If a source with async video wasn't currently active, it would endlessly
buffer the video data, which would cause memory to grow endlessly until
available memory was extinguished.
This really needs to be replaced with a proper caching mechanism at some
point.
The 'wait' constant was a terrible means of trying to ensure that the
packets were interleaved. Instead, calculate the current highest
timestamps of each encoder that's present in the interleaved buffer, and
use that as a means of detecting whether the current packet should be
sent off. This will guarantee sorting without relying on some arbirary
constant that 'assumes' that it'll be interleaved. It also reduces
buffering any more than what is needed to interleave.
- Updated the services API so that it links up with an output and
the output gets data from that service rather than via settings.
This allows the service context to have control over how an output is
used, and makes it so that the URL/key/etc isn't necessarily some
static setting.
Also, if the service is attached to an output, it will stick around
until the output is destroyed.
- The settings interface has been updated so that it can allow the
usage of service plugins. What this means is that now you can create
a service plugin that can control aspects of the stream, and it
allows each service to create their own user interface if they create
a service plugin module.
- Testing out saving of current service information. Saves/loads from
JSON in to obs_data_t, seems to be working quite nicely, and the
service object information is saved/preserved on exit, and loaded
again on startup.
- I agonized over the settings user interface for days, and eventually
I just decided that the only way that users weren't going to be
fumbling over options was to split up the settings in to simple/basic
output, pre-configured, and then advanced for advanced use (such as
multiple outputs or services, which I'll implement later).
This was particularly painful to really design right, I wanted more
features and wanted to include everything in one interface but
ultimately just realized from experience that users are just not
technically knowledgable about it and will end up fumbling with the
settings rather than getting things done.
Basically, what this means is that casual users only have to enter in
about 3 things to configure their stream: Stream key, audio bitrate,
and video bitrate. I am really happy with this interface for those
types of users, but it definitely won't be sufficient for advanced
usage or for custom outputs, so that stuff will have to be separated.
- Improved the JSON usage for the 'common streaming services' context,
I realized that JSON arrays are there to ensure sorting, while
forgetting that general items are optimized for hashing. So
basically I'm just using arrays now to sort items in it.
Add API for streaming services. The services API simplifies the
creation of custom service features and user interface.
Custom streaming services later on will be able to do things such as:
- Be able to use service-specific APIs via modules, allowing a more
direct means of communicating with the service and requesting or
setting service-specific information
- Get URL/stream key via other means of authentication such as OAuth,
or be able to build custom URLs for services that require that sort
of thing.
- Query information (such as viewer count, chat, follower
notifications, and other information)
- Set channel information (such as current game, current channel title,
activating commercials)
Also, I reduce some repeated code that was used for all libobs objects.
This includes the name of the object, the private data, settings, as
well as the signal and procedure handlers.
I also switched to using linked lists for the global object lists,
rather than using an array of pointers (you could say it was..
pointless.) ..Anyway, the linked list info is also stored in the shared
context data structure.
Before, async video sources would flicker because they were only being
drawn when they were updated. So when updated, they'd draw that frame,
then it would stop drawing it until it updated again. This fixes that
issue and they should now draw properly.
Also, fix a few other minor bugs and issues relating to async video,
and make it so that non-async video filters can be properly applied to
them.
For the purposes of testing, change the 'test-random' source to an async
video source that updates every quarter of a second with a new random
face.
Also fix a bug where non-async video sources wouldn't have filter
effects applied properly.
- Fix an issue that could occur when using more than one video encoder.
Audio/video would not sync up correctly because they were expected to
be paired with a particular encoder. This simply adds a little
helper variable to encoder packets that specifies the system time in
microseconds. We then use that system time to sync
- Fix an issue with x264 with fractional FPS rates (29.97 and 59.94
particularly) where it would create ridiculously large stream
outputs. The problem was that you shouldn't set the timebase_*
variables in the x264 params manually, let x264 handle the default
values for it and leave them at 0.
- Make x264 use CFR output, because there's no reason to ever use VFR
in this case.
