31 ms·

If you know what hardware video encoding is you are not the target audience for raspberry pi.

MegaDeKay 3y ago
This. I think people often forget that RPi is made to a price and intended to provide a balanced suite of capabilities at that price to their target markets. The delta sales due to a lack of something like hardware video encoding will be near zero.
redundantly 3y ago
Yeah, completely ignoring the fact that they included both encoding and decoding before, yup! Totally not the target audience! The rPi foundation doesn't care about the individual end users anymore. They make most of their money supporting commercial vendors. They're keeping up the appearance of being good to the little guy so they can keep their support ecosystem alive and well.
- creeble 3y ago
  I’ve yet to find a Pi-based commercial product that sold more than 10k units, ever. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
  - stonogo 3y ago
    Spin scooters, while not for sale, number approximately 50k units and are powered by a full-size Raspberry Pi 4.
  - nereye 3y ago
    Korg uses the Pi Compute Module 3 [0] in at least three of their products (wavestate, modwave, opsix), with Korg being one of the major synth manufacturers and overall annual keyboard synthesizer sales in the US alone being over 100K units. Don't have hard evidence but am assuming that Korg has sold more than 10K units of those three products. [0] - https://www.raspberrypi.com/success-stories/korg-synthesizers/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/success-stories/korg-synthesizer...
  - nsteel 3y ago
    "As of late 2022, Yodeck had shipped almost 50,000 Raspberry Pi-based units" https://www.raspberrypi.com/app/uploads/2023/04/230329-Yodeck-Digital-Signage-Case-Study.pdf https://www.raspberrypi.com/app/uploads/2023/04/230329-Yodec... Yoto Player is another example but I don't know how many Pi-based ones they shipped, I'd guess more than 10k but I don't know.
- dgacmu 3y ago
  Is it really a big deal? How many people are doing encoding on the device and can't spare a core for it? I'm sure they exist, but the move from 4->5 will leave them with plenty of headroom, so it's not clear this changes anything, even if it makes 5 potentially slightly less attractive for some. (I say this using a cm4 for image acquisition commercially. Because of the way our pipeline works, I skip the hardware encoder anyway - first, it's a complete pain in the ass to use, and second, it can't handle full-resolution images from a pi camera. We're slower than video because of the resolution, but still capture between 1fps and 1/10fps depending on configuration, with enough headroom to do some on-device image classification using tflite, rotation and JPEG compression, etc.)
  - msh 3y ago
    People transcode video in Plex or jellyfin
    - dgacmu 3y ago
      Sure, but it kind of sounds like the 5 will still be a superior solution, even without hardware support: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/#comment-1594055 https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/... Obviously, it would need benchmarks, but taking that post at its word, the 5 can transcode twice as fast in software as the 4b could do in hardware. That doesn't mean some other hardware platform wouldn't be drastically better, I just don't get the extreme reaction about the 5 when compared to the 4.
nfriedly 3y ago
I think this overstates it a bit. I know what hardware video encoding is, but I still think I'm part of the target audience for the Pi. I have several Pi's around the house that I use for various projects, and none of them have ever involved video encoding. The one thing I can think of where it might be beneficial is my plex server, but that's an x86 machine right now, and it'll probably stay that way.

This. I think people often forget that RPi is made to a price and intended to provide a balanced suite of capabilities at that price to their target markets. The delta sales due to a lack of something like hardware video encoding will be near zero.

redundantly 3y ago

Yeah, completely ignoring the fact that they included both encoding and decoding before, yup! Totally not the target audience! The rPi foundation doesn't care about the individual end users anymore. They make most of their money supporting commercial vendors. They're keeping up the appearance of being good to the little guy so they can keep their support ecosystem alive and well.

creeble 3y ago
I’ve yet to find a Pi-based commercial product that sold more than 10k units, ever. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
- stonogo 3y ago
  Spin scooters, while not for sale, number approximately 50k units and are powered by a full-size Raspberry Pi 4.
- nereye 3y ago
  Korg uses the Pi Compute Module 3 [0] in at least three of their products (wavestate, modwave, opsix), with Korg being one of the major synth manufacturers and overall annual keyboard synthesizer sales in the US alone being over 100K units. Don't have hard evidence but am assuming that Korg has sold more than 10K units of those three products. [0] - https://www.raspberrypi.com/success-stories/korg-synthesizers/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/success-stories/korg-synthesizer...
- nsteel 3y ago
  "As of late 2022, Yodeck had shipped almost 50,000 Raspberry Pi-based units" https://www.raspberrypi.com/app/uploads/2023/04/230329-Yodeck-Digital-Signage-Case-Study.pdf https://www.raspberrypi.com/app/uploads/2023/04/230329-Yodec... Yoto Player is another example but I don't know how many Pi-based ones they shipped, I'd guess more than 10k but I don't know.
dgacmu 3y ago
Is it really a big deal? How many people are doing encoding on the device and can't spare a core for it? I'm sure they exist, but the move from 4->5 will leave them with plenty of headroom, so it's not clear this changes anything, even if it makes 5 potentially slightly less attractive for some. (I say this using a cm4 for image acquisition commercially. Because of the way our pipeline works, I skip the hardware encoder anyway - first, it's a complete pain in the ass to use, and second, it can't handle full-resolution images from a pi camera. We're slower than video because of the resolution, but still capture between 1fps and 1/10fps depending on configuration, with enough headroom to do some on-device image classification using tflite, rotation and JPEG compression, etc.)
- msh 3y ago
  People transcode video in Plex or jellyfin
  - dgacmu 3y ago
    Sure, but it kind of sounds like the 5 will still be a superior solution, even without hardware support: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/#comment-1594055 https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/... Obviously, it would need benchmarks, but taking that post at its word, the 5 can transcode twice as fast in software as the 4b could do in hardware. That doesn't mean some other hardware platform wouldn't be drastically better, I just don't get the extreme reaction about the 5 when compared to the 4.

nfriedly 3y ago

I think this overstates it a bit. I know what hardware video encoding is, but I still think I'm part of the target audience for the Pi. I have several Pi's around the house that I use for various projects, and none of them have ever involved video encoding. The one thing I can think of where it might be beneficial is my plex server, but that's an x86 machine right now, and it'll probably stay that way.