[vlc-devel] [PATCH] Discontinuities in source scr/pts/ dts break transcoding for dvdread -> mp4

[Christopher Key]

Hello,

I recently ran into problems trying to transcode dvds to mp4 format. 
Following any discontinuity in the scr (e.g. layer break, or skip over
unreadable sectors), I would lose the audio in the output.  What was
happening was that the discontinuity was causing the dts timestamps on
packets to jump backwards*.  As the muxer uses two fifos (audio and
video) and pulls in whichever of the packets has the lowest dts, a jump
back in time causes problems.  Imagine two FIFOs, with packets with the
following dts timeamps:

{...,6,4,2,98,96} and {...,5,3,1,99,97}

As values are popped from the right, taking which ever is lower, we will
end up with,

{...,6,4,2} and {...,5,3,1,99}

and it can clearly be seen that the second FIFO is now stuck.


The attached patch attemps to fix these issues by detecting
discontinuities in the scr, and adjusting the scr and pts and dts
timetamps accordingly, to maintain a continuous progression (with the
correct gaps between samples) for each.  I've tested it, and it fixes my
transcoding problem, but I've no idea if it might cause other problems. 
It's also fairly untidy, and perhaps needs some cleanup by someoen more
familiar with vlc coding styles.

This is a fairly general problem, and the streams going to the TS muxer
certainly suffers in the same way. 

Also, whilst it does make some sense to try to deal with discontinuities
in a centralised manner, such that all access modules could just pass on
packets with timestamps as read without any special handling, it would
be significantly more difficult.  The code for handling clock
discontinuties simply had the effect of making the dts timestamps
arriving at the muxer jump forward a large amount, before jumping back
(see* in first para).  Also, as the clock handling process is
potentially in a different thread to the code handling the timestamps,
getting predictable behaviour could be hard.

Any feedback much appreciated.

Chris Key.
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: vlc-dvdread-fix-discontinuities.patch
URL: <http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/attachments/20091008/f3e7d83a/attachment.ksh>