On Wed, 15 Dec 2021, James Almer wrote:



On 12/15/2021 6:32 PM, Marton Balint wrote:


 On Wed, 15 Dec 2021, James Almer wrote:



 On 12/15/2021 7:24 AM, Marton Balint wrote:


  On Tue, 14 Dec 2021, James Almer wrote:

  On 12/14/2021 3:54 PM, Nicolas George wrote:
   James Almer (12021-12-14):
   We add a const uint8_t* field to AVChannelCustom. If the user wants
 to
   allocate the strings instead, and not worry about their lifetime,
 they
   can
   provide the layout with a custom free() function that will take
 care
  of
   cleaning anything they came up with on uninit().

   I understood what you suggested, and it amounts to letting API users
   fend for themselves. We can do that, but I would prefer if we only
 did
   on last resort, if we do not find a more convenient solution.

  There's "char name[16]". Bigger than a pointer (Could be 8 bytes
 instead,
  but then it's kinda small). The user will not have to worry about the
  lifetime of anything then.

  I'm attaching a diff that goes on top of the last patch of this set
  implementing this. It also adds support for these custom names to
  av_channel_layout_describe(), av_channel_layout_index_from_string()
 and
  av_channel_layout_channel_from_string(), including tests.

  I'd rather not mix custom labels with our fixed names for channels.
 E.g.
  what if a label conflicts with our existing channel names? If the user
  wants to specify a channel based on its label, that should be a
 separate
  syntax IMHO.

  Overall, having a char name[16] is still kind of limiting, e.g. a label
  read from a muxed file will be truncated, I'd rather not have anything.

 Container metadata is typically be exported as stream metadata or side
 data.

 That is always a possibility, but if you want some data per-channel, and
 not per-stream, (e.g. variable size labels) then side data becomes
 difficult to work with.



  Here is one more idea, kind of a mix of what I read so far: Let's
 refcount
  only the dynamically allocated part of AVChannelLayout. Something like:

  typedef struct AVChannelLayout {
       enum AVChannelOrder order;
       int nb_channels;
       uint64_t mask;
       AVBufferRef *custom;
  } AVChannelLayout;

  And the reference counted data could point to an array of
 AVChannelCustom
  entries. And AVChannelCustom can have AVDictionary *metadata, because
 it
  is refcounted.

 AVBufferRef is meant to hold flat arrays, though.

 Since sizeof(AVChannelCustom) is fixed, I don't really see the difference.

A flat array of bytes. If you do a copy of the contents of the buffer (av_buffer_make_writable), and there's a pointer in it, you're copying it but not what it points to. The copy is not a reference, so when the last actual reference is freed, the custom free() function is called, it frees the dictionary, and the copy now has a dangling pointer to a non existent dictionary.

OK, I understand. Wrapped avframe misuses AVBufferRef similarly however, and that also should be fixed then sometime... Maybe with an optional copy() function for AVBuffer?

 And what about the buffer being writable or not? You need to consider
 both copy and ref scenarios.

 av_channel_layout_copy() can simply ref. If a deep copy is needed because
 the user wants to change anything in AVChannelCustom, then helper function
 can be added.


 It's a lot of added complexity for what should be a simple "this stream
 with six channels has the channels arranged like this in your room: This
 is front left, this is front right, this is 'under the carpet', etc".

 See the attached proof-of-concept patch, to be used on top of your
 channel_layout branch. Is it that bad?

It's fragile by misusing the AVBufferRef API. Also, why remove the pointer from the union?

Because you may want additional metadata without having a custom channel layout.


I'll send a version with a flat name array plus an opaque pointer. Then an email listing all the proposed solutions, to be discussed in a call where we hopefully reach an agreement.

OK.

Thanks,
Marton
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