Table of Contents

1 Overview

The below sections describe the detailed run and build steps for all the TRD components. For the overview, software tools, system requirements, design files and board setup follow the link below:

• Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC VCU TRD 2018.3

2 Run Flow

• Setup the board as explained in “Board Setup” Section in link Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC VCU TRD 2018.3

• Prepare the SD card. Use SD Card Formatter tool to format the SD card, https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

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Please note that Windows format option can't be used.

• Copy all the files from the $TRD_HOME/images/<Path to Design Images>/ to FAT32 formatted SD card directory.

• Power on the board; make sure INIT_B, done and all power rail LEDs are lit green.

NOTE: The SD card file system is mounted at /media/card. Optional storage medium SATA and USB are mounted at /media/sata and /media/usb respectively.

2.1 Graphic User Interface

A QT based graphical user interface (GUI) provides control and monitoring interface. GUI will run on DP only.

NOTE1: QT GUI will work on for VCU TRD Multi-stream design and HDMI Video Capture and HDMI Display with the Audio design.

NOTE2: Make sure monitor is in DP mode when you run the QT GUI app.

Run the below command to launch GUI on Display port when connected.

The GUI is not supported for HDMI Tx. In HDMI 4kp60 mode, GUI requires additional ~2GB memory bandwidth. If you invoke the GUI cause memory bandwidth issue. So HDMI Tx, use only command line application (vcu_gst_app). The table below provides the supported display interfaces for both GUI and command line application.

The figure below shows the home screen of GUI when only DP is connected.

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GUI only supports single stream playback. Supported resolutions are 1080p and 4kp. The supported frame rate for 1080p is 60 fps and 30fps for 4kp. For all multi-stream use case and 4kp60 single stream, the user has to run command line applications.

QT GUI has following options for the user to select:

Number of Input
This determines the number of active video sources. Only one input source is supported.

Output
This option allows the user to select sink for the pipeline. Supported output sink types are display port, record, and stream. For the Display Port, the available Codec options are either enc-dec or Pass-through. For Record and Stream Out, the available Codec option is Enc.

Demo Mode

• By clicking this button, the button text state changes to stop and the user can play all pipelines(TPG, MIPI, HDMI) with raw and presets configurations.

• For every 10 seconds, playback preset changes and it plays in a loop till user clicks on the stop button.

• If no source connected it displays an error popup.

• If any error returns in any playback, it skips and continues to play other pipelines.

• With HDMI Video Capture and HDMI Display with Audio design, To enable audio in a demo mode goto→ Input Settings→ select Input1: HDMI→ Settings→ Audio Settings→ Enable Audio → true and Click on Demo Mode

Input Settings
The below figure shows the input settings window with configuration options.

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Different configuration options available in the QT pop up window are:

Input Source (Input 1)
The following video sources (4K) are available as part of input video selection:

• HDMI-Rx: To select HDMI Rx source as input.

• File: To select a file source as input.

• Test Pattern Generator (TPG): To select TPG source as input.

• MIPI: To select MIPI Camera source as input.

• Stream-In: To select a streaming pipeline.

Codec
The following options are available as part of Codec functionality

• Enc-Dec: This option is to select encode and decode in the pipeline.

• Enc: This option is to select encode only in the pipeline for record or stream out a use case.

• Pass-through: This option is to display raw video.

Preset
There are six predefined presets. If the user edits any control options preset mode switches to “Custom”.

• AVC Low Encoder type = H264, bitrate = 10Mbps

• AVC Medium Encoder type = H264, bitrate = 30Mbps

• AVC High Encoder type = H264, bitrate = 60Mbps

• HEVC Low Encoder type = H265, bitrate = 10Mbps

• HEVC Medium Encoder type = H265, bitrate = 30Mbps

• HEVC High Encoder type = H265, bitrate = 60Mbps

Profile = Main, Rate Control = CBR, Filler Data = true, QP = Auto, L2 Cache = true, Latency mode = Normal, Low Bandwidth = false, Gop Mode = Basic, B-frame = 0, Slice = 8 and GoP Length = 60 common for all above options.

• Custom User specific options

Please refer to the Supported Encoder Format section for the supported encoder format in this release.

Settings
A user can control the encoder, record and stream out configuration from the GUI, Settings option are enabled when the pipeline is in the stop state. The user can control the encoder parameters when output option is selected as Display port/Record/Stream.

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Encoder
This can be either H264 or H265.

