[MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: MPCF proposal

[D Richard Felker III]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 08:10:04AM +0000, R. Hetherington wrote:
> D Richard Felker III wrote:
> 
> > Somehow the MPCF discussion seems to have died off... So here's what I
> > propose:
> > 
> > 1) Anyone who has remaining complaints or issues that haven't yet been
> > resolved with MPCF should post them now, and they should be discussed.
> 
> I tried posting something a few weeks ago (via Gmane) but it never showed
> up.  It was to do with a compromise between those that want stuff like
> menus and those that don't.  I'll include the original below.

I saw it before, I think.

> ---Original post that never showed up------
> 
> I know there seems to be a bit of a divide on the issue of whether the
> new container format should allow things like menus and the sort of
> stuff that DVDs have.
> 
> Some people want it, and some of the developers don't.
> 
> Now i don't know if this is possible, but i had an idea earlier that i
> think would satisfy both camps.
> 
> What about making the actual container only for audio, video and
> subtitles, but also defining a way that seperate menu files (in say
> SMIL) and still images can be packaged together with the video/audio
> file.  A tar archive for instance.

This is much worse than having the file format actually support
storing such data, since it complicates the demuxer (you have to first
demux the different streams out of the tar). It's much easier to just
have one layer and throw away the menu packets when demuxing.

Anyway, I think the issue has already been resolved. The developers
aren't opposed to allowing menu data in the file format. What we're
opposed to is wasting lots of time and effort specifying how menus
should work within the framework. As it stands, I see no reason why
they can't be included just as a separate stream type, the details of
which can be specified later without affecting the main
audio/video/sub part of the spec.

Rich