[FFmpeg-devel] Internal handling of subtitles in ffmpeg

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:39:12PM +0100, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:32:01PM +0100, Reimar D?ffinger wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:12:31PM +0100, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > > What you suggest is _exactly_ what i want and what the original author
> > > suggested (if i understood it correctly) but with different terminology
> > > 
> > > yours:
> > > ASS -(decoder)-> bitmap
> > > text_in_bitstream -(bitstream filter)-> ASS
> > > ASS -(bitstream filter)-> text_in_bitstream
> > > 
> > > mine:
> > > ASS -(renderer)-> bitmap
> > > text_in_bitstream -(decoder)-> ASS
> > > ASS -(encoder)-> text_in_bitstream
> > 
> > Well, possibly, but I think my terminology matches the existing code
> > better,
> 
> the mplayer code yes, ffmpeg very certainly not.

Uh, no, it does not match MPlayer at all, in MPlayer the
renderer/decoders are filters, and the decoder/bitstream filters
is just a big ugly blob of code.

> > there is an actual bitstream filter to convert between mov and
> > plain text text subtitles
> 
> >, and the subtitle "renderers" are called
> > decoders right now.
> 
> huh?
> which of our decoders converts text to bitmaps?

_text_ to bitmaps no, but _subtitles_ to bitmaps yes.

> our decoders output the vector based graphics when such are stored in the
> format.
> For text based formats the logic extension is to export the text ...
> this needs a char* to be added to AVSubtitleRect and filled by the decoder

Well, that's one of the questions. Going by what I heard in some
discussions it would be appropriate to call ASS subtitles a highly compressed
representation of bitmaps and thus have it decode to bitmaps (yes, it
is a bit silly - though I'll also add that IIRC the sucessor of ASS
supports embedded images, calling something that may discard about
90% of the content would match even the term "encoder" better than
"decoder")...
Also I don't see how that fits particularly well in the current scheme,
since the one "to text" "decoder" in existence currently is a bitstream
filter.
Anyway, not saying which one is better and I don't think I care much,
I just think that things are not as obvious as you think...