[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Support multiple frames in a singe AVPacket in avcodec_decode_subtitle2

[wm4]

On Tue, 1 Oct 2013 23:16:01 +0200 (CEST)
Marton Balint <cus at passwd.hu> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> When I implemented the DVB teletext decoder, I faced a problem: If 
> multiple teletext pages are in a single teletext packet, the decoder has 
> no way to return multiple AVSubtitles. So the current decoder only return 
> one AVSubtitle in that case, an AVSubtitle containing the first decoded 
> page from the packet.
> 
> This is not a problem if the user wants to decode only a single teletext 
> page (subtitle page), because the same page is not sent twice in a single 
> packet. However, if somebody wants to decode all pages, he probably won't 
> be able to do so without losing a page here or there.
> 
> I could have split the teletext PES packets (usually around 1472 bytes) at 
> the demuxer level to 46-byte packets to overcome this, but I thought it 
> would be much better to extend the API the same way it is used now for 
> audio decoding, where a single packet can contain multiple frames.
> 
> If I combine this with CODEC_CAP_DELAY, the teletext decoder can store the 
> remaining pages of a teletext packet (unfortunately libzvbi parses all 
> pages in the packet in a single pass), and return them to the user on the 
> next call to avcodec_decode_subtitle2. In that case the decoder obviously 
> would not consume anything from the next packet until its buffer 
> containing teletext pages from the previous packet is not empty.
> 
> If we do this, we will have to make sure that the current subtitle 
> decoders will always return the full buffer size as the number of consumed 
> bytes. I've checked, and it seems that only 3 decoders are problematic, 
> but they only need a one-line patch to fix them. Movtext (patch is already 
> on the mailing list), srtdec and dvbsub are the three.
> 
> So, what do you think?

Sounds like a bad idea.

First, this kind of partial packet decoding seems to be in decline in
ffmpeg. Video doesn't use it anymore, audio uses it only for some
obscure formats (hopefully one day it won't require this anymore). It's
also additional pain for the user to keep around a packet and to slice
it. This is pretty unintuitive API and increases the amount of
boilerplate needed to decode something. It's also not entirely robust
and foolproof. And now you want to introduce a new API which uses this
API anti-pattern?

Second, the API is in need for a better design. AVSubtitle still sucks,
and I'm very doubtful about how subtitle->ASS conversion is done. I
think the next iteration of the subtitle API should fix this, and not
just be another shot in the dark just to make teletext work for now.

Are you sure there's no better way to shoehorn proper teletext decoding
into ffmpeg?