Hardware Accelerated Video with Qt 6 on the Raspberry Pi

Getting hardware acceleration into Qt eglfs is tricky. Doing so on a Raspberry Pi is, unfortunately, still tricky after many years. Qt claimed to have reimplemented the Qt Multimedia module entirely, and one of their target was getting hardware acceleration where possibile. So, I thought I could start with a quick look.

Qt 5

Since Raspberry Pi was born, I had to solve the problem of hardware accelerated video in Qt. At the beginning, I wrote POT (PiOmxTextures) to solve this problem: https://github.com/carlonluca/pot. It used OpenMAX to stream decoded video into an OpenGL texture, which was then showed through a custom backend of Qt Multimedia in Qt 5. This approach worked fine, but won’t work on Pi 4/Qt 6. On the other hand, there is another component in the same repo, that includes a custom Qt Quick item to render video through omxplayer. This is the most performant approach, but has its limitations.

Qt Multimedia

I quickly tested Qt Multimedia in Qt 6 on the rpi. My build from this article should support gstreamer. All I got was a a warning on the console. I didn’t investigate further. Maybe I’ll spend more time on this in the future.

POTVL

As the classical POT is no more usable on Raspberry Pi 4, I started to have a look at POTVL, which is very simple to port to Qt 6. With a small patch, it is possible to build it. You’ll find updates on the repo.

Demo

The video is a 1080p video. As you can see, the framerate is acceptable up to a certain weight of the graphics. It seems that Qt 6 OpenGL backend still is a bit less performant than Qt 5 in this specific demo, as you can see from this test from a previous article:

so the result may even improve in the future.
The benchmark app can be found here: https://github.com/carlonluca/Fall.
Unfortunately POTVL is still not future proof, but it is the simplest and most efficient element to port to Qt 6. I may try something better in the near future.
Have fun! Bye 😉

POT 5.7.0 with Qt 5.10.0 built for armv8 with GCC 6.3.0 on Raspbian Stretch

This was a good test for my cross toolchain with gcc 6.3.0 I uploaded some days ago: the new Qt 5.10.0 built with -march=armv8-a -mtune=cortex-a53 -mfpu=crypto-neon-fp-armv8 -mfloat-abi=hard, including POT for video acceleration on Raspbian Stretch. The build includes most Qt modules plus Qt WebKit (the modernized QtWebKit from
Konstantin Tokarev, version 5.212, https://github.com/annulen/webkit) plus QtWebEngine 5.9.1, a bit patched to build here. I didn't test browsers much, you'll have to work on those yourself if you need them.

By using the Qt build and the cross toolchain you can build your own applications.

Download here the build for Qt 5.10.0 with POT 5.7.
Download here the cross toolchain.

Experimenting with Pi3 optimisations - POT 5.6.0-beta1 with Qt 5.8.0 built for armv8 with GCC 4.9.4

At the moment I still don't want to test custom firmwares or 64 bit arch builds, but I started to test a couple of new features: a new compiler from Linaro (the one provided by the foundation keeps giving me headaches), version 4.9.4 instead of 4.8, and optimised compiler flags for the Rapsberry Pi 3, which is an armv8.
In this build, Qt, ffmpeg and POT are all built with 4.9.4 Linaro toolchain and optimised compiler flags for Pi3. This will only work on Pi3.
You won't probably see much difference in GPU intensive apps, but it is a step on the road of optimisation!

Have fun! Bye! ;-)

Download the toolchain here.
Download POT 5.6.0-beta1 for Raspbian Jessie Lite Pi3 here (md5: 0eec41ef02e9369fc7e569030b8ff868).

Hardware Decoding in Chromium through QtWebEngine on Raspberry Pi

A few months back I decided to try to implement hardware decoding in WebKit. Unfortunately this task is always pretty long and complex for many reasons. I found the time to draft an implementation for WebKit1, which is pretty useless as WebKit1 in Qt is only used outside QML and JS is executed in the main thread. Unfortunately I never found the time to implement this in WebKit2, which runs in QML and is suitable for more fluid UIs. This was the result:

This is how YouTube was running with this implementation:

Now Qt has deprecated QtWebKit and is working heavily on QtWebEngine, which is built on Chromium, so I wanted to try this road. Unfortunately these kind of things always claim a lot of time, and I don't typically have that much, but I was able to start and get something done already.