Profile
The standard defines a set of capabilities, which are referred to as profiles, targeting specific classes of applications. These are declared as a profile code (profile_idc) and a set of constraints applied in the encoder. This allows a decoder to recognize the requirements to decode that specific stream.
H264 supports baseline, main and high profile. In H265 only main profile is supported.

QP
Quantization in an encoder is controlled by a quantization parameter. It specifies how to generate the QP per coding unit (CU). Two modes are supported-

• Uniform: All CUs of the slice using the same QP

• Auto: VCU encoder changes the QP for each coding unit according to its content.

Rate Control
Constant bitrate (CBR), variable bitrate (VBR) and low-latency are supported. CBR mode generates a constant bitrate that you can predefine. CBR is recommended for limited bandwidth use cases.

Bitrate
Encoding bit rate. In digital multimedia, bit rate often refers to the number of bits used per unit of playback time to represent a continuous medium such as audio or video after source coding (data compression).

B-frame
Short for bi-directional frame, or bi-directional predictive frame, a video compression method used by the MPEG standard. It ranges from 0 to 4.

Slice
The number of slices produced for each frame. Each slice contains one or more complete macroblock/CTU row(s). Slices are distributed over the frame as regularly as possible. If slice-size is defined as well more slices may be produced to fit the slice-size requirement
Range:
4-22 4kp resolution with HEVC codec
4-32 4kp resolution with AVC codec
4-32 1080p resolution with HEVC codec
4-32 1080p resolution with AVC codec

GoP Length
In video coding, a group of pictures, or GOP structure, specifies the order in which intra and inter-frames are arranged. And GoP-length is a length between two Intra frames. The GOP is a collection of successive pictures within a coded video stream. Each coded video stream consists of successive GOPs, from which the visible frames are generated. Its range is from 1 to 1000.

Filler Data
Filler Data NAL units for CBR rate control to maintain constant bitrate throughout the playback. It can be enabled or disabled. It is applicable to CBR mode only.

L2 Cache
Enable or Disable L2Cache buffer in encoding process.

Latency Mode
Encoder latency mode. It can be normal or sub_frame mode.

Low Bandwidth
If enabled, decrease the vertical search range used for P-frame motion estimation to reduce the bandwidth.

Gop Mode
Group of Pictures mode. It can be Basic, low_delay_p, or low_delay_b.

Record
When Output option is selected as Record, A tab will be enabled in settings window through which user can record the video into the storage medium.

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Storage
This option specifies a storage device for the recorded file. The list is dynamically populated based on mounted storage devices. Supported storage devices are SD, USB, and SATA.

Output File Name
Name of the output file. For H264, recorded file get saved as <Source name>_H264_rec_<timestamp>.ts and for H265 it will be <Source name>_H265_rec_<timestamp>.ts

Duration
This option will specify the Recording time duration. It ranges from 1-3 mins.

NOTE: Due to speed and storage constraints it is recommended to use USB/SATA storage devices for the record.

Stream-out
The stream-out panel allows the user to configure streaming parameters.

Stream-out Prerequisites when zcu106 board is connected to host machine:

• Host server machine (with GPU) capable of playing 4K60 stream.

• Setup an Ethernet connection between ZCU106 board and the host machine. Ensure the connection is alive by doing a ping from the board to host machine.

• VLC player installed on the host machine.

• Firewall is turned off on the host machine.

• Start VLC player on the host before streaming from GUI.

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Sink
Provides sink option for the stream-out. It is set to PS Ethernet.

Host IP
IP address of a computer or other Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC board in which streaming video will be played on. It is set to 192.168.25.89 by default.

IP
This option will show the IP address of the board if the Ethernet link is up. If no Ethernet link is connected then it will show “Not Connected”.

Port
Port number of the Ethernet link. By default, it is set to 5004.

Steps for Stream Out
Here are the steps to get the ZCU106 TRD to play out to VLC.

• Make sure that your machine can play 4Kp60 streams and turned off the Firewall.

• Connect your PC to the ZCU106 board. It is recommended a direct connection between ZCU106 board and PC to minimize the network traffic.

• Set the IP address for the ZCU106 board and PC to use the same subnet (i.e. ZCU106 - ifconfig eth0 192.168.25.90 and PC - 192.168.25.89).

• Launch VLC on your PC and Click on media -> Open Network Stream and Enter Network URL (rtp://192.168.25.89:5004, rtp://@:5004) and Click on Play.

• Setup output option to “Stream” in the ZCU106 VCU TRD GUI.

• Configure the Stream out settings and make sure that the ZCU106 VCU TRD GUI is pointing to the IP address of your PC.

