> On Sep 1, 2015, at 4:03 , Robert O'Callahan <rob...@ocallahan.org> wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 8:02 PM, Kevin Marks <kevinma...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> QuickTime supports full variable speed playback and has done for well over >> a decade. With bidirectionally predicted frames you need a fair few buffers >> anyway, so generalising to full variable wait is easier than posters above >> claim - you need to work a GOP at a time, but memory buffering isn't the >> big issue these days. >> > > "GOP”?
Group of Pictures. Video-speak for the run between random access points. > > How about a hard but realistic (IMHO) case: 4K video (4096 x 2160), 25 fps, > keyframe every 10s. Storing all those frames takes 250 x 4096 x 2160 x 2 > bytes = 4.32 GiB. Reading back those frames would kill performance so that > all has to stay in VRAM. I respectfully deny that in such a case, memory > buffering "isn't a big issue”. well, 10s is a pretty long random access interval. > > Now that I think about it, I guess there are more complicated strategies > available that would reduce memory usage at the expense of repeated > decoding. which indeed QuickTime implemented around 10 years ago. > E.g. in a first pass, decode forward and store every Nth frame. > Then as you play backwards you need only redecode N-1 intermediate frames > at time. I don't know whether HW decoder interfaces would actually let you > implement that though... > > What QuickTime got right was having a ToC approach to video so being able >> to seek rapidly was possible without thrashing , whereas the stream >> oriented approaches we are stuck with no wean knowing which bit of the file >> to read to get the previous GOP is the hard part. >> > > I don't understand. Can you explain this in more detail? The movie file structure (and hence MP4) has a table-of-contents approach to file structure; each frame has its timestamps, file location, size, and keyframe-nature stored in compact tables in the head of the file. This makes trick modes and so on easier; you’re not reading the actual video to seek for a keyframe, and so on. David Singer Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.
