h264_video_encoder

Overview

This package provides a ROS Node that will encode a stream of images into an H264 video stream.

Keywords: ROS, AWS, Kinesis

License

The source code is released under LGPL 2.1. However, this package uses h264_encoder_core which incorporates several different encoding components which may further restrict the license. By default, x264 is used for software encoding, thereby applying GPL to all of h264_video_encoder.

Author: AWS RoboMaker
Affiliation: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Maintainer: AWS RoboMaker, ros-contributions@amazon.com

Supported ROS Distributions

• Kinetic
• Lunar
• Melodic

Build status

• Travis CI:
• ROS build farm:
  • v1.0.0:
    • ROS Kinetic @ u16.04 Xenial

Installation

Building from Source

Create a ROS workspace and a source directory

mkdir -p ~/ros-workspace/src

To build from source, clone the latest version from master branch and compile the package.

• Clone the package into the source directory

    cd ~/ros-workspace/src
    git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-ros-utils-common.git
    git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-ros-utils-ros1.git
    git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-ros-kinesisvideo-encoder-common.git
    git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-ros-kinesisvideo-encoder-ros1.git
  

• Install dependencies

    cd ~/ros-workspace && sudo apt-get update
    rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
  

• Build the packages

    cd ~/ros-workspace && colcon build
  

• Configure ROS library Path

    source ~/ros-workspace/install/setup.bash
  

• Build and run the unit tests

    colcon build --packages-select h264_video_encoder --cmake-target tests
    colcon test --packages-select h264_video_encoder h264_encoder core && colcon test-results --all
  

Building on Cloud9 - Cross Compilation

• In RoboMaker's Cloud9, start with an empty workspace and in the Cloud9 console:

   # build docker image
   cd /opt/robomaker/cross-compilation-dockerfile/
   sudo bin/build_image.bash  # this step will take a while
  
   # create workspace
   mkdir -p ~/environment/robot_ws/src
   cd ~/environment/robot_ws/src
   git clone https://github.com/aws-robotics/kinesisvideo-encoder-common.git
   git clone https://github.com/aws-robotics/kinesisvideo-encoder-ros1.git
  
   # run docker image
   cd ..
   sudo docker run -v $(pwd):/ws -it ros-cross-compile:armhf
  

• Now you're inside the cross-compilation docker container

   # build the workspace
   cd ws
   apt update
   rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y  # this step will take a while
   colcon build --build-base armhf_build --install-base armhf_install
   colcon bundle --build-base armhf_build --install-base armhf_install --bundle-base armhf_bundle --apt-sources-list /opt/cross/apt-sources.yaml   # this step will take a while
   exit
  

• Now you're oustide the cross-compilation docker container

   # for more on copying s3 buckets see: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/s3/cp.html
   aws s3 cp armhf_bundle/output.tar.gz s3://<bucket_name_in_your_robomaker_account>/h264_video_encoder.armhf.tar
  

Launch Files

A launch file called h264_video_encoder.launch is included in this package. The launch file uses the following arguments:

Arg Name	Description
node_name	(optional) The name the H264 encoder node should be launched with. If not provided, the node name will default to h264_video_encoder
config_file	(optional) A path to a rosparam config file.

An example launch file called sample_application.launch is included in this project that gives an example of how you can include this node in your project and provide it with arguments.

Usage

Running the node

To launch the H264 encoder node, you can run the following command:

roslaunch h264_video_encoder sample_application.launch

Configuration File and Parameters

An example configuration file called sample_configuration.yaml is provided for running the H264 encoder node on a Raspberry Pi based system. When the parameters are absent in the ROS parameter server, default values are used, thus all parameters are optional. See table below for details.

Parameter Name	Description	Type
queue_size	(optional) The maximum number of incoming and outgoing messages to be queued towards the subscribed and publishing topics.	integer
output_width	(optional) The desired width (in pixels) of each frame in the encoded video output.	integer
output_height	(optional) The desired height (in pixels) of each frame in the encoded video output.	integer
fps_numerator	(optional) The desired frames per second (the numerator portion when expressing FPS as a rational number) for the encoded video output.	integer
fps_denominator	(optional) The desired frames per second (the denominator portion when expressing FPS as a rational number) for the encoded video output.	integer
bitrate	(optional) The desired bitrate (in bits per second) of the encoded video output.	integer

Node Details

Published Topics

Topic Name	Message Type	Description
Configurable (default="video/encoded")	kinesis_video_msgs/KinesisVideoFrame	The node will publish to a topic of a given name. Each message being published contains a chunk of the video stream, usually per video frame.

Subscribed Topics

Topic Name	Message Type	Description
Configurable (default="/raspicam_node/image")	sensor_msgs/Image	The node will subscribe to a topic of a given name. The data is expected to be a stream of images from a source (such as a Raspberry Pi camera).

Bugs & Feature Requests

Please contact the team directly if you would like to request a feature.

Please report bugs in Issue Tracker.