Question

I have an application that sends raw h264 NALUs as generated from encoding on the fly using x264 x264_encoder_encode. I am getting them through plain TCP so I am not missing any frames.
I need to be able to decode such a stream in the client using Hardware Acceleration in Windows (DXVA2). I have been struggling to find a way to get this to work using FFMPEG. Perhaps it may be easier to try Media Foundation or DirectShow, but they won’t take raw H264.
I either need to:

1. Change the code from the server application to give back an mp4 stream. I am not that experienced with x264. I was able to get raw H264 by calling x264_encoder_encode, by following the answer to this question: How does one encode a series of images into H264 using the x264 C API? How can I go from this to something that is wrapped in MP4 while still being able to stream it in realtime

2. I could at the receiver wrap it with mp4 headers and feed it into something that can play it using DXVA. I wouldn’t know how to do this

3. I could find another way to accelerate it using DXVA with FFMPEG or something else that takes it in raw format.

An important restriction is that I need to be able to pre-process each decoded frame before displaying it. Any solution that does decoding and displaying in a single step would not work for me

I would be fine with either solution

Answer 1

I believe you should be able to use H.264 packets off the wire with Media Foundation. there’s an example on page 298 of this book http://www.docstoc.com/docs/109589628/Developing-Microsoft-Media-Foundation-Applications# that use a HTTP stream with Media Foundation.

I’m only learning Media Foundation myself and am trying to do a similar thing to you, in my case I want to use H.264 payloads from an RTP packet, and from my understanding that will require a custom IMFSourceReader. Accessing the decoded frames should also be possible from what I’ve read since there seems to be complete flexibility in chaining components together into topologies.