GstQtOverlay plugin performance on Jetson Nano

GStreamer Qt Overlay
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For testing purposes, take into account the following points:

• Maximum performance mode enabled: all cores, and Jetson clocks enabled
• Jetpack 4.5 (4.2.1 or earlier is not recommended)
• Base installation
• The GstQtOverlay is surrounded by queues to measure the actual capability of GstQtOverlay

For measuring and contrasting the performances with and without NVMM support for every format, we used the following pipelines:

NVMM using nvvidconv:

gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc pattern=black ! 'video/x-raw, width=1920, height=1080, format=NV12' ! queue ! nvvidconv ! queue ! 'video/x-raw(memory:NVMM), format=RGBA' ! qtoverlay qml=gst-libs/gst/qt/main.qml ! perf ! queue ! nvvidconv ! 'video/x-raw' ! fakesink sync=false

NVMM with native UYVY and NV12 support:

gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc pattern=black ! 'video/x-raw, width=1920, height=1080, format=NV12' ! queue ! nvvidconv ! queue ! 'video/x-raw(memory:NVMM), format=NV12' ! qtoverlay qml=gst-libs/gst/qt/main.qml ! perf ! queue ! nvvidconv ! 'video/x-raw' ! fakesink sync=false

No NVMM

gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc pattern=black ! 'video/x-raw, width=1920, height=1080' ! queue ! qtoverlay qml=gst-libs/gst/qt/main.qml ! perf ! queue ! fakesink sync=false

The results obtained:

Measurement	RGBA	UYVY	NV12
No NVMM	57 fps	N/A	N/A
NVMM with nvvidconv	121 fps	67 fps	61 fps
NVMM with native formats	123 fps	67 fps	61 fps

While using the native formats may not provide big performance gains here as it still uses nvvidconv to upload to NVMM memory, it allows connecting directly to some cameras that output NV12 in NVMM memory like with the nvarguscamerasrc element.

CPU usage

Taking the following pipelines as reference:

No NVMM

gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc is-live=true ! 'video/x-raw, width=1920, height=1080'  ! qtoverlay qml=gst-libs/gst/qt/main.qml ! perf print-cpu-load=true ! 'video/x-raw, width=1920, height=1080' ! fakesink

NVMM:

gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc is-live=true ! 'video/x-raw, width=1920, height=1080' ! nvvidconv ! 'video/x-raw(memory:NVMM), width=1920, height=1080' ! qtoverlay qml=gst-libs/gst/qt/main.qml ! perf print-cpu-load=true ! nvvidconv ! 'video/x-raw, width=1920, height=1080'  ! fakesink sync=false

Results

Measurement	No NVMM	NVMM
GstQtOverlay	2%	2%
Rest of pipeline	17%	13%
Total	19%	15%