How to encode a video from several images generated in a C++ program without writing the separate frame images to disk?

Question

I am writing a C++ code where a sequence of N different frames is generated after performing some operations implemented therein. After each frame is completed, I write it on the disk as IMG_%d.png, and finally I encode them to a video through ffmpeg using the x264 codec.

The summarized pseudocode of the main part of the program is the following one:

std::vector<int> B(width*height*3); for (i=0; i<N; i++) {   // void generateframe(std::vector<int> &, int)   generateframe(B, i); // Returns different images for different i values.   sprintf(s, "IMG_%d.png", i+1);   WriteToDisk(B, s); // void WriteToDisk(std::vector<int>, char[]) } 

The problem of this implementation is that the number of desired frames, N, is usually high (N~100000) as well as the resolution of the pictures (1920x1080), resulting into an overload of the disk, producing write cycles of dozens of GB after each execution.

In order to avoid this, I have been trying to find documentation about parsing directly each image stored in the vector B to an encoder such as x264 (without having to write the intermediate image files to the disk). Albeit some interesting topics were found, none of them solved specifically what I exactly want to, as many of them concern the execution of the encoder with existing images files on the disk, whilst others provide solutions for other programming languages such as Python (here you can find a fully satisfactory solution for that platform).

The pseudocode of what I would like to obtain is something similar to this:

std::vector<int> B(width*height*3); video_file=open_video("Generated_Video.mp4", ...[encoder options]...); for (i=0; i<N; i++) {   generateframe(B, i+1);   add_frame(video_file, B); } video_file.close(); 

According to what I have read on related topics, the x264 C++ API might be able to do this, but, as stated above, I did not find a satisfactory answer for my specific question. I tried learning and using directly the ffmpeg source code, but both its low ease of use and compilation issues forced me to discard this possibility as a mere non-professional programmer I am (I take it as just as a hobby and unluckily I cannot waste that many time learning something so demanding).

Another possible solution that came to my mind is to find a way to call the ffmpeg binary file in the C++ code, and somehow manage to transfer the image data of each iteration (stored in B) to the encoder, letting the addition of each frame (that is, not "closing" the video file to write) until the last frame, so that more frames can be added until reaching the N-th one, where the video file will be "closed". In other words, call ffmpeg.exe through the C++ program to write the first frame to a video, but make the encoder "wait" for more frames. Then call again ffmpeg to add the second frame and make the encoder "wait" again for more frames, and so on until reaching the last frame, where the video will be finished. However, I do not know how to proceed or if it is actually possible.

Edit 1:

As suggested in the replies, I have been documenting about named pipes and tried to use them in my code. First of all, it should be remarked that I am working with Cygwin, so my named pipes are created as they would be created under Linux. The modified pseudocode I used (including the corresponding system libraries) is the following one:

FILE *fd; mkfifo("myfifo", 0666);  for (i=0; i<N; i++) {   fd=fopen("myfifo", "wb");   generateframe(B, i+1);   WriteToPipe(B, fd); // void WriteToPipe(std::vector<int>, FILE *&fd)   fflush(fd);   fd=fclose("myfifo"); } unlink("myfifo"); 

WriteToPipe is a slight modification of the previous WriteToFile function, where I made sure that the write buffer to send the image data is small enough to fit the pipe buffering limitations.

Then I compile and write the following command in the Cygwin terminal:

./myprogram | ffmpeg -i pipe:myfifo -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 20 Video.mp4 

However, it remains stuck at the loop when i=0 at the "fopen" line (that is, the first fopen call). If I had not called ffmpeg it would be natural as the server (my program) would be waiting for a client program to connect to the "other side" of the pipe, but it is not the case. It looks like they cannot be connected through the pipe somehow, but I have not been able to find further documentation in order to overcome this issue. Any suggestion?

Answer 1

Thanks for your excellent work, @ksb496 !

One minor improvement:

c=avcodec_alloc_context3(codec); 

should be better written as:

c = stream->codec; 

to avoid a memory leak.

If you don't mind, I've uploaded the complete ready-to-deploy library onto GitHub: https://github.com/apc-llc/moviemaker-cpp.git

Answer 2

After some intense struggle, I finally managed to make it work after learning a bit how to use the FFmpeg and libx264 C APIs for my specific purpose, thanks to the useful information that some users provided in this site and some others, as well as some FFmpeg's documentation examples. For the sake of illustration, the details will be presented next.

