Is it theoretically possible to read mp4 from SD card ?

[Fragmendal]

Hello everyone !
I'm currently trying to develop a media player for the Wii U, i'm really struggling with it and i'm starting to understand why after all those years no one made a media player for the Wii U

I'm using ffmpeg-wiiu but the performance are awful and after looking for the few informations about it on the internet, I'm starting to think that the wii U just can't handle reading 720p mp4. It looks like ffmpeg is just using software decoding while the Wii U has a a H264 hardware decoding feature. The only thing that makes me think that it's possible to make a media player is that Youtube works well on the wii and you can read videos easily and with a good frame rate on it.
All the tries i've made ended up with a video being read at about 8 fps.. it's been months i'm working on this and i'm kinda giving up lol. Didn't find much information about it so i'm asking everyone if in theory it's possible to decode and play mp4 videos at a good and stable framerate, if someone has any leads... thanks a lots !

 

[Exnor]

Does the GPU decodes h264 ? It encodes h264 to be transmitted to the gamepad at 480p wide but can it decode h264 ?

 

[N7Kopper]

Does the GPU decodes h264 ? It encodes h264 to be transmitted to the gamepad at 480p wide but can it decode h264 ?

The Internet Browser applet is designed to be able to handle 720p video with no problem, so if you're making a full-on program 1080p should be no trouble.

 

[Fragmendal]

Yup that's what I thought too, if youtube and the internet browser can do it, it should be do-able in an homebrew. And after looking through the moonlight-wiiu repo, i'm thinking the wiiu might have the hardware capacities to decode h264

 

[ploggy]

You may want to speak with Gary on the 4TU discord, there has been some work on a Media Player there, but that was a while ago. Still, you wont be starting from 0

 

[Fragmendal]

Oh wow I've never heard of this disc before ! It definitely gives some leads and examples about how to use the decoding library, thanks a lot for the tip !
So from what i've read it's totally do-able, I wonder why no one has ever made a media player for the console, after all those years I would've thought someone will be brave enough to work on it, there must be something I'm missing there, might be harder than it looks..