[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH 5/6] fftools: avradio support

[Cosmin Stejerean]

On Jul 27, 2023, at 11:36 AM, Michael Niedermayer <michael at niedermayer.cc> wrote:

Let me first explain what i want to provide to the user (most of this
is already implemented, some needs more work)
the user starts her favorite player, be that vlc, ffplay, or whatever
chooses sdr as input device and thats all configuration she needs.
She can select a specific driver, gain and so but she doesnt have to
Now she only needs 2 buttons, seek forward and seek backward, in
ffplay thats the cursor keys. To select the station.
And she sees on the screen what station that is, what song title and
artist are playing as well as what is playing on any other FM station
in view (that works here already in europe, for the US if it doesnt work

i need a sample from dumpurl ...)
(for non interactive tools like ffmpeg she would have to select the
frequency she wants to listen to or all in view ...)

Now gqrx needs me to manually enter the frequency, the modulation the
device, then it still doesnt work (first one has to know why from multiple
rtlsdr lines some dont work) and once one is through this it still
doesnt work, all AGC methods dont work, i have to set the gain manually
for the station i want to listen to to have acceptable quality. I do know
but at this point we lost likely 90% of users

I know this is a contentious topic, but as a heavy user of ffmpeg for both work and fun, and as an amateur radio user, what you describe sounds pretty great to me. I can definitely imagine using this for a few usecases. I get that other tools exist and others that know how to use those can of course continue to use them. I for one would definitely love to use ffmpeg directly if that was an option.

This is not something I'd want enabled in the ffmpeg build at work due to the extra surface area, but assuming I can disable the sdr radio bits at build time for "serious" builds, and that this code is actively maintained and designed in a way that minimizes interference with other parts of ffmpeg, then it's not clear to me why there's such a strong reaction against having this included in ffmpeg.

- Cosmin