Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH 1/2 v2] avutil: add a Tile Grid API

[Anton Khirnov <anton@khirnov.net>]

Quoting James Almer (2024-01-21 19:38:50)
> On 1/21/2024 3:29 PM, Anton Khirnov wrote:
> > Quoting James Almer (2024-01-21 18:47:43)
> >> On 1/21/2024 2:29 PM, Anton Khirnov wrote:
> >>> Honestly this whole new API strikes me as massively overthinking it. All
> >>> you should need to describe an arbitrary partition of an image into
> >>> sub-rectangles is an array of (x, y, width, height). Instead you're
> >>> proposing a new public header, struct, three functions, multiple "tile
> >>> types", and if I'm not mistaken it still cannot describe an arbitrary
> >>> partitioning. Plus it's in libavutil for some reason, even though
> >>> libavformat seems to be the only intended user.
> >>>
> >>> Is all this complexity really warranted?
> >>
> >> 1. It needs to be usable as a Stream Group type, so a struct is
> >> required. Said struct needs an allocator unless we want to have its size
> >> be part of the ABI. I can remove the free function, but then the caller
> >> needs to manually free any internal data.
> > 
> > If the struct lives in lavf and is always allocated as a part of
> > AVStreamGroup then you don't need a public constructor/destructor and
> > can still extend the struct.
> 
> Yes, but that would be the case if it's only meant to be allocated by 
> AVStreamGroup and nothing else.

That is the case right now, no?

If that ever changes then the constructor can be added.

> > 
> >> 2. We need tile dimensions (Width and height) plus row and column count,
> >> which give you the final size of the grid, then offsets x and y to get
> >> the actual image within the grid meant for presentation.
> >> 3. I want to support uniform tiles as well as variable tile dimensions,
> >> hence multiple tile types. The latter currently has no use case, but
> >> eventually might. I can if you prefer not include said type at first,
> >> but i want to keep the union in place so it and other extensions can be
> >> added.
> >> 4. It's in lavu because its meant to be generic. It can also be used to
> >> transport tiling and cropping information as stream and packet side
> >> data, which can't depend on something defined in lavf.
> > 
> > When would you have tiling information associated with a specific
> > stream?
> 
> Can't think of an example for tiling, but i can for cropping. If you 
> insist on not reusing this for non-HEIF cropping usage in mp4/matroska, 
> then ok, I'll move it to lavf.

I still don't see why should it be a good idea to use this struct for
generic container cropping. It feels very much like a hammer in search
of a nail.

> > 
> >> And what do you mean with not supporting describing arbitrary
> >> partitioning? Isn't that what variable tile dimensions achieve?
> > 
> > IIUC your tiling scheme still assumes that the partitioning is by rows
> > and columns. A completely generic partitioning could be irregular.
> 
> A new tile type that doesn't define rows and columns can be added if 
> needed. But the current variable tile type can support things like grids 
> of two rows and two columns where the second row is effectively a single 
> tile, simply by setting the second tile in said row as having a width of 0.

The problem I see here is that every consumer of this struct then has to
explicitly support every type, and adding a new type requires updating
all callers. This seems unnecessary when "list of N rectangles" covers
all possible partitionings.

That does not mean you actually have to store it that way - the struct
could be a list of N rectangles logically, while actually being
represented more efficiently (in the same way a channel layout is always
logically a list of channels, even though it's often represented by an
uint64 rather than a malloced array).

-- 
Anton Khirnov
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