Used by the next commit. It mostly exposes part of mp4_dash
functionality. It actually makes little sense other than for ytdl
special-use. See next commit.
This commit adds an extension to mpv EDL, which basically allows you to
do the same as --audio-file, --external-file, etc. in a single EDL file.
This is a relatively quick & dirty implementation. The dirty part lies
in the fact that several shortcuts are taken. For example, struct
timeline now forms a singly linked list, which is really weird, but also
means the other timeline using demuxers (cue, mkv) don't need to be
touched. Also, memory management becomes even worse (weird object
ownership rules that are just fragile WTFs). There are some other
dubious small changes, mostly related to the weird representation of
separate streams.
demux_timeline.c contains the actual implementation of the separate
stream handling. For the most part, most things that used to be on the
top level are now in struct virtual_source, of which one for each
separate stream exists. This is basically like running multiple
demux_edl.c in parallel. Some changes could strictly speaking be split
into a separate commit, such as the stream_map type change.
Mostly untested. Seems to work for the intended purpose. Potential for
regressions for other timeline uses (like ordered chapters) is probably
low. One thing which could definitely break and which I didn't test is
the pseudo-DASH fragmented EDL code, of which ytdl can trigger various
forms in obscure situations. (Uh why don't we have a test suite.)
Background:
The intention is to use this for the ytdl wrapper. A certain streaming
site from a particularly brain damaged and plain evil Silicon Valley
company usually provides streams as separate audio and video streams.
The ytdl wrapper simply does use audio-add (i.e. adding it as external
track, like with --audio-file), which works mostly fine. Unfortunately,
mpv manages caching completely separately for external files. This has
the following potential problems:
1. Seek ranges are rendered incorrectly. They always use the "main"
stream, in this case the video stream. E.g. clicking into a cached range
on the OSC could trigger a low level seek if the audio stream is
actually not cached at the target position.
2. The stream cache bloats unnecessarily. Each stream may allocate the
full configured maximum cache size, which is not what the user intends
to do. Cached ranges are not pruned the same way, which creates disjoint
cache ranges, which only use memory and won't help with fast seeking or
playback.
3. mpv will try to aggressively read from both streams. This is done
from different threads, with no regard which stream is more important.
So it might happen that one stream starves the other one, especially if
they have different bitrates.
4. Every stream will use a separate thread, which is an unnecessary
waste of system resources.
In theory, the following solutions are available (this commit works
towards D):
A. Centrally manage reading and caching of all streams. A single thread
would do all I/O, and decide from which stream it should read next. As
long as the total TCP/socket buffering is not too high, this should be
effective to avoid starvation issues. This can also manage the cached
ranges better. It would also get rid of the quite useless additional
demuxer threads. This solution is conceptually simple, but requires
refactoring the entire demuxer middle layer.
B. Attempt to coordinate the demuxer threads. This would maintain a
shared cache and readahead state to solve the mentioned problems
explicitly. While this sounds simple and like an incremental change,
it's probably hard to implement, creates more messy special cases,
solution A. seems just a better and simpler variant of this. (On the
other hand, A. requires refactoring more code.)
C. Render an intersection of the seek ranges across all streams. This
fixes only problem 1.
D. Merge all streams in a dedicated wrapper demuxer. The general demuxer
layer remains unchanged, and reading from separate streams is handled as
special case. This effectively achieves the same as A. In particular,
caching is simply handled by the usual demuxer cache layer, which sees
the wrapper demuxer as a single stream of interleaved packets. One
implementation variant of this is to reuse the EDL infrastructure, which
this commit does.
All in all, solution A would be preferable, because it's cleaner and
works for all external streams in general.
Some previous commit tried to prepare for implementing solution A. This
could still happen. But it could take years until this is finally
seriously started and finished. In any case, this commit doesn't block
or complicate such attempts, which is also why it's the way to go.
It's worth mentioning that original mplayer handles external files by
creating a wrapper demuxer. This is like a less ideal mixture of A. and
D. (The similarity with A. is that extending the mplayer approach to be
fully dynamic and without certain disadvantages caused by the wrapper
would end up with A. anyway. The similarity with D. is that due to the
wrapper, no higher level code needs to be changed.)
EDLs can be provided either as external file, or "inline" as a big
edl:// URL. There is no difference between them, except if it's loaded
from an external file, there is some weird filename sanitation going on
(see fix_filenames() in demux_edl.c). It seems this is intended to be a
security mechanism, but probably makes no sense at all.
Note that playlists are allowed to access anything locally. One
difference to playlists is that the EDL code lacks the "security"
mechanism when accessing playlist entries (see handling of the
playlist_entry.stream_flags field - EDL would need something similar),
so don't remove that, as I'm unaware of the exact consequences.
We use the metadata provided by youtube-dl to sort-of implement
fragmented DASH streaming.
This is all a bit hacky, but hopefully a makeshift solution until
libavformat has proper mechanisms. (Although in danger of being one
of those temporary hacks that become permanent.)
No development activity (or even any sign of life) for almost a year.
A replacement based on youtube-dl will probably be provided before the
next mpv release. Ask on the IRC channel if you want to test.
Simplify the Lua check too: libquvi linking against a different Lua
version than mpv was a frequent issue, but with libquvi gone, no
direct dependency uses Lua, and such a clash is rather unlikely.
This was forgotten when the parser for mplayer2 EDL files was removed.
Change the header of the mpv EDL format to include a '#', so a naive
parser could skip the header as comment. (Maybe this is questionable;
on the other hand, if it can be simpler, why not.)
Also, strip the header in demux_edl.c before passing on the data, so the
header check doesn't need to be duplicated in tl_mpv_edl.c.
Edit Decision Lists (EDL) allow combining parts from multiple source
files into one virtual file. MPlayer had an EDL format (which sucked),
which mplayer2 tried to improve with its own format (which sucked). As
logic demands, mpv introduces its very own format (which sucks).
The new format should actually be much simpler and easier to use, and
its implementation is simpler and smaller too.
wm4
sfan5