Writing a complete solution in Chromium to decode and render video takes much time, so I thought of a shortcut: creating a custom VDA (Video Decode Accelerator) that loads the POT library and reusing its entire codebase to implement decode and rendering with little modifications. This proved to be possible and now I get something on the screen.

So, to summarise: a little patch to Chromium is needed to create a VDA that dynamically loads POT library into memory and uses it with a common interface. Data and calls are translated to POT structures and are sent to POT, which then processes the buffers properly. The result of the decode operation is then sent back to the VDA through the same interface and textures are then sent to Chromium for rendering.

Still many problems remain open, there is much to be done yet as you can see from the video, but something is drawn. Have a look at the demo:

Have fun! ;-)

Binaries for POT 5.5.0-beta1 on Qt 5.8.0-rc1 and Experimental Accelerated QtWebKit

A new version of Qt is out and some interesting changes are being developed. Interesting work was done on WebEngine. This package contains an experimental build of Qt 5.8.0-rc1 with the POT driver to provide hardware acceleration to video decoding and rendering. POT was updated to build on the new plugin architecture of Qt and includes ffmpeg 3.2.2. For info on the content of the package refer to this article. The youtube player still runs on WebKit 1 and so is still hardly useful.

Please report issues on github. Have fun ;-)

Download POT 5.5.0-beta1 for Raspbian Jessie Lite Pi2 (also tested on Pi3) here (md5: 7ca1b961ab8c70176f6aeb13d0bc4f9a).

Binaries for POT 5.4.0 on Qt 5.7.0 and Experimental Accelerated QtWebKit

So far, no real complains about POT 5.4.0-beta1 so I suppose it is sufficiently safe to consider it POT 5.4.0. Refer to this article for more info.

Binaries for POT 5.4.0-beta1 on Qt 5.7.0 and Experimental Accelerated QtWebKit

This is a new binary package including the same content of POT 5.3.0-beta1 package, with some updates:

• new improvements in POT taken from omxplayer code;
• bump to ffmpeg 3.1;
• based on Qt 5.7.0.

The build includes support for network protocols and WebKit 1 supporting video html5 elements (including youtube).

This version is still experimental. Please report bugs on github.

Have fun! Bye! ;-)

Download POT 5.4.0-beta1 for Raspbian Jessie Lite Pi2 (also tested on Pi3) here (md5: e6b6a1f92b71ac2bdd3d9756efd7669c).

Streaming from VLC to a Qt App on HTTP Using POT

The latest version of POT (5.3.0-beta1) implements some kind of buffering which makes it also possible to do some streaming. ffmpeg provides what is needed to work on protocols like HTTP. This video is a little demo showing how simple it is to stream from VLC on HTTP, remuxing to mpeg-ts, and decoding/rendering on Raspberry Pi in an accelerated Qt application using POT.

Such feature can be useful when dealing with streams coming from many sources, like an IP camera for instance.
Have fun! Bye ;-)

Binaries for POT 5.3.0-beta1 on Qt 5.6.0 and Experimental Accelerated QtWebKit

This is an experimental version of POT that includes a few new features. The driver now includes an experimental version of playback of remote content including proper buffering of the media and the QtWebKit library is able to play videos using proper hardware acceleration.

Features

The driver can now be used through the regular Qt/QML interface to play content over protocols different from file://. I only tested HTTP but others should be available.
This new feature allowed me to also implement a new player in QtWebKit using the POT driver to stream content to the regular Qt QWebView. Unfortunately I could only find the time to implement this in the WebKit 1 branch, not in WebKit 2 which requires more work. This makes the implementation hardly useful, but it is a start. If anyone wanted to contribute this is where to start. This video shows the new implementation in action:

As QtWebKit now uses the GPU properly, I could also implement a YouTube player app using the same QWebView with just a few lines of code of regular Qt code:

In the video you can also see an application I wrote to implement a YouTube fullscreen player using the YouTube iframe API. Such a sample app is also included in the package.

