Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] 5 year plan & Inovation

[Lynne <dev@lynne.ee>]

Apr 23, 2024, 09:47 by ffmpeg-devel@pileofstuff.org:

> On Tue, Apr 23, 2024 at 02:20:51AM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Apr 18, 2024 at 10:46:35AM +0200, Stefano Sabatini wrote:
>> > On date Wednesday 2024-04-17 15:58:32 +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>> > > Hi all
>> > > 
>> > > The pace of inovation in FFmpeg has been slowing down.
>> > > Most work is concentarted nowadays on code refactoring, and adding
>> > > support for new codecs and formats.
>> > > 
>> > > Should we
>> > > * make a list of longer term goals
>> > > * vote on them
>> > > * and then together work towards implementing them
>> > > ?
>> > > 
>> > > (The idea here is to increase the success of larger efforts
>> > >  than adding codecs and refactoring code)
>> > > It would then also not be possible for individuals to object
>> > > to a previously agreed goal.
>> > > And it would add ideas for which we can try to get funding/grants for
>> > > 
>> > > (larger scale changes need consensus first that we as a whole want
>> > >  them before we would be able to ask for funding/grants for them)
>> > > 
>> > > Some ideas and why they would help FFmpeg:
>> > > 
>> > [...]
>> > > * client side / in browser support
>> > >     (expand towards webapps, webpages using ffmpeg client side in the browser)
>> > >     bring in more users and developers, and it will be costly for us
>> > >     if we let others take this area as its important and significant
>> > 
>> > There are already several projects on github, the most prominent one:
>> > https://github.com/ffmpegwasm/ffmpeg.wasm/
>> > 
>> > In general it would be useful to provide libav* bindings to other
>> > languages, for example:
>> > https://github.com/PyAV-Org/PyAV
>> > https://github.com/zmwangx/rust-ffmpeg
>> > 
>> > Not sure these should be really moved to FFmpeg though.
>>
>> From a user PoV it would be nice if there was a official
>> python, rust and wasm binding
>>
>> It also would draw in more developers and users to FFmpeg.
>> test coverage might also improve
>>
>> I think the 2 questions are.
>>  1. is there a binding for some language that wants to become the official
>>  FFmpeg binding for that language ?
>>  2. does the FFmpeg community want that too ?
>>
>> thx
>>
>
> I've thought about this a lot while trying to learn FFmpeg.
> IMHO there are two big hurdles to good other-language bindings:
>
> First, FFmpeg's interface is full of C idioms that are unintuitive to
> programmers from other languages.  For example, Stefano Sabatini is
> patiently explaining to me in anoher thread how contexts are a central
> concept in FFmpeg's design.  Even where I understood the code on a
> mechanical level, I had drastically underestimated their importance
> because I didn't have a mental model to understand them.  Binding
> FFmpeg functionality in another language is only half the problem -
> the interface needs to be explained in terms they can understand,
> or rewritten in terms they already know.
>
> Second, the interface is full of special cases that make translation
> to other languages burdensome.  For example, C errors are based on
> returning a value and requiring the caller to check it explicitly;
> whereas most other languages throw an error and allow the caller to
> catch it or not.  A translator needs to convert every one of those,
> but FFmpeg functions don't have a standard mechanism to signal the
> correct behaviour for a given function.  Even the documentation isn't
> reliably helpful, sometimes saying a variant of "returns an AVERROR",
> sometimes "returns a negative number", and sometimes it just
> returns an int and expects the reader to dig through the source.
> That eats up a huge amount of programmer time, and has to be done for
> every language that wants a binding.
>
> Solving those problems would make it far more practical for translators
> to make bindings in other languages, and for new people to learn FFmpeg
> even in C.  For example, creating an `enum AVERROR` and rewriting
> functions to return it would make the code easier to read and drastically
> cut translator time.
>

We always return a negative number for error. 
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