[FFmpeg-devel] VDD 2023, FFmpeg meeting notes, (23-11-2023, 4pm, Dublin)

[Kyle Swanson]

Hi,

Here are my notes from the VDD meeting. If I missed anything, please feel
free to send corrections.

Thanks,
Kyle


Voting
------

General Assembly:
-   Original 2020 general assembly: <https://0x0.st/HVz-.txt>
-   Proposal: General Assembly is determined twice a year on January 1st,
and July 1st.
-   The criteria for General Assembly inclusion is 20 commits with
authorship in the last 18 months.
-   Current General Assembly will vote on vote.ffmpeg.org to enact the
above proposal, J-B will setup.
-   Admission of the extra members to the GA will be voted on separately
well.

General Assembly, Candidates (J-B will mail a vote):
-   BBB
-   Derek

Technical Committee, Candidates (J-B will mail a vote):
-   JEEB
-   Anton
-   Lynne
-   wbs
-   haasn
-   MN
-   Mark

Community Committee, Candidates (J-B will mail a vote):
-   Dave Rice
-   James
-   J-B
-   Thilo
-   Steven
-   BBB

Gitlab (or something like Gitlab)
---------------------------------

-   Ronald is proposing that we move to Gitlab, or something similar
(gitea).
-   Michael says "i don't like Gitlab"; Ronald says the exact tool is not
important and we can work together to make sure that the new tool suits
other styles of work, such as command line tools.
-   No strong dissent in the room, acceptable to most.
-   This change will need to be voted on by today's General Assembly (J-B
will mail a vote).
-   We need to make sure that "drive by contributions" do not have a high
barrier of entry (i.e. must create a new Gitlab user to submit patches,
issues).
-   We could find a way to accept "off Gitlab" patches, the workflow needs
to be well documented.
-   We need to ensure we have people to do the work, doesn't seem like a
huge issue.
-   J-B recommends against gitea, suggesting that we piggyback on the
videolan Gitlab experience infra.

DNS
---

-   Currently the DNS of ffmpeg.org is managed by Fabrice
-   Michael was asked if he has control over the ffmpeg.org DNS register.
-   Michael says he thinks he has some.
-   Ronald would be curious to know what "some" means.
-   Ronald proposes current project owners should have control over DNS and
trademark.
-   Ronald: Fabrice is not active, DNS and trademark should be in the
control of project members.
-   Michael: "i think fabrice should stay in ultimate control", "he has
always acted in the best interests of the people".
-   Ronald took a poll in the room, most agreed current project developers
should have control of this.
-   This will need a vote, Fabrice will need to be contacted.
-   We would prefer to bring voting results to Fabrice, hopeful that
Fabrice would be amicable to handover.

SDR (software defined radio)
----------------------------

-   Michael says, "just merge it"
-   J-B, "the problem is no one wants it in FFmpeg except you"
-   Ronald, "this should be an external library, like libdav1d", would be
fine if external library.
-   Michael: "it can become a separate library within ffmpeg but it should
be merged first"
-   Paul "burden to maintain it is huge, adding it will fragment
contributions even more"
-   Michael, rational to merge: "there's no API/ABI it needs users first"
-   Ronald asks if Michael wants to bring this to a TC vote?
-   Michael will try to write a mail to ffmpeg-devel on this topic, and
probably ask for a vote.
-   Kieran asks Michael to confirm that SDR will not be merged into 6.1
-   Michael says he will make an alternative 6.1 release
-   On where the fork is published, Michael says "this depends on the
community"
-   Ronald, Kieran, others want to confirm this is not published in a way
that it makes it seem like ffmpeg endorses SDR

Stream Groups
-------------

-   Anton introduces the topic of stream groups, a concept for bundling
many streams with metadata.
-   Many probable use cases: separate alpha, enhancement layers, HEIF,
IAMF, etc.
-   Derek asks about API, Anton suggests an array of structs in avformat.
-   J-B: We need to start this, and see how this goes.
-   decoder/filters would not be aware of stream groups, there may be some
cases where this may be limiting. Derek mentions something about
DolbyVision.
-   Not limited to video, could be used for audio, etc.
-   AVFormat should export stream groups, "everyone agrees"

AVFrame Subtitles
-----------------

-   Lynne cares about this, and hasn't done work on this yet.
-   Lynee suggests she could make time to collaborate with others on this.
-   Anton, others, say it makes sense to do this to avoid special handling
of subtitles, filtering, etc.
-   We should do it, someone needs to take this on.

Sidedata
--------

-   JEEB asks if there is any reason that we use two overlapping
functionality, metadata can reside in either AVPacket and AVFrame.
-   Agreed that it is nice to have, the benefit is small but the work is
large.

MMX, self modifying code
------------------------

-   We should remove it

MPEG-2 Fast
-----------

-   We should remove it

7.0
---

-   If there is to be a new major release (7.0) in January we need to get
started on the work.
-   We need to define/agree on a depreciation and removal timeline. This
needs to be documented.
-   If you want to deprecate things in time, get started on this work ASAP.