Of course the real target would be to implement this in QtWebEngine. I was never able to find a version of QtWebEngine with video acceleration for Pi. Anyone who knows one?

Package

The package now includes:

• build_valgrind.tar: a build of valgrind to analyse your code;
• libpiomxtextures_qmlutils.so: QML plugin to provide a video probe in QML;
• piomxtextures_browser_we: an application that tests the QtWebEngine module (run passing a URL, ./piomxtextures_browser_we http://www.youtube.com);
• piomxtextures_browser_wk: an application that tests the QtWebKit module:
• you can run on WebKit 1 like ./piomxtextures_browser_wk http://www.youtube.com;
• or you can run on WebKit 2 like ./piomxtextures_browser_wk --wk2 http://www.youtube.com;
• piomxtextures_pocplayer: a sample QML player;
• piomxtextures_pocplayer_yt: a youtube sample player (run passing a video ID like ./piomxtextures_pocplayer_yt 71UvXMzVgx4);
• qtdeps.tar: the usual libs needed by Qt and POT;
• Qt-rasp2-5.6.0.tar: a build of Qt 5.6.0 stable including:
• regular Qt 5.6.0 modules;
• untested bluetooth module including BLE support;
• untested MySQL plugin;
• untested QtFtp module;
• untested Qt hat tools module;
• QtWebEngine;
• QtWebKit.

Please report any bug you find on github. Don't use in production. Sources will be available shortly. Have fun! ;-)

Download POT 5.3.0-beta1 for Raspbian Jessie Lite Pi2 (also tested on Pi3) here (md5: edbe0ad2a552a5c8280e3876d16b237d).

Binaries for Hardware Accelerated Qt 5.6.0-rc1 Multimedia Backend on Raspbian Jessie Lite (POT 5.2.2)

This is a new build including a video probe to monitor frames being rendered. I also included a plugin to access video probe functionalities from QML. You can use it like this:

POT_VideoProbe {
   source: mediaPlayer
   onVideoFrameProbed: console.log("Frame probed!")
}

where mediaPlayer is an element of type MediaPlayer. Modifying the frame is not probably possible at the moment.

Have fun! Bye ;-)

Download PiOmxTextures 5.2.2 for Raspbian Jessie Pi2 here (extraction code is: 2bd6, md5:
   8be82eee7498e63e63ecbe17cb3eb7ef).

Binaries for Hardware Accelerated Qt 5.6.0-rc1 Multimedia Backend on Raspbian Jessie Lite (POT 5.2.1)

This the same build provided in the firmware from the previous post. It includes a couple of fixes over 5.2.0 and the new Qt 5.6.0-rc1. Refer to this article for more information.
Please file issues on github if needed.
Bye! ;-)

Download PiOmxTextures 5.2.1 for Raspbian Jessie Pi2 here (extraction code is: 62c9, md5: 356e2004dfeb9017a482e2448750121e).

Fully Optimised Raspbian Jessie Lite with Accelerated Qt Multimedia Backend (Pi2)

This is a follow-up to the image provided in this article. The concept is identical, but in this case this firmware is smaller, it is based on Raspbian Jessie Lite and includes updated software. The firmware was 1.9GB while now is 759MB. This is the current setup (but I encourage to update to the latest possible firmware):

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ vcgencmd version
Feb 25 2016 14:25:47 
Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
version dea971b793dd6cf89133ede5a8362eb77e4f4ade (clean) (release)
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 4.1.18-v7+ #846 SMP Thu Feb 25 14:22:53 GMT 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux

Download the image here (torrent) (md5: 06d75d03f63674350be6cb807850bf09).
(Please be patient while downloading and decompressing)

The image includes:

• Qt 5.6.0-rc1: built for armv7 with neon optimisations, including support for touch screens, gstreamer, libinput, tslib, and Bluetooth/Bluetooth BLE using bluez (complete configuration below).
• QtWebKit 5.6.0: includes WebKit 1 and WebKit 2.
• QtWebEngine 5.6.0-rc1: multimedia only based on ffmpeg.
• Dependant libs: evdev, icu (not the one provided by raspbian), mtdev, libts.
• Samples: samples from the repo to test POT.
• POT: POT version 5.2.1 including ffmpeg 2.8.6.

