On Mon, Apr 08, 2024 at 11:55:02PM +0200, Niklas Haas wrote:
> On Mon, 08 Apr 2024 22:18:33 +0200 Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 05, 2024 at 08:57:11PM +0200, Niklas Haas wrote:
> > > From: Niklas Haas <git@haasn.dev>
> > > 
> > > This replaces the myriad of existing lists in AVCodec by a unified API
> > > call, allowing us to (ultimately) trim down the sizeof(AVCodec) quite
> > > substantially, while also making this more trivially extensible.
> > > 
> > > In addition to the already covered lists, add two new entries for color
> > > space and color range, mirroring the newly added negotiable fields in
> > > libavfilter.
> > > 
> > > I decided to drop the explicit length field from the API proposed by
> > > Andreas Rheinhardt, because having it in place ended up complicating
> > > both the codec side and the client side implementations, while also
> > > being strictly less flexible (it's trivial to recover a length given
> > > a terminator, but requires allocation to add a terminator given
> > > a length). Using a terminator also presents less of a porting challenge
> > > for existing users of the current API.
> > > 
> > > Once the deprecation period passes for the existing public fields, the
> > > rough plan is to move the commonly used fields (such as
> > > pix_fmt/sample_fmt) into FFCodec, possibly as a union of audio and video
> > > configuration types, and then implement the rarely used fields with
> > > custom callbacks.
> > > ---
> > >  doc/APIchanges              |  5 ++++
> > >  libavcodec/avcodec.c        | 51 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > >  libavcodec/avcodec.h        | 27 ++++++++++++++++++++
> > >  libavcodec/codec.h          | 19 +++++++++++---
> > >  libavcodec/codec_internal.h | 21 +++++++++++++++
> > >  libavcodec/version.h        |  4 +--
> > >  6 files changed, 121 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
> > 
> > This patchset seems to overlap a bit with AVOptionRanges
> > 
> > I think ideally the user should at some point be able to query using some
> > API on a AVCodecContext/AVCodecParameters/AVFormatContex/AVStream
> > what for that specific instance are supported settings for each field
> > 
> > The API here seems to use a enum, which can make sense but it differs from
> > how AVOption works which doesnt use enums to identify fields
> 
> I didn't know AVOptionRanges exists; indeed it can be seen as somewhat
> overlapping here. That said, there is a vital distinction here: AVOptionRanges
> represents *static* limits on what options can be set (e.g. via
> `av_opt_set_int`), whereas this API represents *dynamic* limits on what can be
> coded.

AVOptionRanges where definitly not intended to be static

see the docs:
 * The returned list may depend on other fields in obj like for example profile.

that would not be static



> 
> In particular, the list of supported colorspaces etc. can *depend* on the value
> of other options. Currently, only strict_std_compliance, but I can easily see
> this list growing in the future (e.g. for different profiles, dolbyvision,
> ...).
> 
> That aside, I personally find an API based on strings and doubles rather
> cumbersome to use, especially when downstream clients expect an enum list.

AVOption* is intended to be a generic API.
For example something that an App can query to build a drop down menu in a GUI
for each parameter

For this, it must be possible to iterate over all paremeters, then for each
iterate over all possible settings if its a discrete type or range if its a
continous type. And then present the user with the corresponding GUI elements

thx

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Does the universe only have a finite lifespan? No, its going to go on
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