H.264 Video Decode Reference Application ¶

Authors: Holoscan Team (NVIDIA)
Supported platforms: x86_64, aarch64
Last modified: March 18, 2025
Language: C++
Latest version: 2.0
Minimum Holoscan SDK version: 2.6.0
Tested Holoscan SDK versions: 2.6.0
Contribution metric: Level 1 - Highly Reliable

This is a minimal reference application demonstrating usage of H.264 video decode operators. This application makes use of H.264 elementary stream reader operator for reading H.264 elementary stream input and uses Holoviz operator for rendering decoded data to the native window.

The H.264 video decode operators do not adjust framerate as it reads the elementary stream input. As a result the video stream can be displayed as quickly as the decoding can be performed. This application uses PeriodicCondition to play video at the same speed as the source video.

Requirements¶

This application is configured to use H.264 elementary stream from endoscopy sample data as input. To use any other stream, the filename / path for the input file can be specified in the 'h264_video_decode.yaml' file.

Data¶

📦️ (NGC) Sample App Data for AI-based Endoscopy Tool Tracking

The data is automatically downloaded when building the application.

Building and Running H.264 Endoscopy Tool Tracking Application¶

Building and running the application from the top level Holohub directory:

# C++ version
./dev_container build_and_run h264_video_decode --docker_file applications/h264/Dockerfile --language cpp

# Python version
./dev_container build_and_run h264_video_decode --docker_file applications/h264/Dockerfile --language python

Important: on aarch64, applications also need tegra folder mounted inside the container and the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable should be updated to include tegra folder path.

Open and edit the Dockerfile and uncomment line 66:

# Uncomment the following line for aarch64 support
ENV LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/tegra/

Dev Container¶

To start the the Dev Container, run the following command from the root directory of Holohub:

./dev_container vscode h264

VS Code Launch Profiles¶

C++¶

Use the (gdb) h264_video_decode/cpp launch profile to run and debug the C++ application.

Python¶

There are a couple of launch profiles configured for this application:

(debugpy) h264_video_decode/python: Launch the h.264 Video Decode application with the ability to debug Python code.
(pythoncpp) h264_video_decode/python: Launch the h.264 Video Decode application with the ability to debug both Python and C++ code.

H.264 Video Decode Reference Application¶