API changed:
--------------------------
void obs_output_set_audio_encoder(
obs_output_t *output,
obs_encoder_t *encoder);
obs_encoder_t *obs_output_get_audio_encoder(
const obs_output_t *output);
obs_encoder_t *obs_audio_encoder_create(
const char *id,
const char *name,
obs_data_t *settings);
Changed to:
--------------------------
/* 'idx' specifies the track index of the output */
void obs_output_set_audio_encoder(
obs_output_t *output,
obs_encoder_t *encoder,
size_t idx);
/* 'idx' specifies the track index of the output */
obs_encoder_t *obs_output_get_audio_encoder(
const obs_output_t *output,
size_t idx);
/* 'mixer_idx' specifies the mixer index to capture audio from */
obs_encoder_t *obs_audio_encoder_create(
const char *id,
const char *name,
obs_data_t *settings,
size_t mixer_idx);
Overview
--------------------------
This feature allows multiple audio mixers to be used at a time. This
capability was able to be added with surprisingly very little extra
overhead. Audio will not be mixed unless it's assigned to a specific
mixer, and mixers will not mix unless they have an active mix
connection.
Mostly this will be useful for being able to separate out specific audio
for recording versus streaming, but will also be useful for certain
streaming services that support multiple audio streams via RTMP.
I didn't want to use a variable amount of mixers due to the desire to
reduce heap allocations, so currently I set the limit to 4 simultaneous
mixers; this number can be increased later if needed, but honestly I
feel like it's just the right number to use.
Sources:
Sources can now specify which audio mixers their audio is mixed to; this
can be a single mixer or multiple mixers at a time. The
obs_source_set_audio_mixers function sets the audio mixer which an audio
source applies to. For example, 0xF would mean that the source applies
to all four mixers.
Audio Encoders:
Audio encoders now must specify which specific audio mixer they use when
they encode audio data.
Outputs:
Outputs that use encoders can now support multiple audio tracks at once
if they have the OBS_OUTPUT_MULTI_TRACK capability flag set. This is
mostly only useful for certain types of RTMP transmissions, though may
be useful for file formats that support multiple audio tracks as well
later on.
The temporary unoptimized code we were using before just completely
allocated a new copy of each frame every single time a new async frame
was output by the source plugin. This just creates a cache of frames as
needed for the current format/width/height to minimize the allocation
and deallocation. If new frames come in that are of a different
format/width/height, it'll just clear the cache. This is a fairly
important optimization.
all the async video related stuff usually started with async_*, and
there were two that didn't. So I just renamed them so they have the
same naming convention
If an async video source stops video for whatever reason, it would get
stuck on the last frame that was played. This was particularly awkward
when I wanted to give the user the ability to deactivate a source such
as a webcam because it would get stuck on the last frame.
Previously, the design for the interaction between the encoder thread
and the graphics thread was that the encoder thread would signal to the
graphics thread when to start drawing each frame. The original idea
behind this was to prevent mutually cascading stalls of encoding or
graphics rendering (i.e., if rendering took too long, then encoding
would have to catch up, then rendering would have to catch up again, and
so on, cascading upon each other). The ultimate goal was to prevent
encoding from impacting graphics and vise versa.
However, eventually it was realized that there were some fundamental
flaws with this design.
1. Stray frame duplication. You could not guarantee that a frame would
render on time, so sometimes frames would unintentionally be lost if
there was any sort of minor hiccup or if the thread took too long to
be scheduled I'm guessing.
2. Frame timing in the rendering thread was less accurate. The only
place where frame timing was accurate was in the encoder thread, and
the graphics thread was at the whim of thread scheduling. On higher
end computers it was typically fine, but it was just generally not
guaranteed that a frame would be rendered when it was supposed to be
rendered.
So the solution (originally proposed by r1ch and paibox) is to instead
keep the encoding and graphics threads separate as usual, but instead of
the encoder thread controlling the graphics thread, the graphics thread
now controls the encoder thread. The encoder thread keeps a limited
cache of frames, then the graphics thread copies frames in to the cache
and increments a semaphore to schedule the encoder thread to encode that
data.
