[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] AVPacket.display_duration

[Uoti Urpala]

On Wed, 2008-09-10 at 15:15 +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 02:09:24PM +0300, Uoti Urpala wrote:
> > There are 2 time positions per subtitle: when it appears and when it
> > disappears.
> 
> This is true for some subtitle formats, not all, there can be just 1 time and
> duration can be until the next packet, or there can be more than 2
> times with some changes in effects at intermediate times.

That there are 2 relevant time positions per subtitle is true for ALL
subtitle formats, whichever way you use to express them (single packet
that expresses duration too or another packet to signal it, either with
new subtitle too or without).

> > If you represent each subtitle with a single packet you need
> > 2 time values per packet.
> 
> see above

Did you somehow miss the "If you represent each subtitle with a single
packet"? There are formats that use another packet to signal the end and
so only one time value per packet is enough, but I'm explicitly talking
about the ones that use a single packet.

> > Moving one of them inside inside the codec
> > data is a hack and makes inspection and manipulation of the values
> > harder.
> 
> We arent moving them inside, they are inside. Inspection is not hard when

You can have a codec where it has already been moved inside, but in some
of the most popular cases (with Matroska) it hasn't been.

> the value is exported in a AVPacket.display_duration and manipulation needs
> to update the internal value anyway, matroska is the only exception known to
> me that could get away without the internal update. And iam not even sure
> this is true for all subtitle formats one can store in matroska.
> 
> Now as iam not planning to drop support for other containers the update
> of internal values will be needed in case the duration is changed.
> 
> If this where a terribly difficult task one could use it as argument but
> its just a bitstream filter with a few lines of code that is needed to
> update the times based on pts&display_duration.

If you're going to mangle subtitle packets into a different
representation anyway then you can use an internal format that keeps the
timing information in packet fields only. That doesn't require "dropping
support for other containers".