media: docs: dev-decoder: add restrictions about CAPTURE buffers

CAPTURE buffers might be read by the hardware after they are dequeued,
which goes against the general idea that userspace has full control over
dequeued buffers. Explain why and document the restrictions that this
implies for userspace.

Signed-off-by: Alexandre Courbot <acourbot@chromium.org>
Acked-by: Tomasz Figa <tfiga@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil-cisco@xs4all.nl>
Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>
This commit is contained in:
Alexandre Courbot 2021-10-18 11:14:27 +02:00 committed by Mauro Carvalho Chehab
parent ef054e345e
commit 4cfe98e647
1 changed files with 17 additions and 0 deletions

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@ -752,6 +752,23 @@ available to dequeue. Specifically:
buffers are out-of-order compared to the ``OUTPUT`` buffers): ``CAPTURE``
timestamps will not retain the order of ``OUTPUT`` timestamps.
.. note::
The backing memory of ``CAPTURE`` buffers that are used as reference frames
by the stream may be read by the hardware even after they are dequeued.
Consequently, the client should avoid writing into this memory while the
``CAPTURE`` queue is streaming. Failure to observe this may result in
corruption of decoded frames.
Similarly, when using a memory type other than ``V4L2_MEMORY_MMAP``, the
client should make sure that each ``CAPTURE`` buffer is always queued with
the same backing memory for as long as the ``CAPTURE`` queue is streaming.
The reason for this is that V4L2 buffer indices can be used by drivers to
identify frames. Thus, if the backing memory of a reference frame is
submitted under a different buffer ID, the driver may misidentify it and
decode a new frame into it while it is still in use, resulting in corruption
of the following frames.
During the decoding, the decoder may initiate one of the special sequences, as
listed below. The sequences will result in the decoder returning all the
``CAPTURE`` buffers that originated from all the ``OUTPUT`` buffers processed