In the cache, each frame has an encode counter. If the frame cache is
full (e.g., the encoder taking too long to return frames), it will not
cache a new frame, but instead will just increment the counter on the
last frame in the cache to schedule that frame to encode again, ensuring
that frames are on time and reducing CPU usage by lowering video
complexity. If the graphics thread takes too long to render a frame,
then it will add that frame with the count value set to the total amount
of frames that were missed (actual legitimately duplicated frames).
Because the cache gives many frames of breathing room for the encoder to
encode frames, this design helps improve results especially when using
encoding presets that have higher complexity and CPU usage, minimizing
the risk of needlessly skipped or duplicated frames.
I also managed to sneak in what should be a bit of an optimization to
reduce copying of frame data, though how much of an optimization it
ultimately ends up being is debatable.
So to sum it up, this commit increases accuracy of frame timing,
completely removes stray frame duplication, gives better results for
higher complexity encoding presets, and potentially optimizes the frame
pipeline a tiny bit.
In certain circumstances where the output was stopping, and where data
took a long enough time to send (such as when using an encoding preset
that causes high CPU usage), the output would sometimes still send data
even after it was stopped, typically causing the output to crash.
This changes the way source volume handles transitioning between being
active and inactive states.
The previous way that transitioning handled volume was that it set the
presentation volume of the source and all of its sub-sources to 0.0 if
the source was inactive, and 1.0 if active. Transition sources would
then also set the presentation volume for sub-sources to whatever their
transitioning volume was. However, the problem with this is that the
design didn't take in to account if the source or its sub-sources were
active anywhere else, so because of that it would break if that ever
happened, and I didn't realize that when I was designing it.
So instead, this completely overhauls the design of handling
transitioning volume. Each frame, it'll go through all sources and
check whether they're active or inactive and set the base volume
accordingly. If transitions are currently active, it will actually walk
the active source tree and check whether the source is in a
transitioning state somewhere.
- If the source is a sub-source of a transition, and it's not active
outside of the transition, then the transition will control the
volume of the source.
- If the source is a sub-source of a transition, but it's also active
outside of the transition, it'll defer to whichever is louder.
This also adds a new callback to the obs_source_info structure for
transition sources, get_transition_volume, which is called to get the
transitioning volume of a sub-source.
The reason to keep a reference counter for transitions is due to an
optimization I'm planning on when calculating transition volumes. I'm
planning on walking the source tree to be able to calculate the current
base volume of a source, but *only* if there are transitions active,
because the only time that the volume can be anything other than 1.0
or 0.0 is when there are active transitions, which may change the base
volume of a source.
Changed the design from using obs_source::enum_refs to just simply
preventing infinite source recursion in general, rather than allowing it
through the enum_refs variable. obs_source_add_child has been changed
so that it now returns a boolean, and if the function fails, it means
that the child cannot be added due to that potential recursion.
This adds bicubic and lanczos scaling capability to libobs to improve
scaling quality and sharpness when the output resolution has to be
scaled relative to the base resolution. Bilinear is also available,
although bilinear has rather poor quality and causes scaling to appear
blurry.
If the output resolution is close to the base resolution, then bilinear
is used instead as an optimization, as there's no need to use these
shaders if scaling is not in use.
The Bicubic and Lanczos effects are also exposed via exported function
to allow the ability to use those shaders in plugin modules if desired.
The API change adds a variable 'scale_type' to the obs_video_info
structure that allows the user interface to choose what type of scaling
filter should be used.
This was an important change because we were originally using an
hard-coded 709/partial range color matrix for the output, which was
causing problems for people wanting to use different formats or color
spaces. This will now automatically generate the color matrix depending
on the format, color space, and range, or use an identity matrix if the
video format is RGB instead of YUV.