Samples

To have a quick look at multimedia in Qt/QML test with this commands:

• /usr/local/Qt-rasp2-5.6.0-rc1/bin/qmlscene "some_video_file" samples/video_simple.qml
• /usr/local/Qt-rasp2-5.6.0-rc1/bin/qmlscene "some_url" samples/webkit_simple.qml
• /usr/local/Qt-rasp2-5.6.0-rc1/bin/qmlscene "some_url" samples/webengine_simple.qml
• /home/pi/piomxtextures_pocplayer --multipleanimtest "720p_video_1" "720p_video_2"

Please let me know if you find something wrong and file a bugreport on https://github.com/carlonluca/pi.

Have fun! ;-)

Binaries for POT 5.1.0 With Remote Streaming Support

This is an experimental build of POT 5.1.0 including support for remote streaming. I tested it for HTTP/HTTPS with YouTube but it should work with other protocols supported by ffmpeg as well.

In case someone is interested in testing it please let me know. This is a build for Pi2 on Qt 5.6.0-beta1. To quickly test you can use POCPlayer:

./piomxtextures_pocplayer "https://something.com/..."

The streaming should start right away.

Download here the build for Pi2 on Qt 5.6.0-beta1 (extraction code is: bfc7).

Have fun! Bye ;-)

Binaries for Hardware Accelerated Qt 5.6.0-beta1 Multimedia Backend on Raspbian Jessie (POT 5.2.0)

This new build is identical to the previous one but includes a few changes in the library:

• Bump to ffmpeg from 2.7.2 to 2.8.5 to fix some rare crashes.
• Multiple fixes that were causing bug #51.
• Other minor fixes.

Download PiOmxTextures 5.2.0 for Raspbian Jessie Pi2 here (extraction code is: cd4f).

Please file bug reports in case of issues and have fun! Bye ;-)

NOTE: If you need to test the samples please keep in mind that Qt 5.6.0 seems to have changed the order of the params to provide to qmlscene: the qml file must appear at the end.

Binaries for Hardware Accelerated Qt 5.6.0-beta1 Multimedia Backend on Raspbian Jessie (POT 5.1.0)

This is a experimental build of POT 5.1.0 running on Qt 5.6.0-beta1 built for Raspbian Jessie for armv7 (Raspberry Pi 2). Do not use in production. The package includes:

• Qt 5.6.0-beta1 optimised for armv7.
• QtConnectivity including BLE support.
• QtWebKit including both WebKit 1 and WebKit 2. Video decoding is implemented in WebKit with gstreamer (won't even do 720p properly).
• QtWebEngine with unaccelerated video decoding using ffmpeg.
• QtFtp.
• valgrind-3.12.0.SVN: using it on PiOmxTextures requires to disable libarmmem.so in /etc/ld.so.preload. Also the default valgrind in Raspbian was not working for me.
• POT 5.1.0 for accelerated playback in Qt.

No accelerated video playback is implemented in QtWebKit nor QtWebEngine in this build. CSS animations instead are properly accelerated when OpenGL rendering is used.

Download PiOmxTextures 5.1.0 for Raspbian Jessie Pi2 here (extraction code is: 508d).

Playing YouTube Videos on Raspberry Pi 2 Using POT and QtWebKit

This is the first attempt at playing YouTube videos using POT and QtWebKit on Raspberry Pi 2 (Raspbian Jessie). I tried two ways: one is from the YouTube website and one is using the iframe YouTube API. What you'll see in the video is done using the old WebKit 1 in QtWebKit with the OpenGL paint engine. This is good if you need to place a YouTube video in your application. Unfortunately this is still very experimental and cannot be placed in QML applications. Much more work is needed for that.

Unfortunately what you'll see in the demo is just HD quality (720p). YouTube doesn't seem to be willing to let my Pi have the 1080p version for some reason.

Have fun! ;-)

Hands-on WebKit and HTML5 Media Elements on Raspberry Pi

I tried to do this a few months ago actually, but I got lost in the huge amount of code and architecture variants of WebKit. Now I convinced myself it would be too interesting to see it working. I don't have much spare time, so I wanted to start with the path of least-resistance and then, depending on the time available, continue climbing. This activity is very time consuming, so I do not know where I'll get.