First of all, the libx264 C library was compiled and, after that, the FFmpeg one with the configure options --enable-gpl --enable-libx264. Now let us go to the coding. The relevant part of the code that achieved the requested purpose is the following one:

Includes:

#include <stdint.h> extern "C"{ #include <x264.h> #include <libswscale/swscale.h> #include <libavcodec/avcodec.h> #include <libavutil/mathematics.h> #include <libavformat/avformat.h> #include <libavutil/opt.h> } 

LDFLAGS on Makefile:

-lx264 -lswscale -lavutil -lavformat -lavcodec 

Inner code (for the sake of simplicity, the error checkings will be omitted and the variable declarations will be done when needed instead of the beginning for better understanding):

av_register_all(); // Loads the whole database of available codecs and formats.  struct SwsContext* convertCtx = sws_getContext(width, height, AV_PIX_FMT_RGB24, width, height, AV_PIX_FMT_YUV420P, SWS_FAST_BILINEAR, NULL, NULL, NULL); // Preparing to convert my generated RGB images to YUV frames.  // Preparing the data concerning the format and codec in order to write properly the header, frame data and end of file. char *fmtext="mp4"; char *filename; sprintf(filename, "GeneratedVideo.%s", fmtext); AVOutputFormat * fmt = av_guess_format(fmtext, NULL, NULL); AVFormatContext *oc = NULL; avformat_alloc_output_context2(&oc, NULL, NULL, filename); AVStream * stream = avformat_new_stream(oc, 0); AVCodec *codec=NULL; AVCodecContext *c= NULL; int ret;  codec = avcodec_find_encoder_by_name("libx264");  // Setting up the codec: av_dict_set( &opt, "preset", "slow", 0 ); av_dict_set( &opt, "crf", "20", 0 ); avcodec_get_context_defaults3(stream->codec, codec); c=avcodec_alloc_context3(codec); c->width = width; c->height = height; c->pix_fmt = AV_PIX_FMT_YUV420P;  // Setting up the format, its stream(s), linking with the codec(s) and write the header: if (oc->oformat->flags & AVFMT_GLOBALHEADER) // Some formats require a global header.     c->flags |= AV_CODEC_FLAG_GLOBAL_HEADER; avcodec_open2( c, codec, &opt ); av_dict_free(&opt); stream->time_base=(AVRational){1, 25}; stream->codec=c; // Once the codec is set up, we need to let the container know which codec are the streams using, in this case the only (video) stream. av_dump_format(oc, 0, filename, 1); avio_open(&oc->pb, filename, AVIO_FLAG_WRITE); ret=avformat_write_header(oc, &opt); av_dict_free(&opt);   // Preparing the containers of the frame data: AVFrame *rgbpic, *yuvpic;  // Allocating memory for each RGB frame, which will be lately converted to YUV: rgbpic=av_frame_alloc(); rgbpic->format=AV_PIX_FMT_RGB24; rgbpic->width=width; rgbpic->height=height; ret=av_frame_get_buffer(rgbpic, 1);  // Allocating memory for each conversion output YUV frame: yuvpic=av_frame_alloc(); yuvpic->format=AV_PIX_FMT_YUV420P; yuvpic->width=width; yuvpic->height=height; ret=av_frame_get_buffer(yuvpic, 1);  // After the format, code and general frame data is set, we write the video in the frame generation loop: // std::vector<uint8_t> B(width*height*3); 

The above commented vector has the same structure than the one I exposed in my question; however, the RGB data is stored on the AVFrames in a specific way. Therefore, for the sake of exposition, let us assume we have instead a pointer to a structure of the form uint8_t[3] Matrix(int, int), whose way to access the color values of the pixels for a given coordinate (x, y) is Matrix(x, y)->Red, Matrix(x, y)->Green and Matrix(x, y)->Blue, in order to get, respectively, to the red, green and blue values of the coordinate (x, y). The first argument stands for the horizontal position, from left to right as x increases and the second one for the vertical position, from top to bottom as y increases.

