moonfire-nvr/guide
Scott Lamb f3ddbfe22a track cumulative duration and runs
This is useful for a combo scrub bar-based UI (#32) + live view UI (#59)
in a non-obvious way. When constructing a HTML Media Source Extensions
API SourceBuffer, the caller can specify a "mode" of either "segments"
or "sequence":

In "sequence" mode, playback assumes segments are added sequentially.
This is good enough for a live view-only UI (#59) but not for a scrub
bar UI in which you may want to seek backward to a segment you've never
seen before. You will then need to insert a segment out-of-sequence.
Imagine what happens when the user goes forward again until the end of
the segment inserted immediately before it. The user should see the
chronologically next segment or a pause for loading if it's unavailable.
The best approximation of this is to track the mapping of timestamps to
segments and insert a VTTCue with an enter/exit handler that seeks to
the right position. But seeking isn't instantaneous; the user will
likely briefly see first the segment they seeked to before. That's
janky. Additionally, the "canplaythrough" event will behave strangely.

In "segments" mode, playback respects the timestamps we set:

* The obvious choice is to use wall clock timestamps. This is fine if
  they're known to be fixed and correct. They're not. The
  currently-recording segment may be "unanchored", meaning its start
  timestamp is not yet fixed. Older timestamps may overlap if the system
  clock was stepped between runs. The latter isn't /too/ bad from a user
  perspective, though it's confusing as a developer. We probably will
  only end up showing the more recent recording for a given
  timestamp anyway. But the former is quite annoying. It means we have
  to throw away part of the SourceBuffer that we may want to seek back
  (causing UI pauses when that happens) or keep our own spare copy of it
  (memory bloat). I'd like to avoid the whole mess.

* Another approach is to use timestamps that are guaranteed to be in
  the correct order but that may have gaps. In particular, a timestamp
  of (recording_id * max_recording_duration) + time_within_recording.
  But again seeking isn't instantaneous. In my experiments, there's a
  visible pause between segments that drives me nuts.

* Finally, the approach that led me to this schema change. Use
  timestamps that place each segment after the one before, possibly with
  an intentional gap between runs (to force a wait where we have an
  actual gap). This should make the browser's natural playback behavior
  work properly: it never goes to an incorrect place, and it only waits
  when/if we want it to. We have to maintain a mapping between its
  timestamps and segment ids but that's doable.

This commit is only the schema change; the new data aren't exposed in
the API yet, much less used by a UI.

Note that stream.next_recording_id became stream.cum_recordings. I made
a slight definition change in the process: recording ids for new streams
start at 0 rather than 1. Various tests changed accordingly.

The upgrade process makes a best effort to backfill these new fields,
but of course it doesn't know the total duration or number of runs of
previously deleted rows. That's good enough.
2020-06-09 16:17:32 -07:00
..
developing-ui.md fix description of MOONFIRE_DEV_HOST 2020-05-08 19:29:47 -07:00
install-manual.md upgrade to hyper 0.13 ecosystem 2020-01-09 16:07:46 -08:00
install-scripted.md many improvements to install docs/procedures 2019-07-10 00:56:43 -07:00
install.md mount options for fewer write operations 2019-07-20 15:33:51 -07:00
schema.md track cumulative duration and runs 2020-06-09 16:17:32 -07:00
secure.md switch to websocket for live stream (#59) 2020-02-29 14:39:16 -08:00
troubleshooting.md Remove mention of #36 from troubleshooting guide 2019-02-13 22:25:33 -08:00