[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] What is missing for working AVFMT_FLAG_NONBLOCK?

[Nicolas George]

Le tridi 13 vent?se, an CCXVII, Michael Niedermayer a ?crit?:
> thread(){
>     if((uint8_t)(writer_index - reader_index) < RING_SIZE){
>         write at buffer[writer_index & (RING_SIZE-1)];
>         writer_index++;
>     }
> }
> 
> read_packet(){
>     if(writer_index == reader_index)
>         return AVERROR(EAGAIN);
> 
>     take packet from buffer[reader_index & (RING_SIZE-1)];
>     buffer[reader_index & (RING_SIZE-1)]= av_new_packet();
>     reader_index++;
> }

That is mostly the same thing that I suggested, apart from two points.

First, you treat packets as a raw stream of bytes: if thread() runs twice
before the next time read_packet() is scheduled, it returns only a single
packet with all the data. I am not sure this is a correct behaviour in all
cases. But this is very secondary.

The major point is that I think you are missing one of the point of using
threads. With this code, you turn in a portable way any blocking source into
a non-blocking one, even if the underlying devices or libraries do not allow
it.

But that is not all: using threads correctly also address the problem of the
polling / busy-waiting in the main loop.

The principle is to have a single pthread_cond_t (or any equivalent
synchronization primitive) for all the sources guarding the condition "there
is something to read on at least one source". Whenever a thread gets a
packet from its source, it signals that condition; the main loop, on the
other side, spends most of its time blocked waiting for the condition. That
way, the main loop wakes up exactly when there is data to process.

As a side note, assuming that all the source have the same time reference,
it may be more efficient and/or elegant to have a single thread-to-main
packet queue, maybe sorted in PTS order instead of FIFO.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George
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