[NUT-devel] Patch for info packets

[Rich Felker]

On Sat, Feb 25, 2006 at 11:52:42AM +0100, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> IMHO the issue is more complex, your argumentation that chapter length
> isnt known (and i fully agree that there are realistic cases where
> its not known) can be applied to many other things too
> with your DJ example, things like genre or artist would be examples

No, you just use a new 'chapter' span when this information changes..

> maybe simply allowing adding but not removing stuff from info packets
> would be the solution ...

You mean dropping info frames and using info packets for this?

> > I have a proposal that works, IMO. It requires some alterrations to
> > convert info frames to info packets, but ONLY in the header (chapter
> > start/length), not any of the contents (key/value pairs). It works
> > like:
> > 
> > 1. All info frames with the same chapter id must be binary identical.
> > 2. The first info frame with a given chapter id determines the start
> >    time of the chapter from its pts.
> > 3. An info frame with different chapter id (or EOR) marks the end time
> >    of the previous chapter. Info frames with same chapter id are just
> >    repetition and have no other meaning.
> 
> so a single lost info frames will mess up 2 chapters, while with my suggestion
> all info frames of a chapter need to be lost to loose any information

No, a single lost info frame will not cause any nonlocal problems. At
worst the previous chapter artificially extends further forward than
it should.

> > One objection you may have to my scheme is that it precludes
> > overlapping chapter spans. I thought this was a problem too and didn't
> > like it at first, but then Oded pointed out that you can use more than
> > one info stream if you need to (the above points 2-3 should be
> > interpreted only within a single given stream).
> 
> 1 stream: actual chapters
> 2 stream: start/stop of commercial/advertisements
> 
> single EOR in stream 2 is lost -> whole chapter becomes marked as a 
> commercial

For streaming content you will repeat all headers/info often,
including EOR since a newly connecting client will need them.

Anyway, let me know the second you find someone willing to _flag_
their commercials as commercials so clients can auto-ignore them!!
I'll be the first to start listening/watching! ;)

Rich