[Libav-user] True zero latency H264 encoding and decoding

[WIERSEMA Peter]

Hi,

I'm trying to create an application where the video of a camera is encoded and transported to a client via a LAN (UDP), with as less latency as possible. I use the FFMpeg API on both the server and client side. The source has a rate of 50 Hz. I've opted for the following:

  * encoder: libx264 (tune zerolatency, preset ultrafast, sliced threads; about 4 threads seems optimal)
  * protocol: UDP (either uni-cast or muli-cast)
  * format/muxer: mpegts

The ultimate goal is to have the picture on the screen of the client in only a few tens of milliseconds (lets say 100ms max). I've read a lot of guides resulting in that there is no added latency on the server side, i.e. an encoded H264 frame gets transported immediately; Great! On the client side, however, one frame is always held back. It seems that the mpegts demuxer is the cause.

I'm using av_read_frame() to read a complete frame. Consequently, the mpegts demuxer needs to be able to find the end of a frame in the bitstream. From looking at the code, i think the mpegts demuxer returns a complete frame, only when the beginning of the next frame is received, hence the extra latency of one frame.

Is there a way the eliminate the extra delay of one frame when demuxing? Possibly using a different muxer/demuxer? Any other advice?

I'm using the latest FFmpeg 2.2.1 and libx264 20131210-2245-stable.

Peter

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