- Implement the RTMP output module. This time around, we just use a
simple FLV muxer, then just write to the stream with RTMP_Write.
Easy and effective.
- Fix the FLV muxer, the muxer now outputs proper FLV packets.
- Output API:
* When using encoders, automatically interleave encoded packets
before sending it to the output.
* Pair encoders and have them automatically wait for the other to
start to ensure sync.
* Change 'obs_output_signal_start_fail' to 'obs_output_signal_stop'
because it was a bit confusing, and doing this makes a lot more
sense for outputs that need to stop suddenly (disconnections/etc).
- Encoder API:
* Remove some unnecessary encoder functions from the actual API and
make them internal. Most of the encoder functions are handled
automatically by outputs anyway, so there's no real need to expose
them and end up inadvertently confusing plugin writers.
* Have audio encoders wait for the video encoder to get a frame, then
start at the exact data point that the first video frame starts to
ensure the most accrate sync of video/audio possible.
* Add a required 'frame_size' callback for audio encoders that
returns the expected number of frames desired to encode with. This
way, the libobs encoder API can handle the circular buffering
internally automatically for the encoder modules, so encoder
writers don't have to do it themselves.
- Fix a few bugs in the serializer interface. It was passing the wrong
variable for the data in a few cases.
- If a source has video, make obs_source_update defer the actual update
callback until the tick function is called to prevent threading
issues.
- Add interleaving of video/audio packets for outputs that are encoded
and expect both video and audio data, sorting the packets and sending
them to the output when both video and audio is received.
- Combine create and initialize callbacks for the encoder API callback
interface.
Improve the properties API so that it can actually respond somewhat to
user input. Maybe later this might be further improved or replaced with
something script-based.
When creating a property, you can now add a callback to that property
that notifies when the property has been changed in the user interface.
Return true if you want the properties to be refreshed, or false if not.
Though now that I think about it I doubt there would ever be a case
where you would have this callback and *not* refresh the properties.
Regardless, this allows functions to change the values of properties or
settings, or enable/disable/hide other property controls from view
dynamically.
- Make it so that encoders can be assigned to outputs. If an encoder
is destroyed, it will automatically remove itself from that output.
I specifically didn't want to do reference counting because it leaves
too much potential for unchecked references and it just felt like it
would be more trouble than it's worth.
- Add a 'flags' value to the output definition structure. This lets
the output specify if it uses video/audio, and whether the output is
meant to be used with OBS encoders or not.
- Remove boilerplate code for outputs. This makes it easier to program
outputs. The boilerplate code involved before was mostly just
involving connecting to the audio/video data streams directly in each
output plugin.
Instead of doing that, simply add plugin callback functions for
receiving video/audio (either encoded or non-encoded, whichever it's
set to use), and then call obs_output_begin_data_capture and
obs_output_end_data_capture to automatically handle setting up
connections to raw or encoded video/audio streams for the plugin.
- Remove 'active' function from output callbacks, as it's no longer
really needed now that the libobs output context automatically knows
when the output is active or not.
- Make it so that an encoder cannot be destroyed until all data
connections to the encoder have been removed.
- Change the 'start' and 'stop' functions in the encoder interface to
just an 'initialize' callback, which initializes the encoder.
- Make it so that the encoder must be initialized first before the data
stream can be started. The reason why initialization was separated
from starting the encoder stream was because we need to be able to
check that the settings used with the encoder *can* be used first.
This problem was especially annoying if you had both video/audio
encoding. Before, you'd have to check the return value from
obs_encoder_start, and if that second encoder fails, then you
basically had to stop the first encoder again, making for
unnecessary boilerplate code whenever starting up two encoders.
Also, rename atomic functions to be consistent with the rest of the
platform/threading functions, and move atomic functions to threading*
files rather than platform* files
- Implement OBS encoder interface. It was previously incomplete, but
now is reaching some level of completion, though probably should
still be considered preliminary.
I had originally implemented it so that encoders only have a 'reset'
function to reset their parameters, but I felt that having both a
'start' and 'stop' function would be useful.
