Swfdec - Sep 2008 - Mac OS X Port Update

I'm looking at releasing a public beta of Swfdec 0.8.0 for Mac OS X in  
a few days.

Here's my source code so far; don't check this into anything yet  
because I've got some more things to do over the weekend:
<http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/macosx.zip
 >

The Mac OS X version will come with more or less the same software as  
the GTK+ version - a framework with an NSView subclass (the Mac OS X  
equivalent of a GTK+ widget), a standalone player app, a thumbnailer,  
and a Web browser plugin that works with Safari. I did not change any  
existing files; I only added several GTK+ subclasses and several  
Objective-C classes.

Here is a screenshot of Swfdec operating inside Safari, and  
SwfdecPlayer running in the background:
<http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/Picture2.png
 >

I've got three more questions for Benjamin or anyone else who would  
know:

1. I've noticed that JPEG rendering is really slow for some reason,  
and I hope it's from something I'm doing incorrectly. But every time  
an animation uses at least one JPEG, drawing the frame seems to  
monopolize the CPU. This makes JPEG-heavy animations unplayable. Can  
anyone look at my -drawRect: method in SDFlashView and tell me if I'm  
missing something?

2. Also, I've noticed that on some animations, when the swfdec_player  
structure is deallocated, when it tries to deallocate some of the  
ActionScript variables, it causes a crash. Is this happening to anyone  
else? Should I file a bug? I can't reproduce the problem 100% of the  
time.

3. In the video decoder, I'm getting the frames, but is there some way  
to get the container, and if so, then how? I'm trying to use QuickTime  
to load the Flash video, but QuickTime apparently needs the whole  
container format, and can't do much with just frames.

Nick Zitzmann
<http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/>
S/MIME signature available upon request

On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 6:12 AM, Nick Zitzmann <seiryu at comcast.net>
wrote:
> I'm looking at releasing a public beta of Swfdec 0.8.0 for Mac OS X in
> a few days.
>
> Here's my source code so far; don't check this into anything yet
> because I've got some more things to do over the weekend:
<http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/macosx.zip
>
Awesome news. I'll have a look at that soon and comment about it. For
now, I'll just answer your questions:
> 1. I've noticed that JPEG rendering is really slow for some reason,
> and I hope it's from something I'm doing incorrectly. But every
time
> an animation uses at least one JPEG, drawing the frame seems to
> monopolize the CPU. This makes JPEG-heavy animations unplayable. Can
> anyone look at my -drawRect: method in SDFlashView and tell me if I'm
> missing something?
>
Usually the image is decoded once and then cached until the cache is
reclaimed. So it might very well be a problem with Cairo's OS X
backend or our caching as well as the JPEG decoder. Someone would need
to experiment and profile there.
> 2. Also, I've noticed that on some animations, when the swfdec_player
> structure is deallocated, when it tries to deallocate some of the
> ActionScript variables, it causes a crash. Is this happening to anyone
> else? Should I file a bug? I can't reproduce the problem 100% of the
> time.
>
It's weird if it's only happening on OS X, might be your problem. The
last garbage collection is somewhat tricky, because it happens in a
pretty much random order, and sometimes objects refer to each other in
their destructors (aka dispose/finalize vfuncs), which shouldn't
happen.
Anyway, if you get a crash, the file that caused it and a stacktrace
are a good start.
> 3. In the video decoder, I'm getting the frames, but is there some way
> to get the container, and if so, then how? I'm trying to use QuickTime
> to load the Flash video, but QuickTime apparently needs the whole
> container format, and can't do much with just frames.
>
Nope, you get just the frames. Making available the container doesn't
work because Swfdec needs to access the data parts of the stream, so
needs to parse it itself.
I'd have thought quicktime gives you access to the video codecs
somehow in its low level APIs. How would other people integrate their
codecs/containers with Quicktime otherwise?


Cheers,
Benjamin