ROS image transport for FFmpeg encoding

This ROS image transport supports encoding/decoding with the FFMpeg library. With this transport, you can encode h264 and h265, using nvidia hardware acceleration when available.

Downloading

Create a catkin workspace (if not already there) and download the ffmpeg image transport and other required packages:

mkdir -p catkin_ws/src
cd catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/daniilidis-group/ffmpeg_image_transport_msgs.git
git clone https://github.com/daniilidis-group/ffmpeg_image_transport.git

Requirements: FFmpeg v4.0 or later

If you have ffmpeg 4.0, you may be able to compile against default header files:

sudo apt install ffmpeg

If you don't have ffmpeg 4.0 or later, compile ffmpeg from scratch, and point the transport to the right place:

ffmpeg_dir=<here the ffmpeg_dir>
catkin config -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DFFMPEG_LIB=${ffmpeg_dir}/build/lib -DFFMPEG_INC=${ffmpeg_dir}/build/include

Compiling

This should be easy as running the following inside your catkin workspace

catkin config -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

or, if you have your own version of ffmpeg installaed under ${ffmpeg_dir (see above)

catkin config -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DFFMPEG_LIB=${ffmpeg_dir}/build/lib -DFFMPEG_INC=${ffmpeg_dir}/build/include

then compile should be as easy as this:

catkin build ffmpeg_image_transport

Trouble shooting:

On e.g. Ubuntu 16.04, you need a newer version of ffmpeg. If you get an error like this one, you need a newer version of ffmpeg:

In member function ‘bool ffmpeg_image_transport::FFMPEGDecoder::decodePacket(const ConstPtr&)’:
/home/pfrommer/Documents/birds/src/ffmpeg_image_transport/src/ffmpeg_decoder.cpp:104:47:
error: ‘avcodec_send_packet’ was not declared in this scope
int ret = avcodec_send_packet(ctx, &packet);

If the build still fails, make sure you start from scratch:

catkin clean ffmpeg_image_transport