Re: [Cellar] Matroska Elements to support frame side data

[Moritz Bunkus <[e-mail]>]

Hey,

> In other thoughts on this suggestion, I think it could make it difficult
> to easily understand if a file has a particular type of side data. For
> instance if only a few Clusters somewhere in the Segment contain a
> certain type of side data, it would require parsing every Cluster to know
> what types of side data are available. This uncertainly wouldn’t be the
> same issue if the side data was itself a Track.

It's not entirely necessary to use a full track for side data. We can simply
signal the presence of side data in the track headers and refer to it from
the side data in the block groups. This would also mean we only have to
store the string identifying the side data type once (in the track headers)
instead of in each block.

(I'll use "BlockMetadata" as the basis for all element names
here. Initially I proposed "FrameMetadata", but "BlockMetadata" is fine
with me, too.)

For example:

Tracks
+- TrackEntry
 +- TrackBlockMetadata (Master)
  +- TrackBlockMetadataType (String, required)
  +- TrackBlockMetadataID (Unsigned Integer, required)

…

Cluster
+- BlockGroup
 +- BlockMetadata (Master)
  +- BlockMetadataID (Unsigned Integer, required, refers to existing
     TrackBlockMetadataID in track headers)
  +- BlockMetadataString (Unicode String, optional)
  +- BlockMetadataBinary (Binary, optional)
  +- BlockMetadataUInteger (Unsigned Integer, optional)
  +- BlockMetadataSInteger (Signed Integer, optional)
  +- BlockMetadataFloat (Float, optional)

with the restriction that exactly one of (BlockMetadataString,
BlockMetadataBinary, BlockMetadataUInteger, BlockMetadataSInteger,
BlockMetadataFloat) must exist.

Advantages as I see them:

• Less overhead (no repeated string parsing required)
• Quicker parsing (no repeated string parsing required)
• Presence of meta data is known upfront
• Not using a full-blown track for meta data would alleviate the need to
  specify how all those track and block features (e.g. BlockDuration,
  TrackDefaultDuration…) apply to a "meta data track".

Kind regards,
mosu