This is however the first stage: using POT to implement 1080p hardware accelerated zero-copy video playback in the Qt port of WebKit1. No QML here. Of no use, but it somehow works. I read there are far better results out there, but I learned much by doing this, and I had fun :-)
Of course, as you can see, there is much much work being done in the UI thread. JavaScript is mostly run in the main thread, making the framerate pretty bad on heavy websites. That is why WebKit2 is there after all :-)

Demo

Bye! ;-)

Binaries for Hardware Accelerated Qt 5.5.1 Multimedia Backend on Raspbian Jessie (POT 5.1.0)

This is a build of version 5.1.0 for Raspbian Jessie of POT that includes Qt 5.5.1. As many asked in the past, this version also includes the QtWebKit module (WebKit1 and WebKit2). The changes are:

• Fixed bugs reported on github.
• New environment variables used for controlling deinterlacing:
• POT_HALF_FRAMERATE_MODE: if set to 1 the number of frames sent to the renderer are halved. This is needed mostly when using deinterlacing.
• POT_TEXTURE_COUNT: number of texture to be used when buffering. Default is 4.
• POT_DEINTERLACE_MODE: the type of deinterlacing; 0 means off, 1 means auto and 2 means on.
• POT_DEINTERLACE_QPU: 0 or 1; indicates whether to use the QPU for deinterlacing.
• Added watchdogs to monitor the video capabilities and discover instability. These are currently disable but you can enable if needed.
• Some other minor fixes and improvements.

Please remember to update the firmware to the latest possible version as it includes a fix relevant to POT.
Please file bugs to github if you experience issues.
Bye! ;-)

Download PiOmxTextures 5.1.0 for Raspbian Jessie Pi2 here (extraction code is: bd4f).
Download PiOmxTextures 5.1.0 for Raspbian Jessie Pi2 with Bluetooth (BLE) here.

This is the configure summary of the Qt build:
   Configure summary

Building on:   linux-g++ (x86_64, CPU features: mmx sse sse2)
Building for:  devices/linux-rasp-pi2-g++ (arm, CPU features: neon)
Platform notes:

            - Also available for Linux: linux-clang linux-kcc linux-icc linux-cxx
        
qmake vars .......... styles += mac fusion windows QT_CFLAGS_GLIB = -pthread -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include  QT_LIBS_GLIB = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -lgthread-2.0 -pthread -lglib-2.0  QT_CFLAGS_PULSEAUDIO = -D_REENTRANT -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include  QT_LIBS_PULSEAUDIO = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -lpulse-mainloop-glib -lpulse -lglib-2.0  QMAKE_CFLAGS_FONTCONFIG = -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/include/freetype2  QMAKE_LIBS_FONTCONFIG = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -lfontconfig -lfreetype  QMAKE_INCDIR_LIBUDEV =  QMAKE_LIBS_LIBUDEV = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -ludev  QMAKE_LIBINPUT_VERSION_MAJOR = 1 QMAKE_LIBINPUT_VERSION_MINOR = 0 QMAKE_INCDIR_LIBINPUT = /opt/rpi/sysroot/home/pi/qtdeps/include  QMAKE_LIBS_LIBINPUT = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/home/pi/qtdeps/lib -linput  QMAKE_LIBXI_VERSION_MAJOR = 1 QMAKE_LIBXI_VERSION_MINOR = 7 QMAKE_LIBXI_VERSION_PATCH = 4 QMAKE_X11_PREFIX = /usr QMAKE_XKB_CONFIG_ROOT = /usr/share/X11/xkb QMAKE_CFLAGS_XCB =  QMAKE_LIBS_XCB = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -lxcb-sync -lxcb-xfixes -lxcb-render -lxcb-randr -lxcb-image -lxcb-shm -lxcb-keysyms -lxcb-icccm -lxcb-shape -lxcb  INCLUDEPATH +=  "/opt/rpi/sysroot/home/pi/qtdeps/include" LIBS +=  -L"/opt/rpi/sysroot/home/pi/qtdeps/lib" sql-drivers =  sql-plugins =  sqlite qmake switches ......... 