• Select the HDMI-Rx/MIPI or the TPG as an input.

• Press play in VLC on your PC. (The Client must start first, but VLC times out if you wait too long before starting the ZCU106 VCU TRD Stream).

• Press play on the ZCU106 VCU TRD GUI

Audio Settings
The Audio Settings panel allows the user to configure audio parameters.

Note: The Audio Settings are only applicable in-case of HDMI Video Capture and HDMI Display with Audio design.

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Enable Audio

Enable or Disable audio in a pipeline. It is set to false by default.

Format
The format of the audio. It is set to S24_32LE by default.

Channel
The number of audio channels. It is set to 2 by default.

Sampling Rate

To set audio sampling rate. It is set to 48000 by default.

Volume
To set the volume level. It is set to 5 by default.

Note: To increase volume in DP use below command:

Stream-In
Stream-In panel allows the user to enter network URL.

Stream-In Prerequisites when 2 ZCU106 boards are connected:

• Setup an Ethernet connection between 2 ZCU106 boards. Ensure the connection is alive by doing a ping from one board to another board.

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Uri
Provides the network URL to receive network stream. As an e.g. “udp://192.168.25.89:5004/”.

Steps for Stream Out from one board and Stream In from another board

• Connect ZCU106 board to another ZCU106 board. It is recommended a direct connection between 2 ZCU106 boards to minimize the network traffic.

• Set the IP address for both ZCU106 board such that both boards are in the same subnet (i.e. ZCU106 1st board - ifconfig eth0 192.168.25.90, ZCU106 2nd board - ifconfig eth0 192.168.25.89).

• Make sure both boards are connected by ping command.

• Setup output option to “Stream” in the 1st ZCU106 board from VCU TRD GUI.

• Configure the Stream out settings in the 1st ZCU106 board from VCU TRD GUI and make sure that it is pointing to the IP address (192.168.25.89) of 2nd board.

• Setup input option to “Stream In” in the 2nd ZCU106 board from VCU TRD GUI.

• Enter the network URL (udp://192.168.25.89:5004/) in Stream In settings in the 2nd ZCU106 board from VCU TRD GUI

• Press play on both ZCU106 board from VCU TRD GUI.

NOTE: It is recommended to use rev-1.0 or rev-F board.

2.2 GStreamer Application (vcu_gst_app)

The vcu_gst_app is a command line multi-threaded Linux application that uses the vcu_gst_lib interface similar to vcu_qt. The command line application requires an input configuration file (input.cfg) to be provided in the plain text. Refer to the Appendix A - Input Configuration File (input.cfg) for the file format and description.

Before execution of vcu_gst_app, we need to check the HDMI-Rx or SDI-Rx link status depending on design. Refer to Appendix B for how to check the HDMI and SDI Link Status.

NOTE: Before execution of vcu_gst_app, we need to run below modetest command manually in background to set CRTC configurations in case of Full-Fledged VCU TRD main design. CRTC configurations are set by default in case of other designs.

• Execution of the application is shown below:

Note: Required Storage medium SATA and USB are mounted at /media/sata and /media/usb respectively.

Example:

4kp60 HEVC_HIGH Display Pipeline execution

4kp60 HEVC_HIGH Record Pipeline execution

4kp60 HEVC_HIGH Stream-out Pipeline execution

4kp60 HEVC_HIGH Stream-in Pipeline execution

NOTE: Make sure HDMI-Rx should be configured to 4kp60 mode.

To measure the latency of the pipeline, run the below command. The latency data is huge, so dump it to a file.

2.2.1 Multistream

When the number of input is more than one in the command line application, it is a multi-stream use case. The command line application supports multi-streaming, multi-recording, or multi-display. The input source type can be HDMI, TPG and MIPI.

Note: Multistream  feature is only supported in VCU Multi stream design

Ex:

2-4kp30 HEVC_MEDIUM Display Pipeline execution

NOTE: Make sure HDMI-Rx should be configured to 4kp30 mode.

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4-1080p60 HEVC_15Mbps Display Pipeline execution

NOTE: Make sure HDMI-Rx should be configured to 1920x1080p60 mode.

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8-1080p30 HEVC_7.5Mbps Display Pipeline execution

NOTE: Make sure HDMI-Rx should be configured to 1920x1080p30 mode.

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2.2.2 Streaming

Streaming Prerequisites when 2 ZCU106 boards are connected

• Setup an Ethernet connection between 2 ZCU106 boards. Ensure the connection is alive by doing a ping from one board to another board.