Encoders are now assigned to a specific video/audio media output each
rather than implicitely assigned to the main obs video/audio
contexts. This allows separate encoder contexts that aren't
necessarily assigned to the main video/audio context (which is useful
for things such as recording specific sources). Will probably have
to do this for regular obs outputs as well.
When creating an encoder, you must now explicitely state whether that
encoder is an audio or video encoder.
Audio and video can optionally be automatically converted depending
on what the encoder specifies.
When something 'attaches' to an encoder, the first attachment starts
the encoder, and the encoder automatically attaches to the media
output context associated with it. Subsequent attachments won't have
the same effect, they will just start receiving the same encoder data
when the next keyframe plays (along with SEI if any). When detaching
from the encoder, the last detachment will fully stop the encoder and
detach the encoder from the media output context associated with the
encoder.
SEI must actually be exported separately; because new encoder
attachments may not always be at the beginning of the stream, the
first keyframe they get must have that SEI data in it. If the
encoder has SEI data, it needs only add one small function to simply
query that SEI data, and then that data will be handled automatically
by libobs for all subsequent encoder attachments.
- Implement x264 encoder plugin, move x264 files to separate plugin to
separate necessary dependencies.
- Change video/audio frame output structures to not use const
qualifiers to prevent issues with non-const function usage elsewhere.
This was an issue when writing the x264 encoder, as the x264 encoder
expects non-const frame data.
Change stagesurf_map to return a non-const data type to prevent this
as well.
- Change full range parameter of video scaler to be an enum rather than
boolean
Ensure that a source has a valid name. Duplicates aren't a big deal
internally, but sources without a name are probably something that
should be avoided. Made is so that if a source is programmatically
created without a name, it's assigned an index based name.
In the main basic-mode window, made it check to make sure the name was
valid as well.
- Add some temporary streaming code using FFmpeg. FFmpeg itself is not
very ideal for streaming; lack of direct control of the sockets and
no framedrop handling means that FFmpeg is definitely not something
you want to use without wrapper code. I'd prefer writing my own
network framework in this particular case just because you give away
so much control of the network interface. Wasted an entire day
trying to go through FFmpeg issues.
There's just no way FFmpeg should be used for real streaming (at
least without being patched or submitting some sort of patch, but I'm
sort of feeling "meh" on that idea)
I had to end up writing multiple threads just to handle both
connecting and writing, because av_interleaved_write_frame blocks
every call, stalling the main encoder thread, and thus also stalling
draw signals.
- Add some temporary user interface for streaming settings. This is
just temporary for the time being. It's in the outputs section of
the basic-mode settings
- Make it so that dynamic arrays do not free all their data when the
size just happens to be reduced to 0. This prevents constant
reallocation when an array keeps going from 1 item to 0 items. Also,
it was bad to become dependent upon that functionality. You must now
always explicitly call "free" on it to ensure the data is free, and
that's how it should be. Implicit functionality can lead to
confusion and maintainability issues.
Split off activate to activate and show callbacks, and split off
deactivate to deactivate and hide callbacks. Sources didn't previously
have a means to know whether it was actually being displayed in the main
view or just happened to be visible somewhere. Now, for things like
transition sources, they have a means of knowing when they have actually
been "activated" so they can initiate their sequence.
A source is now only considered "active" when it's being displayed by
the main view. When a source is shown in the main view, the activate
callback/signal is triggered. When it's no longer being displayed by
the main view, deactivate callback/signal is triggered.
When a source is just generally visible to see by any view, the show
callback/signal is triggered. If it's no longer visible by any views,
then the hide callback/signal is triggered.
Presentation volume will now only be active when a source is active in
the main view rather than also in auxilary views.
Also fix a potential bug where parents wouldn't properly increment or
decrement all the activation references of a child source when a child
was added or removed.
- Remove obs_source::type because it became redundant now that the
type is always stored in the obs_source::info variable.
