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Message-ID: <8b10414a1c198a6e3bd5e131a72bd6f68466bea5.camel@ndufresne.ca>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] media: hantro: Support H264 profile control
From:   Nicolas Dufresne <nicolas@ndufresne.ca>
To:     Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl>, Tomasz Figa <tfiga@chromium.org>
Cc:     Hirokazu Honda <hiroh@chromium.org>,
        Ezequiel Garcia <ezequiel@collabora.com>,
        Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@kernel.org>,
        Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Linux Media Mailing List <linux-media@vger.kernel.org>,
        devel@driverdev.osuosl.org,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Date:   Sat, 18 Jan 2020 08:31:22 -0500
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Le vendredi 10 janvier 2020 à 13:31 +0100, Hans Verkuil a écrit :
> On 11/29/19 1:16 AM, Tomasz Figa wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 1:52 AM Nicolas Dufresne <nicolas@ndufresne.ca>
> > wrote:
> > > Le samedi 23 novembre 2019 à 01:00 +0900, Tomasz Figa a écrit :
> > > > On Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 12:09 AM Nicolas Dufresne <nicolas@ndufresne.ca>
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > Le vendredi 22 novembre 2019 à 14:16 +0900, Hirokazu Honda a écrit :
> > > > > > The Hantro G1 decoder supports H.264 profiles from Baseline to High,
> > > > > > with
> > > > > > the exception of the Extended profile.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Expose the V4L2_CID_MPEG_VIDEO_H264_PROFILE control, so that the
> > > > > > applications can query the driver for the list of supported
> > > > > > profiles.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Thanks for this patch. Do you think we could also add the LEVEL
> > > > > control
> > > > > so the profile/level enumeration becomes complete ?
> > > > > 
> > > > > I'm thinking it would be nice if the v4l2 compliance test make sure
> > > > > that codecs do implement these controls (both stateful and stateless),
> > > > > it's essential for stack with software fallback, or multiple capable
> > > > > codec hardware but with different capabilities.
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Level is a difficult story, because it also specifies the number of
> > > > macroblocks per second, but for decoders like this the number of
> > > > macroblocks per second it can handle depends on things the driver
> > > > might be not aware of - clock frequencies, DDR throughput, system
> > > > load, etc.
> > > > 
> > > > My take on this is that the decoder driver should advertise the
> > > > highest resolution the decoder can handle due to hardware constraints.
> > > > Performance related things depend on the integration details and
> > > > should be managed elsewhere. For example Android and Chrome OS manage
> > > > expected decoding performance in per-board configuration files.
> > > 
> > > When you read datasheet, the HW is always rated to maximum level (and
> > > it's a range) with the assumption of a single stream. It seems much
> > > easier to expose this as-is, statically then to start doing some math
> > > with data that isn't fully exposed to the user. This is about filtering
> > > of multiple CODEC instances, it does not need to be rocket science,
> > > specially that the amount of missing data is important (e.g. usage of
> > > tiles, compression, IPP all have an impact on the final performance).
> > > All we want to know in userspace is if this HW is even possibly capable
> > > of LEVEL X, and if not, we'll look for another one.
> > > 
> > 
> > Agreed, one could potentially define it this way, but would it be
> > really useful for the userspace and the users? I guess it could enable
> > slightly faster fallback to software decoding in the extreme case of
> > the hardware not supporting the level at all, but I suspect that the
> > majority of cases would be the hardware just being unusably slow.
> > 
> > Also, as I mentioned before, we already return the range of supported
> > resolutions, which in practice should map to the part of the level
> > that may depend on hardware capabilities rather than performance, so
> > exposing levels as well would add redundancy to the information
> > exposed.
> 
> There is a lot of discussion here, but it all revolves around a potential
> LEVEL control.
> 
> So I gather everyone is OK with merging this patch?

I'm ok with this. For me, the level reflects the real time performance
capability as define in the spec, while the width/height constraints usually
represent an addressing capabicity, which may or may not operate real-time.

> 
> If not, let me know asap.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 	Hans
> 
> > > > > > Signed-off-by: Hirokazu Honda <hiroh@chromium.org>
> > > > > > ---
> > > > > >  drivers/staging/media/hantro/hantro_drv.c | 10 ++++++++++
> > > > > >  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > diff --git a/drivers/staging/media/hantro/hantro_drv.c
> > > > > > b/drivers/staging/media/hantro/hantro_drv.c
> > > > > > index 6d9d41170832..9387619235d8 100644
> > > > > > --- a/drivers/staging/media/hantro/hantro_drv.c
> > > > > > +++ b/drivers/staging/media/hantro/hantro_drv.c
> > > > > > @@ -355,6 +355,16 @@ static const struct hantro_ctrl controls[] = {
> > > > > >                       .def =
> > > > > > V4L2_MPEG_VIDEO_H264_START_CODE_ANNEX_B,
> > > > > >                       .max =
> > > > > > V4L2_MPEG_VIDEO_H264_START_CODE_ANNEX_B,
> > > > > >               },
> > > > > > +     }, {
> > > > > > +             .codec = HANTRO_H264_DECODER,
> > > > > > +             .cfg = {
> > > > > > +                     .id = V4L2_CID_MPEG_VIDEO_H264_PROFILE,
> > > > > > +                     .min = V4L2_MPEG_VIDEO_H264_PROFILE_BASELINE,
> > > > > > +                     .max = V4L2_MPEG_VIDEO_H264_PROFILE_HIGH,
> > > > > > +                     .menu_skip_mask =
> > > > > > +                     BIT(V4L2_MPEG_VIDEO_H264_PROFILE_EXTENDED),
> > > > > > +                     .def = V4L2_MPEG_VIDEO_H264_PROFILE_MAIN,
> > > > > > +             }
> > > > > >       }, {
> > > > > >       },
> > > > > >  };