[gst-devel] audio/raw vs float

[Steve Baker]

We have the option of including floating point audio in the definition of
audio/raw data:
http://www.tartarus.org/~richard/gst-plugin-writers-guide/cha-basic-types.ht
ml

This would probably only require the inclusion of a boolean to specify
whether the data is int or float.  In this case the width would specify
whether the float is 32 bit or 64 bit.

However this is starting to get a bit messy since law, endianness(?), signed
and depth become meaningless in a float context.

So, what if we create a new mime type audio/float with these properties:
format - an enum including standard 32 bit and 64 bit formats.  New formats
can be included in future releases.
lower-bound - usually -1.0 (sometimes 0.0)
upper-bound - usually 1.0
rate - The sample rate of the data, in samples per second. 
channels - The number of channels of audio data. 

I think it is justified to have a seperate mime type for audio float data
since plugins that support both int and float will have to duplicate
functionality for both types anyway.

cheers.