On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 1:57 PM, Jean-Marc Valin <jmva...@jmvalin.ca> wrote: > 3.2. Channel Mapping Family 3 > > I would suggest removing the "Output Channel Numbering" field because it > is fully equivalent to simply permuting lines of the matrix. Also, I > believe that the size of the matrix was meant to be "32*(N+M)*C bits" > rather than "32*N*C bits".
To expand on this a bit, a mapping family maps M+N decoded channels (corresponding to the actual order of the coupled and uncoupled channels in the bitstream) to C output channels (channels with a specific semantic meaning). The additional "Output Channel Numbering" table confuses things by adding an additional mapping from the output channel numbers to a different set of numbers with actual semantic meaning, leaving the output channel numbers with no apparent meaning. This does have a potential benefit as a matrix compression technique, to reduce the size of the matrix when it would contain rows that are all zero. However considering that the matrix occurs only once, and mapping family 2 already offers a way to compress the matrix, this alone does not seem worth the complexity of another level of indirection. If matrix compression is desired it would probably be less confusing to describe it in those terms and keep the semantic meaning tied to the output channels. The description of the Output Channel Numbering also does not specify the intended behavior if the same value appears in the table multiple times. Additionally, section 4.2 describes how to perform a stereo downmix of mapping family 3, but makes assumptions about the output channel numbering. This seems harmful and likely to promote implementations that make similar assumptions. If it is necessary to apply the output channel numbering described in section 3.2 in order to implement a correct stereo downmix, then it would be better to simply use the output channels from section 3 as input to the downmix, consolidating sections 4.1 and 4.2, rather than specify new formulas that make assumptions about the mapping. That would also greatly simplify section 4. Eliminating the Output Channel Numbering table as Jean-Marc suggests should resolve these concerns. On another note, unless I am missing something, the formula in figure 2 does not appear to be correct. For example, according to the formula, k=3 (ACN 2) corresponds to order 0 degree 2, which does not make sense. It is also not clear why this channel index begins at 1, when all others begin at 0. It might also be a good idea to clarify that this is an output channel index, as other uses of channel index in RFC 7845 refer to decoded channel index (and also begin at 0). - Mark _______________________________________________ codec mailing list codec@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/codec
