Which lib is better Transcoder for live camera ? ffmpeg vs intel media sdk

Question

I would like to do a performance comparison between Ffmpeg and Intel Media SDK in transcoding.

I have to write a new application that will do the following.

1. Receive frames from MJPEG, MPEG4 and H264 cameras.

2. Transcode the frames. Output will be h264. Here I have to either use Ffmpeg or Intel Media SDK.

3. Multicast transcoded frames as RTSP streaming.

I have noticed that both these libs are CPU intensive. Is there any settings in Ffmpeg can reduce the CPU usage?

Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

As with all media encoding, you will trade speed for quality. x264 (ffmpeg) will produce higher quality (or smaller files at the same quality) but will use more CPU. Intel Media SDK should use very little CPU, but the quality will be a bit less. It accomplishes this by using specialized hardware on the CPU, if your CPU supports it.

So, what is best? It depends on want you want to optimize for CPU, Power usage, Quality, or file size.