Raspberry Pi 4 Thread - general discussion

[6by9]

No.
The H265 decoder is currently accessed via a modified FFmpeg, it doesn't touch the GPU at all. It is effectively open, therefore there is no need to insert IL or MMAL or any other API in the way.

Pity, as that precludes using the various bits of the pipeline to do stuff with -- resize, etc. -- but I don't blame you for a minute...

We have V4L2 support for resize and format conversion (it wraps the ISP block), and V4L2 also allows us to do zero copy transfer via dmabufs.
It's also possible to pass dmabufs into MMAL (not IL) for zero copy operation, and libdrm for rendering.

The hope is to switch to use the V4L2 M2M API (almost certainly the stateless variant), but we (I) need to improve our understanding of it first. With that, the expectation is that the ffmeg and GStreamer implementations of said API will just work. We pretty much have that with the existing codecs (via the stateful V4L2 API) at the moment.

Will I be able to play 4K H.265 tomorrow morning, out of the box, or is it all still a work in progress?

Kodi has all the required support.

Kodi as packaged with Libreelec has the required patches.
I believe we need to make the changes to the Kodi bundled in Raspbian - I was discussing earlier in the office as to what is required there.

[rpdom]

Ok, from what I've read so far.....

It doesn't boot from USB
It doesn't boot from the network
So, it only boots from micro SDHC cards

At the moment, yes. Those options will be available later.

[Heater]

What's with all the shouting?

Nothing missing there that most of us need.

Can't wait to get my hands on a few with all that 64 bit 4GB lovelyness.

[firecat]

I'm woundering if this opens up to getting more programs something like Blender 3d software, VirtualBox, newer browsers to use and more.

[fruitoftheloom]

I'm woundering if this opens up to getting more programs something like Blender 3d software, VirtualBox, newer browsers to use and more.

VirtualBox and Blender3D require x86 CPU Architecture.


Web browsers, what is wrong with chromium-browser version 74 in Raspbian Buster ?

[dickon]

Will I be able to play 4K H.265 tomorrow morning, out of the box, or is it all still a work in progress?

Kodi has all the required support.

Well done -- I am impressed.

Is there a commandline player in the works? I prefer ssh and omxplayer ATM over Kodi, as it's a lot quicker...

Stunningly good news about the extra UART and I2C macroblocks you've got multiplexed on the GPIO pins. Really looking forward to using those for work projects.

[rodizio]

Has the maximum number of USB endpoints been increased? It would be good to be able to hook up more than half a dozen USB peripherals.

Yeah, that would be nice. With the old Raspberrys, maximum useable number of Atheros 9271 wifi sticks is three and in general usb was subject to timing issues.

[W. H. Heydt]

Waiting to see how much over clocking head room is. I'm just interested don't need to it. Any guesses???

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ra ... ,6188.html

It's odd that they are telling people to use NOOBS to do the system install. I would that anyone who doesn't just directly flash an OS to their card wouldn't even be looking at overclocking.

[W. H. Heydt]

Ok, from what I've read so far.....
It doesn't boot from USB

Is there a way to do USB boot at all? This might be a problem for me as I keep my OS storage on a 1TB HDD...

It will in the near future. It's been mentioned a number of times in this thread that it will require a patch to the boot EEPROM, which can be done easily. As it is, the boards are available now instead of 9 months from now, so a little patience is a pretty small thing to ask.

[spock]

VirtualBox and Blender3D require x86 CPU Architecture.

blender runs fine on a rasberry pi 3 with the opengl driver activated and it even is in the raspbian repository. (i just needed to change some settings regarding the opengl selection method in blender's preferences.)

on a raspberry pi 4 it should run even better with 4gb of ram and the other improvements.

edit: i am not sure about the upcoming blender 2.8 though since its opengl requirements are much higher.

[mikronauts]

Great news indeed!

I ordered two boards - a 1GB, and a 2GB board, however I cannot find a 4GB board in stock in Canada, US, or UK.

Please post here if you know any place eith 4GB in stock.

Btw the additional i2c and uarts are great for my purposes.

[nai1ed]

Great news indeed!

I ordered two boards - a 1GB, and a 2GB board, however I cannot find a 4GB board in stock in Canada, US, or UK.

Please post here if you know any place eith 4GB in stock.

Btw the additional i2c and uarts are great for my purposes.

Last I check, the 4GB models won't be available till almost end of July. I ordered the 2GB but won't ship till July 5th.

It's strange that they would have different memory size versions. They should have made different form factors instead, like the Pi Zero and A+.

[jdb]

Has the maximum number of USB endpoints been increased? It would be good to be able to hook up more than half a dozen USB peripherals.

It's an xHCI controller - number of endpoints is no longer the limit, number of device slots is.
HCSPARAMS1 = 0x05000420 -> 0x20 for number of slot IDs -> 32 simultaneous devices (with an arbitrary number of endpoints within those devices).

[epoch1970]

Did anybody complain about the M2.5 mounting holes (same as on previous models) yet? I can do that if you want
M2.5 standoffs are horribly expensive compared to M3 or M2, what were you thinking??
(Ok, I spare you the huge font...)