Steps for Streaming

• Connect ZCU106 board to another ZCU106 board. It is recommended a direct connection between 2 ZCU106 boards to minimize the network traffic.

• Set the IP address for both ZCU106 board such that both boards are in the same subnet (i.e. ZCU106 1^st board - ifconfig eth0 192.168.25.90, ZCU106 2^nd board - ifconfig eth0 192.168.25.89).

• Make sure both boards are connected by ping command.

• Configure the Stream out (server) settings in input.cfg for 1st board and make sure that it is pointing to the IP address of 2nd board (client) and Run vcu_gst_app for Stream out (server) pipeline.

• Configure the Stream in (client) settings in input.cfg for 2^nd board and Run vcu_gst_app for Stream in (client) pipeline.

Streaming Prerequisites when ZCU106 board is connected to host machine:

• Host machine (with GPU) capable of playing 4K60 stream.

• Setup an Ethernet connection between ZCU106 board and the host machine. Ensure the connection is alive by doing a ping from the board to host machine.

• VLC player installed on the host machine.

• Firewall is turned off on the host machine.

• Start VLC player on the host before streaming.

Steps for Streaming

• Make sure that your machine can play 4Kp60/4Kp30 streams and turned off the Firewall.

• Connect your PC to the ZCU106 board. It is recommended a direct connection between ZCU106 board and PC to minimize the network traffic.

• Set the IP address for the ZCU106 board and PC to use the same subnet (i.e. ZCU106 - ifconfig eth0 192.168.25.90 and PC - 192.168.25.89).

• Make sure ZCU106 board and host machine are connected by ping command.

• Launch VLC on your PC and Click on media -> Open Network Stream and Enter Network URL (rtp://192.168.25.89:5004, rtp://@:5004) and Click on Play.

• Configure the Stream out (server) settings in input.cfg in the ZCU106 board and make sure that it is pointing to the IP address of host machine (client) and Run vcu_gst_app for Stream out (server) pipeline.

• Press VLC player play button on your PC. (The Client must start first, but VLC times out if you wait too long before starting the ZCU106 TRD Stream).

NOTE: It is recommended to use rev-1.0 or rev-F board.

3 Build Flow

The following tutorials assume that the $TRD_HOME environment variable is set as given below.

3.1 Hardware Design

Refer to the Vivado Design Suite User Guide: Using the Vivado IDE, UG893, for setting up Vivado environment.

On Linux:

1. Open a Linux terminal

2. Change directory to $TRD_HOME/pl

3. Run the following command in Vivado shell to create the Vivado IPI project and invoke the GUI.

The table below lists the available hardware designs and the script used to generate hardware project. These can be found in the scripts folder in a package under "pl/scripts".

Select tcl script as mentioned in above table for different hardware design as e.g use below command for Full Fledged VCU TRD hardware design.

After executing the script, the Vivado IPI block design comes up as shown in the below figure.

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• Click on “Generate Bitstream”.

Note: If the user gets any pop-up with “No implementation Results available”. Click “Yes”. Then, if any pop-up comes up with “Launch runs”, Click "OK”.

The design is implemented and a pop-up window comes up saying “Open Implemented Design”. Click "OK".

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After opening the implemented design, the window looks as shown in the below figure.
Note: The actual results might graphically look different than the image shown

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• Go to File > Export > Export Hardware

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• In the Export Hardware Platform for SDK window select "Include bitstream" and click "OK".

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The HDF is created at $TRD_HOME/pl/<path to project>/<path to sdk>/<path to hdf>. As an e.g  the HDF is created at $TRD_HOME/pl/vcu_trd/vcu_trd.sdk/vcu_trd_wrapper.hdf  for VCU TRD hardware design.

For creating DSA of SDx project, execte following commands in vivado TCL console :

• />set_param dsa.writeHDFData 1

• />set_property dsa.name vcu_sdx [current_project]

• />write_dsa -unified -force ./vcu_sdx.dsa

• />validate_dsa ./vcu_sdx.dsa
  
  
  

3.2 VCU PetaLinux BSP

This tutorial shows how to build the Linux image and boot image using the PetaLinux build tool.
PetaLinux Installation: Refer to the PetaLinux Tools Documentation (UG1144) for installation.

NOTE: It is recommended to follow the build steps in sequence.

Post PetaLinux installation $PETALINUX environment variable should be set.

• Create PetaLinux project.

• Configure the PetaLinux project.

The table below lists the available hardware designs and HDF path. These can be found in the pre-built folder in the package under "pl/pre-built".