[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH 1/5] avcodec: Add new side data type to contain original PTS value

[Devin Heitmueller]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 10:32 AM Anton Khirnov <anton at khirnov.net> wrote:
> This reasoning is backwards IMO. You'd be creating an implicit API while
> pretending not to. If anyone uses it, they would expect stability,
> otherwise what's the point.

My concern was that given right now it only has a single use case that
we might not have thought of other ways it may be used in the future,
so using a metadata field might allow us to keep it "semi-private"
until others wanted the functionality.  My fear was that we wouldn't
be able to reach a consensus on a new public API definition that we
would be willing to support indefinitely.

> > functionality is really specific to one use case.  However I figured
> > side data might be better since it avoids the conversion of the PTS to
> > a string and back.
>
> One one hand it does feel hacky, on the other I can see valid uses for
> it. Though 'orig' is rather vague, I'd call it something like 'transport
> timestamp' instead. A timebase should definitely be bundled with it.

I don't feel strongly about the naming.  My goal was to convey that
this was the original input timestamp on arrival, and not something
that has been transformed, and I worry that "transport" might be a bit
vague as it isn't clear whether this was on input, output, or
somewhere else in the workflow.  That said, pick a name that will be
considered acceptable to be merged upstream, and I'll adjust the patch
accordingly.

Devin

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Devin Heitmueller, Senior Software Engineer
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