Currently, AVStream contains an embedded AVCodecContext instance, which
is used by demuxers to export stream parameters to the caller and by
muxers to receive stream parameters from the caller. It is also used
internally as the codec context that is passed to parsers.
In addition, it is also widely used by the callers as the decoding (when
demuxer) or encoding (when muxing) context, though this has been
officially discouraged since Libav 11.
There are multiple important problems with this approach:
- the fields in AVCodecContext are in general one of
* stream parameters
* codec options
* codec state
However, it's not clear which ones are which. It is consequently
unclear which fields are a demuxer allowed to set or a muxer allowed to
read. This leads to erratic behaviour depending on whether decoding or
encoding is being performed or not (and whether it uses the AVStream
embedded codec context).
- various synchronization issues arising from the fact that the same
context is used by several different APIs (muxers/demuxers,
parsers, bitstream filters and encoders/decoders) simultaneously, with
there being no clear rules for who can modify what and the different
processes being typically delayed with respect to each other.
- avformat_find_stream_info() making it necessary to support opening
and closing a single codec context multiple times, thus
complicating the semantics of freeing various allocated objects in the
codec context.
Those problems are resolved by replacing the AVStream embedded codec
context with a newly added AVCodecParameters instance, which stores only
the stream parameters exported by the demuxers or read by the muxers.
Contrary to the normal fate tests that run via avconv, this tests
nontrivial call sequences that are only doable via the API
(mainly for different corner cases when using the muxer for
segmenting).
The test muxes fake packet data (with extradata that looks
enough like proper data to make the file be viewable with e.g.
boxdumper) and checks the hash of the produced files. The test also
verifies that fragments produced via different call sequences remain
identical (to avoid e.g. updating the output hashes and suddenly
having fragments that used to be identical suddenly diverging), for
fragments written with frag_discont and/or delay_moov.
Signed-off-by: Martin Storsjö <martin@martin.st>
Anton Khirnov
Ganesh Ajjanagadde
Michael Niedermayer
Martin Storsjö