Build options:
  Configuration .......... accessibility accessibility-atspi-bridge alsa audio-backend c++11 clock-gettime clock-monotonic compile_examples concurrent cross_compile cups dbus egl eglfs eglfs_brcm enable_new_dtags evdev eventfd fontconfig full-config getaddrinfo getifaddrs glib gstreamer-1.0 harfbuzz iconv icu inotify ipv6ifname large-config largefile libinput libproxy libudev linuxfb medium-config minimal-config mremap mtdev neon nis opengl opengles2 openssl pcre png posix_fallocate pulseaudio qpa qpa reduce_exports release rpath shared small-config system-freetype system-jpeg system-png system-zlib tslib use_gold_linker xcb xcb-glx xcb-plugin xcb-render xcb-xlib xinput2 xkbcommon-qt xlib xrender 
  Build parts ............  libs examples
  Mode ................... release
  Using sanitizer(s)...... none
  Using C++11 ............ yes
  Using gold linker....... yes
  Using new DTAGS ........ yes
  Using PCH .............. no
  Target compiler supports:
    Neon ................. yes

Qt modules and options:
  Qt D-Bus ............... yes (loading dbus-1 at runtime)
  Qt Concurrent .......... yes
  Qt GUI ................. yes
  Qt Widgets ............. yes
  Large File ............. yes
  QML debugging .......... yes
  Use system proxies ..... no

Support enabled for:
  Accessibility .......... yes
  ALSA ................... yes
  CUPS ................... yes
  Evdev .................. yes
  FontConfig ............. yes
  FreeType ............... yes (system library)
  Glib ................... yes
  GStreamer .............. yes (1.0)
  GTK theme .............. no
  HarfBuzz ............... yes (bundled copy)
  Iconv .................. yes
  ICU .................... yes
  Image formats: 
    GIF .................. yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    JPEG ................. yes (plugin, using system library)
    PNG .................. yes (in QtGui, using system library)
  journald ............... no
  libinput................ yes
  mtdev .................. yes (system library)
  Networking: 
    getaddrinfo .......... yes
    getifaddrs ........... yes
    IPv6 ifname .......... yes
    libproxy.............. yes
    OpenSSL .............. yes (loading libraries at run-time)
  NIS .................... yes
  OpenGL / OpenVG: 
    EGL .................. yes
    OpenGL ............... yes (OpenGL ES 2.0+)
    OpenVG ............... no
  PCRE ................... yes (bundled copy)
  pkg-config ............. yes 
  PulseAudio ............. yes
  QPA backends: 
    DirectFB ............. no
    EGLFS ................ yes
      EGLFS i.MX6....... . no
      EGLFS KMS .......... no
      EGLFS Mali ......... no
      EGLFS Raspberry Pi . yes
      EGLFS X11 .......... no
    LinuxFB .............. yes
    XCB .................. yes (system library)
      EGL on X ........... no
      GLX ................ yes
      MIT-SHM ............ yes
      Xcb-Xlib ........... yes
      Xcursor ............ yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xfixes ............. yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xi ................. no
      Xi2 ................ yes
      Xinerama ........... yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xrandr ............. yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xrender ............ yes
      XKB ................ yes
      XShape ............. yes
      XSync .............. yes
      XVideo ............. yes
  Session management ..... yes
  SQL drivers: 
    DB2 .................. no
    InterBase ............ no
    MySQL ................ no
    OCI .................. no
    ODBC ................. no
    PostgreSQL ........... no
    SQLite 2 ............. no
    SQLite ............... yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    TDS .................. no
  tslib .................. yes
  udev ................... yes
  xkbcommon-x11........... yes (bundled copy, XKB config root: /usr/share/X11/xkb)
  xkbcommon-evdev......... no
  zlib ................... yes (system library)

Raspbian Wheezy 05.05.2015 including Qt 5.5.0 and Accelerated Qt Multimedia Backend

As some asked in the past, this is a Raspbian Wheezy image 05.05.2015 with fully working POT built for armv6 (which therefore works on both Pi 1 and Pi 2). It includes Qt 5.5.0, POT, ffmpeg 2.7.2 and all the libs needed by Qt not provided by Raspbian.

