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| 1 | <partinfo> | ||
| 2 | <authorgroup> | ||
| 3 | <author> | ||
| 4 | <firstname>Laurent</firstname> | ||
| 5 | <surname>Pinchart</surname> | ||
| 6 | <affiliation><address><email>laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com</email></address></affiliation> | ||
| 7 | <contrib>Initial version.</contrib> | ||
| 8 | </author> | ||
| 9 | </authorgroup> | ||
| 10 | <copyright> | ||
| 11 | <year>2010</year> | ||
| 12 | <holder>Laurent Pinchart</holder> | ||
| 13 | </copyright> | ||
| 14 | |||
| 15 | <revhistory> | ||
| 16 | <!-- Put document revisions here, newest first. --> | ||
| 17 | <revision> | ||
| 18 | <revnumber>1.0.0</revnumber> | ||
| 19 | <date>2010-11-10</date> | ||
| 20 | <authorinitials>lp</authorinitials> | ||
| 21 | <revremark>Initial revision</revremark> | ||
| 22 | </revision> | ||
| 23 | </revhistory> | ||
| 24 | </partinfo> | ||
| 25 | |||
| 26 | <title>Media Controller API</title> | ||
| 27 | |||
| 28 | <chapter id="media_controller"> | ||
| 29 | <title>Media Controller</title> | ||
| 30 | |||
| 31 | <section id="media-controller-intro"> | ||
| 32 | <title>Introduction</title> | ||
| 33 | <para>Media devices increasingly handle multiple related functions. Many USB | ||
| 34 | cameras include microphones, video capture hardware can also output video, | ||
| 35 | or SoC camera interfaces also perform memory-to-memory operations similar to | ||
| 36 | video codecs.</para> | ||
| 37 | <para>Independent functions, even when implemented in the same hardware, can | ||
| 38 | be modelled as separate devices. A USB camera with a microphone will be | ||
| 39 | presented to userspace applications as V4L2 and ALSA capture devices. The | ||
| 40 | devices' relationships (when using a webcam, end-users shouldn't have to | ||
| 41 | manually select the associated USB microphone), while not made available | ||
| 42 | directly to applications by the drivers, can usually be retrieved from | ||
| 43 | sysfs.</para> | ||
| 44 | <para>With more and more advanced SoC devices being introduced, the current | ||
| 45 | approach will not scale. Device topologies are getting increasingly complex | ||
| 46 | and can't always be represented by a tree structure. Hardware blocks are | ||
| 47 | shared between different functions, creating dependencies between seemingly | ||
| 48 | unrelated devices.</para> | ||
| 49 | <para>Kernel abstraction APIs such as V4L2 and ALSA provide means for | ||
| 50 | applications to access hardware parameters. As newer hardware expose an | ||
| 51 | increasingly high number of those parameters, drivers need to guess what | ||
| 52 | applications really require based on limited information, thereby | ||
| 53 | implementing policies that belong to userspace.</para> | ||
| 54 | <para>The media controller API aims at solving those problems.</para> | ||
| 55 | </section> | ||
| 56 | </chapter> | ||