Being that said, the for loop to transfer the data, encode and write each frame would be the following one:

Matrix B(width, height); int got_output; AVPacket pkt; for (i=0; i<N; i++) {     generateframe(B, i); // This one is the function that generates a different frame for each i.     // The AVFrame data will be stored as RGBRGBRGB... row-wise, from left to right and from top to bottom, hence we have to proceed as follows:     for (y=0; y<height; y++)     {         for (x=0; x<width; x++)         {             // rgbpic->linesize[0] is equal to width.             rgbpic->data[0][y*rgbpic->linesize[0]+3*x]=B(x, y)->Red;             rgbpic->data[0][y*rgbpic->linesize[0]+3*x+1]=B(x, y)->Green;             rgbpic->data[0][y*rgbpic->linesize[0]+3*x+2]=B(x, y)->Blue;         }     }     sws_scale(convertCtx, rgbpic->data, rgbpic->linesize, 0, height, yuvpic->data, yuvpic->linesize); // Not actually scaling anything, but just converting the RGB data to YUV and store it in yuvpic.     av_init_packet(&pkt);     pkt.data = NULL;     pkt.size = 0;     yuvpic->pts = i; // The PTS of the frame are just in a reference unit, unrelated to the format we are using. We set them, for instance, as the corresponding frame number.     ret=avcodec_encode_video2(c, &pkt, yuvpic, &got_output);     if (got_output)     {         fflush(stdout);         av_packet_rescale_ts(&pkt, (AVRational){1, 25}, stream->time_base); // We set the packet PTS and DTS taking in the account our FPS (second argument) and the time base that our selected format uses (third argument).         pkt.stream_index = stream->index;         printf("Write frame %6d (size=%6d)\n", i, pkt.size);         av_interleaved_write_frame(oc, &pkt); // Write the encoded frame to the mp4 file.         av_packet_unref(&pkt);     } } // Writing the delayed frames: for (got_output = 1; got_output; i++) {     ret = avcodec_encode_video2(c, &pkt, NULL, &got_output);     if (got_output) {         fflush(stdout);         av_packet_rescale_ts(&pkt, (AVRational){1, 25}, stream->time_base);         pkt.stream_index = stream->index;         printf("Write frame %6d (size=%6d)\n", i, pkt.size);         av_interleaved_write_frame(oc, &pkt);         av_packet_unref(&pkt);     } } av_write_trailer(oc); // Writing the end of the file. if (!(fmt->flags & AVFMT_NOFILE))     avio_closep(oc->pb); // Closing the file. avcodec_close(stream->codec); // Freeing all the allocated memory: sws_freeContext(convertCtx); av_frame_free(&rgbpic); av_frame_free(&yuvpic); avformat_free_context(oc); 

Side notes:

For future reference, as the available information on the net concerning the time stamps (PTS/DTS) looks so confusing, I will next explain as well how I did manage to solve the issues by setting the proper values. Setting these values incorrectly caused that the output size was being much bigger than the one obtained through the ffmpeg built binary commandline tool, because the frame data was being redundantly written through smaller time intervals than the actually set by the FPS.

First of all, it should be remarked that when encoding there are two kinds of time stamps: one associated to the frame (PTS) (pre-encoding stage) and two associated to the packet (PTS and DTS) (post-encoding stage). In the first case, it looks like the frame PTS values can be assigned using a custom unit of reference (with the only restriction that they must be equally spaced if one wants constant FPS), so one can take for instance the frame number as we did in the above code. In the second one, we have to take into account the following parameters:

• The time base of the output format container, in our case mp4 (=12800 Hz), whose information is held in stream->time_base.
• The desired FPS of the video.
• If the encoder generates B-frames or not (in the second case the PTS and DTS values for the frame must be set the same, but it is more complicated if we are in the first case, like in this example). See this answer to another related question for more references.

The key here is that luckily it is not necessary to struggle with the computation of these quantities, as libav provides a function to compute the correct time stamps associated to the packet by knowing the aforementioned data:

av_packet_rescale_ts(AVPacket *pkt, AVRational FPS, AVRational time_base) 

Thanks to these considerations, I was finally able to generate a sane output container and essentially the same compression rate than the one obtained using the commandline tool, which were the two remaining issues before investigating more deeply how the format header and trailer and how the time stamps are properly set.