Download Raspbian 05.05.2015 with Qt, ffmpeg, POT and all dependencies here (extraction code is: 22e9).

Sorry but the download will probably take very long.

Flash it on a micro SD-card and test by running some of the QML samples I placed in there:

/usr/local/Qt-rasp-5.5.0/bin/qmlscene samples/video_position.qml file:///home/pi/big_buck_bunny_1080p_h264.mov

Those are mostly tests for debugging so they won't make much sense. Also you can run a command like this:

./piomxtextures_pocplayer --multipleanimtest /home/pi/big_buck_bunny_720p_h264.mov /home/pi/big_buck_bunny_720p_h264.mov

(You'll need to transfer a 720p video for this demo as it will be running both videos concurrently.) On Pi 2 the result you'd get with full optimisations is this:

The version of POT included is 5.0.0. I don't test the samples for every release so it is possible some do not work. You can go to https://github.com/carlonluca/pi/tree/master/piomxtextures_samples and get updates.

This image only makes sense for a quick test, it is not fully optimised and it is not even built with armv7 optimisations for Pi 2. I may provide updates in the future if I got a considerable amount of requests (unfortunately uploading full images requires a considerable amount of time).

You can however write your own qml samples and run right away. You can rebuild just the library and replace it to strip away debug messages or to build a newer version. Also you can write your Qt apps, cross compile using your environment and run on the pi.

As usual report bugs to github.

Bye ;-)

Binaries for Hardware Accelerated Qt 5.5.0 Multimedia Backend on Raspbian Jessie (Pi 2 only)

As someone asked, I tried to port POT to the recently released Raspbian Jessie. Everything works pretty much the same, except for a few changes. Unfortunately I needed to rebuild icu as well, the system build seemed not compatible as the compiler was updated to 4.9 in jessie. The new icu is provided in qtdeps inside the package. Everything seems to work as expected. Please report to github issues. For the moment only a build for Pi2 is provided.

Download PiOmxTextures 5.0.0 for Pi2 (Raspbian Jessie) here (extraction code is: 1e45).

NOTE:
The Qt build includes support for XCB platform but I never tested POT on XCB. This is the configuration of the Qt 5.5.0 build included in the package:

   Configure summary

Building on:   linux-g++ (x86_64, CPU features: mmx sse sse2)
Building for:  devices/linux-rasp-pi2-g++ (arm, CPU features: neon)
Platform notes:

            - Also available for Linux: linux-kcc linux-icc linux-cxx
        
qmake vars .......... styles += mac fusion windows QT_CFLAGS_GLIB = -pthread -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include  QT_LIBS_GLIB = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -lgthread-2.0 -pthread -lglib-2.0  QT_CFLAGS_PULSEAUDIO = -D_REENTRANT -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include  QT_LIBS_PULSEAUDIO = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -lpulse-mainloop-glib -lpulse -lglib-2.0  QMAKE_CFLAGS_FONTCONFIG = -I/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/include/freetype2  QMAKE_LIBS_FONTCONFIG = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -lfontconfig -lfreetype  QMAKE_INCDIR_LIBUDEV =  QMAKE_LIBS_LIBUDEV = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -ludev  QMAKE_INCDIR_XKBCOMMON_EVDEV =  QMAKE_LIBS_XKBCOMMON_EVDEV = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -lxkbcommon  QMAKE_LIBINPUT_VERSION_MAJOR = 1 QMAKE_LIBINPUT_VERSION_MINOR = 0 QMAKE_INCDIR_LIBINPUT = /opt/rpi/sysroot/home/pi/qtdeps/include  QMAKE_LIBS_LIBINPUT = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/home/pi/qtdeps/lib -linput  QMAKE_LIBXI_VERSION_MAJOR = 1 QMAKE_LIBXI_VERSION_MINOR = 7 QMAKE_LIBXI_VERSION_PATCH = 4 QMAKE_X11_PREFIX = /usr QMAKE_XKB_CONFIG_ROOT = /usr/share/X11/xkb QMAKE_CFLAGS_XCB =  QMAKE_LIBS_XCB = -L/opt/rpi/sysroot/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf -lxcb-sync -lxcb-xfixes -lxcb-render -lxcb-randr -lxcb-image -lxcb-shm -lxcb-keysyms -lxcb-icccm -lxcb-shape -lxcb  INCLUDEPATH +=  "/opt/rpi/sysroot/home/pi/qtdeps/include" LIBS +=  -L"/opt/rpi/sysroot/home/pi/qtdeps/lib" sql-drivers =  sql-plugins =  sqlite qmake switches ......... 

