[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Improving support for IIDC cameras (libavdevice/libdc1394.c)

[Martin Lambers]

On 20/05/11 21:45, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 09:20:25PM +0200, Martin Lambers wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> currently, the libdc1394 format only supports very few video modes:
>> 320x240 or 640x480, and only two pixel formats. Furthermore, these modes
>> have to be selected via AVFormatParameters, there is no autodetection.
>>
>> I'd like to change that so that the camera is queried for the modes it
>> supports, and a suitable mode is selected with regard to
>> AVFormatParameters. If no parameters are given, the best mode should be
>> chosen automatically. Furthermore, I'd like to add support for more
>> pixel formats.
>>
>> The attached patches do this in two steps:
>>
>> 1) Remove support for the libdc1394 v1 API. V2 has been available for
>> ages (it even is in Debian oldstable), and V1 is not shipped with
>> current distributions anymore (it does not work with current kernels).
>>
>> 2) Replace the mode selection code in dc1394.c (but leave the rest of
>> the code untouched). Use the libdc1394 v2 API to query available video
>> modes, remove those that we currently do not support, and sort the rest
>> according to preference. Then pick a mode according to
>> AVFormatParameters, or use a fallback based on the preferences list. At
>> the same time, support all dc1394 color codings for which there is a
>> corresponding FFmpeg pixel format.
> 
> This mode selection code looks quite complex.
> why is this complexity needed?
> 
> I think it should be possible to have a single loop that goes over
> all the modes then
> * skip what we do not support
> * assign a score to the rest depending on matching what was requested
>   as well as bigger/better style, like score= width + A*fps
>   + B*(width == requested_width) ...
> * just keep track of which had the highest score and then use this
> 
> maybe iam missing something but sorting and removial from the list
> dont seem needed

You are right, thanks for the suggestion. I have a attached a simplified
patch, however this conflicts with recent changes: to my surprise, there
was a change to the libdc1394-v1 part of the code while the libdc1394-v2
part was not changed.

So my assumption that v1 is pretty much unused today seems to be wrong,
which means the proposed approach of mode selection may not be
appropriate. (It might be possible to do something similar with the
libdc1394-v1 API, though; I have not checked this).

Martin
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