This moves the 'flags' variable from the obs_source_frame structure to
the obs_source structure, and allows user flags to be set for a specific
source. Having it set on the obs_source_frame structure didn't make
much sense.
OBS_SOURCE_UNBUFFERED makes it so that the source does not buffer its
async video output in order to try to play it on time. In other words,
frames are played as soon as possible after being received.
Useful when you want a source to play back as quickly as possible
(webcams, certain types of capture devices)
This bug would happen if audio packets started being received before
video packets. It would erroneously cause audio packets to be
completely thrown away, and in certain cases would cause audio and video
to start way out of sync.
My original intention was "don't accept audio until video has started",
but instead mistakenly had the effect of "don't start audio until a
video packet has been received". This was originally was intended as a
way to handle outputs hooking in to active encoders and compensating
their existing timestamp information.
However, this made me realize that there was a major flaw in the design
for handling this, so I basically rewrote the entire thing.
Now, it does the following steps when inserting packets:
- Insert packets in to the interleaved packet array
- When both audio/video packets are received, prune packets up until the
point in which both audio/video start at the same time
- Resort the interleaved packet array
I have tested this code extensively and it appears to be working well,
regardless of whether or not the encoders were already active with
another output.
At the start of each render loop, it would get the timestamp, and then
it would then assign that timestamp to whatever frame was downloaded.
However, the frame that was downloaded was usually occurred a number of
frames ago, so it would assign the wrong timestamp value to that frame.
This fixes that issue by storing the timestamps in a circular buffer.
This Fixes a minor flaw with the API where data had to always be mutable
to be usable by the API.
Functions that do not modify the fundamental underlying data of a
structure should be marked as constant, both for safety and to signify
that the parameter is input only and will not be modified by the
function using it.
Typedef pointers are unsafe. If you do:
typedef struct bla *bla_t;
then you cannot use it as a constant, such as: const bla_t, because
that constant will be to the pointer itself rather than to the
underlying data. I admit this was a fundamental mistake that must
be corrected.
All typedefs that were pointer types will now have their pointers
removed from the type itself, and the pointers will be used when they
are actually used as variables/parameters/returns instead.
This does not break ABI though, which is pretty nice.
This prevents multiple needless calls to obs_source_get_frame and other
functions. If the texture has already been processed, then just render
it as-is in any subsequent calls to obs_source_video_render.
This is actually unnecessary now that there's a hard limit on the
maximum offset in which audio can be inserted.
This also assumes too much about the audio; it assumes audio is always
on, where as with some devices (such as the elgato) audio is not on
until the stream starts, and when the video has already incremented the
counter.
This makes it easier to do two things:
1.) Get the skipped frames count relative to each specific output
2.) Make it so that getting the 'current' log will always contain
information about skipped frames. Before, you'd have to force the
user to restart the program and get the last log, which was really
annoying when you just wanted to see how the encoders were
performing.
API functions added:
-----------------------------------------------
obs_output_set_preferred_size
obs_output_get_width
obs_output_get_height
obs_encoder_set_scaled_size
obs_encoder_get_width
obs_encoder_get_height
These functions allow for easier means of setting a custom resolution on
an output or encoder.
If an output uses an encoder and you set the preferred width/height
using the output, then the output will attempt to set the scaled
width/height for the encoder it's currently using.
Outputs and encoders now should use these functions to determine the
width/height of the raw frame data instead of using the video-io
functions.
With the recent change to module handling by BtbN, I felt that having
this information might be useful in case someone is actually using make
install to set up their libraries.
Changed API:
- char *obs_find_plugin_file(const char *sub_path);
Changed to: char *obs_module_file(const char *file);
Cahnge it so you no longer need to specify a sub-path such as:
obs_find_plugin_file("module_name/file.ext")
Instead, now automatically handle the module data path so all you need
to do is:
obs_module_file("file.ext")
- int obs_load_module(const char *name);
Changed to: int obs_open_module(obs_module_t *module,
const char *path,
const char *data_path);
bool obs_init_module(obs_module_t module);
Change the module loading API so that if the front-end chooses, it can
load modules directly from a specified path, and associate a data
directory with it on the spot.