- Apply presentation volumes of 1.0 and 0.0 to sources when they
activate/deactivate, respectively. It also applies that presentation
volume to all sub-sources, with exception of transition sources.
Transition sources must apply presentation volume manually to their
sub-sources with the new transition functions below.
- Add a "transition_volume" variable to obs_source structure, and add
three functions for handling volume for transitions:
* obs_transition_begin_frame
* obs_source_set_transition_vol
* obs_transition_end_frame
Because the to/from targets of a transition source might both contain
some of the same sources, handling the transitioning of volumes for
that specific situation becomes an issue.
So for transitions, instead of modifying the presentation volumes
directly for both sets of sources, we do this:
- First, call obs_transition_begin_frame at the beginning of each
transition frame, which will reset transition volumes for all
sub-sources to 0. Presentation volumes remain unchanged.
- Call obs_source_set_transition_vol on each sub-source, which will
then add the volume to the transition volume for each source in
that source's tree. Presentation volumes still remain unchanged.
- Then you call obs_trandition_end_frame when complete, which will
then finally set the presentation volumes to the transition
volumes.
For example, let's say that there's one source that's within both the
"transitioning from" sources and "transition to" sources. It would
add both the fade in and fade out volumes to that source, and then
when the frame is complete, it would set the presentation volume to
the sum of those two values, rather than set the presentation volume
for that same source twice which would cause weird volume jittering
and also set the wrong values.
Now sources will be properly activated and deactivated when they are in
use or not in use.
Had to figure out a way to handle child sources, and children of
children, just ended up implementing simple functions that parents use
to signal adding/removal to help with hierarchial activation and
deactivation of child sources.
To prevent the source activate/deactivate callbacks from being called
more than once, added an activation reference counter. The first
increment will call the activate callback, and the last decrement will
call the deactivate callback.
Added "source-activate" and "source-deactivate" signals to the main obs
signal handler, and "activate" and "deactivate" to individual source
signal handlers.
Also, fixed the main window so it properly selects a source when the
current active scene has been changed.
Added a "master" volume for the entire audio subsystem.
Also, added a "presentation" volume for both the master volume and for
each invidiaul source. The presentation volume is used to control
things like transitioning volumes, preventing sources from outputting
any audio when they're inactive, as well as some other uses in the
future.
- Changed glMapBuffer to glMapBufferRange to allow invalidation. Using
just glMapBuffer alone was causing some unacceptable stalls.
- Changed dynamic buffers from GL_DYNAMIC_WRITE to GL_STREAM_WRITE
because I had misunderstood the OpenGL specification
- Added _OPENGL and _D3D11 builtin preprocessor macros to effects to
allow special processing if needed
- Added fmod support to shaders (NOTE: D3D and GL do not function
identically with negative numbers when using this. Positive numbers
however function identically)
- Created a planar conversion shader that converts from packed YUV to
planar 420 right on the GPU without any CPU processing. Reduces
required GPU download size to approximately 37.5% of its normal rate
as well. GPU usage down by 10 entire percentage points despite the
extra required pass.
Originally, the rendering system was designed to only display sources
and such, but I realized there would be a flaw; if you wanted to render
the main viewport in a custom way, or maybe even the entire application
as a graphics-based front end, you wouldn't have been able to do that.
Displays have now been separated in to viewports and displays. A
viewport is used to store and draw sources, a display is used to handle
draw callbacks. You can even use displays without using viewports to
draw custom render displays containing graphics calls if you wish, but
usually they would be used in combination with source viewports at
least.
This requires a tiny bit more work to create simple source displays, but
in the end its worth it for the added flexibility and options it brings.
The API used to be designed in such a way to where it would expect
exports for each individual source/output/encoder/etc. You would export
functions for each and it would automatically load those functions based
on a specific naming scheme from the module.
The idea behind this was that I wanted to limit the usage of structures
in the API so only functions could be used. It was an interesting idea
in theory, but this idea turned out to be flawed in a number of ways:
1.) Requiring exports to create sources/outputs/encoders/etc meant that
you could not create them by any other means, which meant that
things like faruton's .net plugin would become difficult.
