ESP32-P4 EYE recording is not close to 30 fps

Narragansett
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2025 10:54 pm

ESP32-P4 EYE recording is not close to 30 fps

Postby Narragansett » Sat Jul 26, 2025 11:12 pm

Hello!
I was excited to get my ESP32-P4 EYE because I wanted to test the H.264 encoding abilities. I built and uploaded the latest factory demo (https://github.com/espressif/esp-dev-ki ... ctory_demo) and applied the patches. All seemed fine, although I'm not sure what is meant by "modify the Board Support Package configuration" in the readme.

When running video recording to sdcard at 480p resolution, I'm getting about 15 fps. The other resolutions (720p and 1080p) are choppy -- maybe 5 fps? I'm using a fast micro sdcard.

Can someone help me shed some light on the poor performance?

thanks :)

Narragansett
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2025 10:54 pm

Re: ESP32-P4 EYE recording is not close to 30 fps

Postby Narragansett » Mon Jul 28, 2025 1:30 am

Looking in main/app/Video/app_video_record.c, it doesn't appear to use H.264 encoder:

// Add video stream
esp_muxer_video_stream_info_t video_stream = {
.width = photo_resolution_width[current_resolution],
.height = photo_resolution_height[current_resolution],
.fps = VIDEO_FRAME_RATE,
.codec = ESP_MUXER_VDEC_MJPEG,
(From https://github.com/espressif/esp-dev-ki ... o_record.c)

It's still using an mpeg4 muxer, which is odd.

(1) Why isn't it able to encode at framerate?
(2) Why doesn't it encode using H.264 video encoder?

I suspect the H.264 encoder isn't quite ready, but I could be wrong. Perhaps someone could shed some light on this.

thanks

Lvhaiyu
Espressif staff
Espressif staff
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2023 7:10 am

Re: ESP32-P4 EYE recording is not close to 30 fps

Postby Lvhaiyu » Mon Aug 18, 2025 12:04 pm

Hi, regarding the recording stutter issue, you can try flashing the factory firmware from [this link](https://espressif.github.io/esp-launchp ... chpad.toml) to check whether the SD card speed is causing the problem.

As for the encoding format, the code uses MJPEG encoding to keep it consistent with the JPEG format used for image capture. However, this doesn’t mean that H.264 encoding isn’t ready. For H.264 encoding support, please refer to:
[https://components.espressif.com/compon ... ions/0.5.3

Lvhaiyu
Espressif staff
Espressif staff
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2023 7:10 am

Re: ESP32-P4 EYE recording is not close to 30 fps

Postby Lvhaiyu » Mon Aug 18, 2025 12:10 pm

Regarding the recording performance issue, the main bottleneck lies in the SD card's read/write speed, as both hardware JPEG and H.264 have good encoding performance. As for the recording format, it wasn’t a major consideration during firmware design — JPEG was simply reused to match the format used for image capture.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: PetalBot, Qwantbot and 5 guests