Build options:
  Configuration .......... accessibility accessibility-atspi-bridge alsa audio-backend c++11 clock-gettime clock-monotonic compile_examples concurrent cross_compile cups dbus egl eglfs eglfs_brcm enable_new_dtags evdev eventfd fontconfig full-config getaddrinfo getifaddrs glib gstreamer-1.0 harfbuzz iconv icu inotify ipv6ifname large-config largefile libinput libproxy libudev linuxfb medium-config minimal-config mremap mtdev neon nis opengl opengles2 openssl pcre png posix_fallocate pulseaudio qpa qpa reduce_exports release rpath shared small-config system-freetype system-png system-zlib tslib use_gold_linker xcb xcb-glx xcb-plugin xcb-render xcb-xlib xinput2 xkbcommon-evdev xkbcommon-qt xlib xrender 
  Build parts ............  libs examples
  Mode ................... release
  Using sanitizer(s)...... none                                                                                                                              
  Using C++11 ............ yes                                                                                                                               
  Using gold linker....... yes                                                                                                                               
  Using new DTAGS ........ yes                                                                                                                               
  Using PCH .............. no
  Target compiler supports:
    Neon ................. yes

Qt modules and options:
  Qt D-Bus ............... yes (loading dbus-1 at runtime)
  Qt Concurrent .......... yes
  Qt GUI ................. yes
  Qt Widgets ............. yes
  Large File ............. yes
  QML debugging .......... yes
  Use system proxies ..... no

Support enabled for:
  Accessibility .......... yes
  ALSA ................... yes
  CUPS ................... yes
  Evdev .................. yes
  FontConfig ............. yes
  FreeType ............... yes (system library)
  Glib ................... yes
  GStreamer .............. yes (1.0)
  GTK theme .............. no
  HarfBuzz ............... yes (bundled copy)
  Iconv .................. yes
  ICU .................... yes
  Image formats: 
    GIF .................. yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    JPEG ................. yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    PNG .................. yes (in QtGui, using system library)
  journald ............... no
  libinput................ yes
  mtdev .................. yes (system library)
  Networking: 
    getaddrinfo .......... yes
    getifaddrs ........... yes
    IPv6 ifname .......... yes
    libproxy.............. yes
    OpenSSL .............. yes (loading libraries at run-time)
  NIS .................... yes
  OpenGL / OpenVG: 
    EGL .................. yes
    OpenGL ............... yes (OpenGL ES 2.0+)
    OpenVG ............... no
  PCRE ................... yes (bundled copy)
  pkg-config ............. yes 
  PulseAudio ............. yes
  QPA backends: 
    DirectFB ............. no
    EGLFS ................ yes
      EGLFS i.MX6....... . no
      EGLFS KMS .......... no
      EGLFS Mali ......... no
      EGLFS Raspberry Pi . yes
      EGLFS X11 .......... no
    LinuxFB .............. yes
    XCB .................. yes (system library)
      EGL on X ........... no
      GLX ................ yes
      MIT-SHM ............ yes
      Xcb-Xlib ........... yes
      Xcursor ............ yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xfixes ............. yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xi ................. no
      Xi2 ................ yes
      Xinerama ........... yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xrandr ............. yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xrender ............ yes
      XKB ................ yes
      XShape ............. yes
      XSync .............. yes
      XVideo ............. yes
  Session management ..... yes
  SQL drivers: 
    DB2 .................. no
    InterBase ............ no
    MySQL ................ no
    OCI .................. no
    ODBC ................. no
    PostgreSQL ........... no
    SQLite 2 ............. no
    SQLite ............... yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    TDS .................. no
  tslib .................. yes
  udev ................... yes
  xkbcommon-x11........... yes (bundled copy, XKB config root: /usr/share/X11/xkb)
  xkbcommon-evdev......... yes
  zlib ................... yes (system library)