[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] avcodec/avcodec.h: Add encryption info side data

[Jacob Trimble]

> You pretty much did. Side data is an ffmpeg internal concept, and if
> your hypothetical streaming protocol needs special support for side
> data, it's automatically relying on ffmpeg internals.

I thought side data was public data?  Doesn't it contain public info
like display info and required decoder info?  So if someone wants to
decode frames without using the demuxers, they'll need to reconstruct
the side data so the decoder can still work.

> On that note, I wonder if we should add an AVPacket reserved field for
> this, just so we don't have to wait for the next ABI bump.

I would much prefer to have this in AVPacket since it is in no way
"optional".  Having the info in the packet ensures a custom app can
see the info and is less likely to get confused on why their packets
aren't decoding.  I did this as side-data since it would have less ABI
impact and I thought it would cause less conflict.  But having it as
another field on AVPacket would allow more control over memory so the
dynamic fields don't cause problems anymore.

> I don't think this is sane. So far, side data could simply be copied
> with memcpy, and having pointers to non-static data in side data would
> break this completely

Then how about storing the data like it is now (the encryption info
followed by the subsample array), but not have a pointer?  Then there
will be several helper methods to get the subsample array from the
side-data.  For example,
av_encryption_info_get_subsamples(AVPacketEncryptionInfo*) or
av_encryption_info_get_subsamples(AVPacket*) (since there will only be
one instance of it).