[gst-devel] audio/raw float caps format

[Andy Wingo]

Hello all,

This is a message to those that work with the float audio format. If you
are one of those, most likely you are working on some kind of audio/dsp
project. Float audio data in such an environment is much nicer than int
data, as you don't really have the set of variables that you do in int
work, and the math is nicer.

So it's really quite an insular world -- your data either comes from a
ladspa plugin src or from a int2float element. For many reasons the
preferred format for float data is noninterleaved -- that's another
discussion I'm not going into now. However, elements with many sink pads
run into the problem of getting the same amount of data from all pads.
Traditionally this is done with bytestream elements, but that's just
masking the problem that there's no way to tell plugins the size of
buffer that you would like your whole system to use. Often, that's a
variable the user should be able to change. This gives rise to such
hacks as the ::buffer-size property on osssink, which sets the size of
buffers from its internal bufferpools. Upstream plugins may then get a
buffer from the pool, calculate its size, and use that as their internal
buffer sizes. All very hackish.

It dawned on me that this kind of a problem is the sort of thing caps
are made for. What I propose doing, and have already done in my local
copy, is to add a "buffer-frames" property to all float caps. This will
determine the size for float buffers, in frames. If an element pushes a
buffer that is smaller than that size, that means it will push EOS on
the next iteration.

Applications may then set the buffer size of a whole graph by using
connect_filtered(). While I was looking at this, I noticed that the
"slope" and "intercept" properties are pretty useless, so I took them
out too in my local copy. Float audio data is a realm of restricted
variables, there's no need to offer the possibility of setting the 0dB
level to anything other than +/-1.0.

I'm writing to see if these changes affect anyone. If not, I'll commit
them next time I get internet. 

On a less business-oriented note, I wish I could have been at guadec ;)
Things are still quite nice down here, and I'm getting a lot of hacking
done as well. But, there's no guinness on draft in Namibia :/

Peace out, peoples.

wingo.