Nah. I think Pi4 looks really promising. It impresses me like Pi 2 did in its day. And once again an elegantly designed case, too.
Well done, well done.

[mikronauts]

In low quantities, yes.

Personally I ordered a few thousand nylon washers, nuts, screws and various height standoffs from a manufacturer for my boards. Price was ok. Shipping took a while.

Did anybody complain about the M2.5 mounting holes (same as on previous models) yet? I can do that if you want
M2.5 standoffs are horribly expensive compared to M3 or M2, what were you thinking??
(Ok, I spare you the huge font...)

Nah. I think Pi4 looks really promising. It impresses me like Pi 2 did in its day. And once again an elegantly designed case, too.
Well done, well done.

[mob-i-l]

Is OpenMax still supported? Will omxplayer continue to work (except for the missing HW codecs)? I'm using it a lot of projects.

OMXplayer will work for H264, that stuff is unchanged, but the MP2 and VC1 codecs no longer exist on the Pi4, and OMXplayer won't use the software decoders.

We are still working on video stuff, at the moment Kodi is the only system that can play back HEVC.

Some DVB-T TV channels use MP2 (e.g. in Sweden) and this could mean that playback is worse on Pi 4 B than on Pi 3 B+. I have not bought a license key for MP2 so I'm not using the hardware decoder anyway. I use e.g. VLC to watch TV using TVHAT on Pi 3 B. Denmark, which is close to where I live, uses MP4 for DVB-T and that runs much smother in VLC.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/ra ... pi-tv-hat/

[rodizio]

Did anybody complain about the M2.5 mounting holes (same as on previous models) yet? I can do that if you want
M2.5 standoffs are horribly expensive compared to M3 or M2, what were you thinking??
(Ok, I spare you the huge font...)

But 3mm drill bits are cheap, takes 2 minutes to drill the holes to M3

[rodizio]

Has the maximum number of USB endpoints been increased? It would be good to be able to hook up more than half a dozen USB peripherals.

It's an xHCI controller - number of endpoints is no longer the limit, number of device slots is.
HCSPARAMS1 = 0x05000420 -> 0x20 for number of slot IDs -> 32 simultaneous devices (with an arbitrary number of endpoints within those devices).

Awesome. Being able to run four or more Atheros sticks is a very big plus for my kind of application.

[PeterO]

Ok, from what I've read so far.....

It doesn't boot from USB
It doesn't boot from the network
So, it only boots from micro SDHC cards

At the moment, yes. Those options will be available later.

For the time being I've just reverted to having a boot partition on an SD card and root filesystem on my USB hard disk. I can live with that until the USB boot is ready to go.

PeterO

[HawaiianPi]

Did anybody complain about the M2.5 mounting holes (same as on previous models) yet? I can do that if you want
M2.5 standoffs are horribly expensive compared to M3 or M2, what were you thinking??

Not sure where you are buying them from, but they cost no more for me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Same price at local hardware stores. Same price from Amazon (USA).

[6by9]

Some DVB-T TV channels use MP2 (e.g. in Sweden) and this could mean that playback is worse on Pi 4 B than on Pi 3 B+. I have not bought a license key for MP2 so I'm not using the hardware decoder anyway. I use e.g. VLC to watch TV using TVHAT on Pi 3 B. Denmark, which is close to where I live, uses MP4 for DVB-T and that runs much smother in VLC.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/ra ... pi-tv-hat/

The arm cores on the Pi2 were sufficient for sd mpeg2. The hw mpeg2 and vc1 codec licences were only a real requirement on the 0 and 1, or for HD (which is rare outside the USA).

In the UK for free to air dvb-t and dvb-s, sd is all mpeg2, and HD is h264.

[wren]

One of the things that's really annoying about all ARM single board computers is they cannot boot from USB without jumping through hoops. Would it ever be possible, with firmware update, to download an arm64 iso from X Linux distribution so you can install Linux the sane way? I miss having my encrypted root and home partitions. I miss having separate home partition period. I realize it can still be done, but it's currently a PITA.

[dom]

Some DVB-T TV channels use MP2 (e.g. in Sweden) and this could mean that playback is worse on Pi 4 B than on Pi 3 B+. I have not bought a license key for MP2 so I'm not using the hardware decoder anyway. I use e.g. VLC to watch TV using TVHAT on Pi 3 B. Denmark, which is close to where I live, uses MP4 for DVB-T and that runs much smother in VLC.

I've tested raw BluRay MPEG-2 and VC1 with LibreELEC on Pi4 and both played fine with software decode.
Broadcast TV tends to be a much lower bitrate so there shouldn't be a problem.

[gtechn]

Another question for the Engineers: I just installed the latest version of Raspberry Pi Desktop ("buster"), and there is a new option in raspi-config for "Raspberry Pi 4 video output" which requires a Raspberry Pi 4. What is this for? (Is this for setting the screen resolutions?)

[RichardUK]

Waiting to see how much over clocking head room is. I'm just interested don't need to it. Any guesses???

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ra ... ,6188.html

Thanks for the link, a good read. Seems a modest overclock can give noticeable results, just a question if the boost is worth the possible shorter life??? Mine will stay stock, for now.

When I googled all I got was RPi 3 over clock stories.

I wonder if the ram can be over clocked.