Multiple HD video streaming using ffmpeg

Question

I am trying to stream HD rtsp streams (1080p) from IPcamera over LAN and displaying it. streaming is done using openRTSP and decoding is done using ffmpeg. For a single frame decoding takes 30-40ms and displaying it on the QTwindow takes another 6-7 ms. When streaming more than 2-3 cameras the whole system is not able to handle it.Can anybody tell me that what could be the best method to approach the problem. Right now I am using a machine with Pentium 64-bit processor with ubuntu 12.04LTS.

Should I go for Graphics card ? If so which would be better for ffmpeg hardware acceleration ? If I have to display 16 videos, Will one graphics card sufficient ?

Answer 1

There are a few methods.

First is to lower the number of frames decoded - either by lowering the frame rate on the encoder side, or to decode only keyframes and skip the rest.

Second is to increase the decoding power - add CPUs or add decoding hardware. AFAIK a graphics card can only decode one h264 stream at a time; not sure if this is the software or hardware restriction. So you're unlikely to gain much here.