi4 .. I have prepping a buster image on a 3+. On that, ffmpeg (installed from repo ) decodes through MMAL just fine, but hangs on trying to encode with OMX. This is 1080p source, to 1080p output, using good old big buck bunny even as a sample file. This is NOT an issue on Stretch.

Specifically h264_omx (using OMX.broadcom.video_encode

What is the best way to flag this error / have anyone else test this?

Generally create a new thread reporting the issue rather than hiding it on an unrelated thread, however I've seen it now so will have a quick look.

In my rtranscode thread you wrote:

We are chasing down an issue that only showed up in the last few days where simultaneous encode and decode with the h264 codec block stalls. We're actively digging into it at the moment. It seems to be some hardware quirk as the same code on Pi3 works fine.

Isn't that the same problem?

gkreidl wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:24 am

6by9 wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:19 am

paulhothersall wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:09 am

Slight offtopic, but whilst waiting for the post to show up with the Shiny new Pi4 .. I have prepping a buster image on a 3+. On that, ffmpeg (installed from repo ) decodes through MMAL just fine, but hangs on trying to encode with OMX. This is 1080p source, to 1080p output, using good old big buck bunny even as a sample file. This is NOT an issue on Stretch.

Specifically h264_omx (using OMX.broadcom.video_encode

What is the best way to flag this error / have anyone else test this?

Generally create a new thread reporting the issue rather than hiding it on an unrelated thread, however I've seen it now so will have a quick look.

In my rtranscode thread you wrote:

We are chasing down an issue that only showed up in the last few days where simultaneous encode and decode with the h264 codec block stalls. We're actively digging into it at the moment. It seems to be some hardware quirk as the same code on Pi3 works fine.

Isn't that the same problem?

OP wrote

have prepping a buster image on a 3+.

So seeing as the transcode issue is only on Pi4, no.

Correct.

This is with buster, fully update/upgraded , on pi3+.

For ref 256MB GPU allocation, not that even starts the encode process so doesn't start consuming resources to see if that's an issue. And of course it worked at 192MB (or less) split on stretch

jamesh wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 24, 2019 2:04 pm

The H264 decoder is the same as before so limited to 1080p60.

Kodi is currently the only way to play back H265, which in turn is the only HW decoder capable of 4k.

any changes after 1 year?i also prefer use raspbian but 4k is a pain

vlc will do 8b 4k HEVC (and decode and display 10b 4k HEVC, but not signal it correctly to the display, leading to washed out colours) from the commandline, with a careful configuration and a following wind.

4k H.264 isn't going to happen; it's a hardware thing.