[gst-devel] nogotiating h264 packing formats

[Stefan Kost]

hi,

h264 streams come in two flavours:
1) length prefixed, each NALU is prefixed by a 32bit length field
(length of NALU)
2) startcode delimmited, as described in annex b of h264 spec, NALUs are
separated by 24 bit value 0x000001.

It looks like MP4/3GP/MOV and MKV use the AVC1 encoding
(length-prefix),while AVI, ES, and TS use
the Annex B encoding (startcodes).

When demuxing videos that contain h264 streams, demuxer will just demux
what the file contains. decoders can check the presence of the
codec-data on the caps. If codec-data is given, stream is length
prefixed (1), otherwise its startedcode delimmited (where the SPS and
PPS are in the stream an not in codec-data).

When muxing we have no mean to negotiate that right now. The x264enc
encoder has a byte-stream property to select the flavor, but that
requires manual setup to have it right. Doing t wrong usualy still
works, but then the file is not well playable.

Should we add h264packing={length-prefixed,startcode-delimmited} to the
caps?


Stefan