2.) Export function declarations could not be checked, therefore if you
created a function with the wrong parameters and parameter types,
the compiler wouldn't know how to check for that.
3.) Required overly complex load functions in libobs just to handle it.
It makes much more sense to just have a load function that you call
manually. Complexity is the bane of all good programs.
4.) It required that you have functions of specific names, which looked
and felt somewhat unsightly.
So, to fix these issues, I replaced it with a more commonly used API
scheme, seen commonly in places like kernels and typical C libraries
with abstraction. You simply create a structure that contains the
callback definitions, and you pass it to a function to register that
definition (such as obs_register_source), which you call in the
obs_module_load of the module.
It will also automatically check the structure size and ensure that it
only loads the required values if the structure happened to add new
values in an API change.
The "main" source file for each module must include obs-module.h, and
must use OBS_DECLARE_MODULE() within that source file.
Also, started writing some doxygen documentation in to the main library
headers. Will add more detailed documentation as I go.
- Fill in the rest of the FFmpeg test output code for testing so it
actually properly outputs data.
- Improve the main video subsystem to be a bit more optimal and
automatically output I420 or NV12 if needed.
- Fix audio subsystem insertation and byte calculation. Now it will
seamlessly insert new audio data in to the audio stream based upon
its timestamp value. (Be extremely cautious when using floating
point calculations for important things like this, and always round
your values and check your values)
- Use 32 byte alignment in case of future optimizations and export a
function to get the current alignment.
- Make os_sleepto_ns return true if slept, false if the time has
already been passed before the call.
- Fix sinewave output so that it actually properly calculates a middle
C sinewave.
- Change the use of row_bytes to linesize (also makes it a bit more
consistent with FFmpeg's naming as well)
- Implement texture scaling/conversion/downloading for the main view so
we can finally start getting data to output.
Also, redesign how it works a bit, it will now properly wait one full
frame for each step in the process: rendering the main texture,
scaling the main texture to an output texture, staging/downloading the
ouput texture, and then outputting that staged data. This way, the
GPU will have more than enough time to fully complete each step.
- Fix a bug with OpenGL plugin's texture staging function. Was using
glBindBuffer instead of what should have been used: glBindTexture.
- Change the naming scheme of the variables in default.effect. It's now
named with the idea of just "color matrix" in mind instead of "yuv
matrix", and instead of DrawRGBToYUV, it's now just DrawMatrix.
Reduce and simplify the UI export interface. Having to export functions
with designated names was a bit silly for this case, it makes more sense
for inputs/outputs/etc because they have more functions associated with
them, but in this case the callback can be retrieved simply through the
enumeration exports. Makes it a bit easier and a little less awkward
for this situation.
Also, changed the exports and names to be a bit more consistent,
labelling them both as either "modal" or "modeless", and changed the UI
function calls to obs_exec_ui and obs_create_ui to imply modal/modeless
functionality a bit more.
I realized that I had intended modeless UI to be usable by plugins, but
it had been pointed out to me that modeless really needs to return a
pointer/handle to the user interface object that was created.
Add the ability to be able to call and use toolkit-specific or
program-specific user interface in modules.
User interface code can be either bundled with the module, or 'split'
out in to separate libraries (recommended).
There are three reasons why splitting is recommended:
1.) It allows plugins to be able to create custom user interface for
each toolkit if desired.
2.) Often, UI will be programmed in one language (the language of the
toolkit), and core logic may be programmed in another. This
allows plugins to keep the languages separated if necessary.
3.) It prevents direct linkage of UI toolkits libraries with core
module logic.
Splitting is not required, though is recommended if you want your plugin
to be more flexible with other user interface toolkits or programs.
Will implement a generic properties lookup next, which will be used for
automatic UI handling so that plugin UI isn't necessarily required.
I'm doing this because I might create another data structure called
obs_data for a different purpose. That and obs_program_data feels a bit
less vague for what it does.
jp9000
Palana