The module will not be initialized immediately; obs_init_module must
be called on the module pointer in order to fully initialize the
module. This is done so a module can be disabled by the front-end if
the it so chooses.
New API:
- void obs_add_module_path(const char *bin, const char *data);
These functions allow you to specify new module search paths to add,
and allow you to search through them, or optionally just load all
modules from them. If the string %module% is included, it will
replace it with the module's name when that string is used as a
lookup. Data paths are now directly added to the module's internal
storage structure, and when obs_find_module_file is used, it will look
up the pointer to the obs_module structure and get its data directory
that way.
Example:
obs_add_module_path("/opt/obs/my-modules/%module%/bin",
"/opt/obs/my-modules/%module%/data");
This would cause it to additionally look for the binary of a
hypthetical module named "foo" at /opt/obs/my-modules/foo/bin/foo.so
(or libfoo.so), and then look for the data in
/opt/obs/my-modules/foo/data.
This gives the front-end more flexibility for handling third-party
plugin modules, or handling all plugin modules in a custom way.
- void obs_find_modules(obs_find_module_callback_t callback, void
*param);
This searches the existing paths for modules and calls the callback
function when any are found. Useful for plugin management and custom
handling of the paths by the front-end if desired.
- void obs_load_all_modules(void);
Search through the paths and both loads and initializes all modules
automatically without custom handling.
- void obs_enum_modules(obs_enum_module_callback_t callback,
void *param);
Enumerates currently opened modules.
Before it would assign the encoder/media callbacks directly to the
output's callbacks, so instead of doing that, it now goes through
intermediary functions for the sake of counting the frames.
This just ensures that if an obs object is renamed that the pointer to
older names will still be valid. Prevents renames from causing any
invalid memory access.
When the obs object is destroyed, so are the cached names.
The core itself now provides reconnection options (enabled by default, 2
second timeout between reconnects, 20 retries max until actual
disconnection occurs). This will make things easier for both module
developers and UI developers.
Reconnecting treats the stream as though it were still active, and
signals are sent when reconnecting and upon successful reconnection.
Need to implement user interface information for reconnections.
The module callback obs_module_set_locale will be called after loading
the module, and any time the locale is manually changed via core API.
When this function is called, the module is expected to load new text
lookup values for all the text it uses based upon the current locale.
This API is used to set the current locale for libobs, which it will set
for all modules when a module is loaded or specifically when the locale
is manually changed.
The 'initialize' callback is used before the encoders/output start up so
it can adjust encoder settings to required values if needed.
Also added the function 'obs_encoder_active' that returns true or false
depending on whether that encoder is active or not.
This replaces the older code which simply queried the max volume level
value for any given audio.
I'm still not 100% sure on if this is how I want to approach the
problem, particularly, whether this should be done in obs_source or in
audio_line, but it can always be moved later if needed.
This uses the calculations by the awesome Bill Hamilton that OBS1 used
for its volume levels. It calculates the current max (level),
magnitude, and current peak. This data then can be used to create
awesome volume meter controls later on.
NOTE: Will probably need optimization, does one float at a time right
now.
Also, change some of the naming conventions. I actually need to change
a lot of the naming conventions in general so that all words are
separated by underscores. Kind of a bad practice there on my part.
This uses the reverse planar YUV 4:2:0 conversion shader to output a YUV
texture without having to convert it via CPU. Again, this will reduce
video upload bandwidth usage to 37.5% of the original rate. I suspect
this will be particularly useful for when an FFmpeg or libav input
plugin for playing videos is made.
NOTE: There's an issue with certain texture sizes right now I haven't
been able to identify, if the full size of texture data divided by the
base texture width is an uneven number, the V chroma plane seems like it
can potentially shift, though I only had this happen with 160x90
resolution C920. Almost all resolutions tend to be even. Needs further
testing with more devices that support planar YUV 4:2:0 output.
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.
