H.264 Question

[wijic#]

Hello,

I am working at an engineering company that does remote handling for the nuclear industry. I am not a software developer but I have picked up some of their existing software made by their subcontractor. The subcontractor no longer works with us. The software uses the AForge MJPEGStream to stream a camera's video back to an application. I have been tasked with finding a new camera that is compatible with this software. I have found a few that work. However it seems that most cameras now use H.264 compression. The MJPEG cameras that fit the requirements all have very poor quality 640x360.

Is it possible to use a H.264 stream for an application written in C# ? Reading articles and looking on forums, people seem to say that its not possible.


Kind regards,

wijic#

[andrew.kirillov]

Hello,

Is it possible to use a H.264 stream for an application written in C# ?

Sure. As long as you have library/code which does decoding.

[wijic#]

Hello,

Is it possible to use a H.264 stream for an application written in C# ?

Sure. As long as you have library/code which does decoding.

Thank you. Are there libraries available to decode it? What is the rough outline of what the code should be? Have you ever done it yourself?

Kind regards,

wijic#

[andrew.kirillov]

Are there libraries available to decode it?

FFmpeg. It is not C#, but plain C. But can be used from C# if you know how.

What is the rough outline of what the code should be?

I would create a Managed C++ wrapper to access RTSP stream from camera (use FFmpeg library for decoding). Then I would use that from C# application.

Have you ever done it yourself?

I did.

[wijic#]

Thank you Andrew, that is most helpful. Would you be able to put me in touch with someone who can provide this service? We would rather subcontract it out to someone who has expertise in it.

Kind regards,

wijic#

[monupandey]

Since you are using a high res frames and you want a good frame rate you're likely going to be looking at H.264 encoding. I've done some work in HD/SDI broadcast video which is totaly dependent on H.264, and a little now moving to H.265. Most of the libraries used in broadcast are written in C++ for speed.