implementing timeshifter - is GstIndex going to be ever public again?

[William Manley]

On 26/10/12 21:34, Rob wrote:
> I've been pondering timeshift myself recently and I think the Fluendo
> element approach did a good job though much of the functionality now
> lies in queue2 and it may need some adjustment for optimisation for
> some other use cases. I was thinking that some things from queue2 and
> elsewhere need refactoring and something building on top of that.
>
> I checked out YouView earlier. It looks like it mostly deals with on
> demand services, right? If so, what protocols do those services offer
> that your platform uses? Maybe some of queue2's existing modes will
> suffice.

It's not just on-demand services.  There are also live sources for which
we must time shift and PVR functionality, again where indexing is important.

> As for your design, I was thinking of something similar once queue2
> and some ringbuffer and linear file buffer code had been refactored it
> of queue2. You need something to provide the index, it's good for it
> to be possible to write the index to disk for more seekable
> recordings, due to the use case of transitioning from time shift to
> recording it's useful to support both. And more.  :-) One difference I
> was thinking of was like the Fluendo element to have some data in RAM
> as well as writing to a disk cache and have the in memory data be
> centred at the play position so that you have data from the proximity
> in memory when looking at past data. Then trying to maintain it as is
> sensible and in a fashion similar to the Fluendo element.

Something I quite like about Krysz's approach is that:
  * The configuration is specified at run time rather than having to
    bake in any of the details in a compile-time.  e.g. you could
    replace queue2 with some other means of buffering the data.
  * It doesn't require refactoring existing elements, re-use is provided
    by re-using existing gstreamer elements as is.
  * Attaching timing information is the responsibility of the parsers
    rather than needing a different timeshifting element for each type
    of stream.
  * If it would be more convenient or more sophisticated interactions
    between the elements were required a timeshiftbin could be created.

Thanks

Will
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