This likely breaks stuff. The good: all of the methods now create
field images aligned with input frames, without timestamp mangling.
The bad: this touches a lot of code, much of which is hairy and in
need of cleanup. However, at this point we can reasonably create a
PSNR-based test.
When not using the fieldanalysis element immediately upstream of deinterlace,
behaviour should remain unchanged. fieldanalysis will set the caps and flags on
the buffers such that they can be interpreted and acted upon to produce
progressive output.
There are two main modes of operation:
- Passive pattern locking
Passive pattern locking is a non-blocking, low-latency mode of operation that
is suitable for close-to-live usage. Initially a telecine stream will be
output as variable framerate with naïve timestamp adjustment. With each
incoming buffer, an attempt is made to lock onto a pattern. When a lock is
obtained, the src pad and output buffer caps will reflect the pattern and
timestamps will be accurately interpolated between pattern repeats. This
means that initially and at pattern transitions there will be short periods
of inaccurate timestamping.
- Active pattern locking
Active pattern locking is a blocking, high-latency mode of operation that is
targeted at use-cases where timestamp accuracy is paramount. Buffers will be
queued until enough are present to make a lock. When locked, timestamps will
be accurately interpolated between pattern repeats. Orphan fields can be
dropped or deinterlaced. If no lock can be obtained, a single field might be
pushed through to be deinterlaced.
Locking can also be disabled or 'auto' chooses between passive and active
locking modes depending on whether upstream is live.
In a number of cases it is necessary to flush the field history by
performing 'degraded' deinterlacing - that is, using the user-chosen
method for as many fields as possible, then using vfir for as long as
there are >= 2 fields remaining in the history, then using linear for
the last field.
This should avoid losing fields being kept for history for example at
EOS.
This may address part of #633294
