[Kdenlive-devel] Could you PLEASE document your code.

[Marco Gittler]

Hi

yes it is correct, that it show only 200 samples.
num_samples can be set simple to "samples", but this takes much more cpu usage.
the correct  way would be to read all samples and take the average (or max ? ).
Since we can only show 1 level for each frame,i used first the first samples.

The best way would be:
copy all samples to an QByteArray for each channel and emit this.
Each audio frame consumer can the decide what to do with the samples.
But i had not the time last  to change this.

If you want to help changing this, you'r welcome.

regards marcco

Am 21.11.2010 um 13:26 schrieb Simon Eugster:

> I wanted to continue working on my audio spectrum scope. So I made use of
> void Render::showAudioSignal(const QByteArray);
> until I found out that this wasn't delivering the audio signal at all
> because I only received two values per frame.
> 
> So I searched for the position where this signal was emitted:
> void Render::showAudio(Mlt::Frame& frame)
> {
> if (!frame.is_valid() || frame.get_int("test_audio") != 0) return;
> mlt_audio_format audio_format = mlt_audio_s16;
> int freq = 0;
> int num_channels = 0;
> int samples = 0;
> int16_t* data = (int16_t*)frame.get_audio(audio_format, freq,
> num_channels, samples);
> if (!data)
>   return;
> int num_samples = samples > 200 ? 200 : samples;
> QByteArray channels;
> for (int i = 0; i < num_channels; i++) {
>   long val = 0;
>   for (int s = 0; s < num_samples; s ++) {
>       val += abs(data[i+s*num_channels] / 128);
>   }
>   channels.append(val / num_samples);
> }
> if (samples > 0)
>   emit showAudioSignal(channels);
> else
>   emit showAudioSignal(QByteArray());
> }
> After skimming the entire function's code I found out that this only
> shows the mean of the (at most) first 200 audio sample points.
> Which I doubt is not correct anyway for a volume meter.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So –
> . Could you, please, document the code you write.
> 
> Some parts look like «if it was hard to write, then it should be hard
> to read». This is okay for me if it is your own code which is not made
> public. But this is a collaborative Open Source project. It DOES
> occasionally happen that others have to take a look at your code,
> understand it, use it, fix bugs, extend it. Reading undocumented code
> sucks. If you don't know what methods are good for and why, you have
> to read everything, look out for possible side effects which might
> crash everything, and so on.
> 
> Example: Understand this code within 2 minutes:
> http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/tree/app/base/gimphistogram.c
> 
> And it is not unlikely that even _you_ will eventually have to
> re-visit your own code after some weeks/months/years. As soon as it
> reaches a certain complexity I'm usually very glad when I can just
> read some comments to understand the workflow again because I usually
> don't remember everything in detail.
> 
> By documenting I don't mean:
>       // Add the current value, divided by 128
>       val += abs(data[i+s*num_channels] / 128);
> i.e. writing what a command does. This is overhead and needs to be
> maintained in parallel to the code (i.e. when 128 changes to 256 –
> What would make sense here is a line explaining why we divide by 128
> and not by Pi or by 42.)
> But consider this:
> // Calculate the mean of the first 200 samples to approximate the
> audio volume
> int num_samples = samples > 200 ? 200 : samples;
> {...}
> This explains WHAT a code section does and WHY. I can read one line
> and immediately know how a whole code section works.
> 
> In my experience, documenting code this way adds to a deeper
> understanding of the code for both parties (author and reader), and I
> occasionally even found some bugs simply by again having to think
> about what the code does (and hereby sparing some time wasting on
> debugging).
> Lots of clever people have been writing about source code comments.
> (One good book I can recommend is «Code Quality» from Spinellis where
> he talks about maintainability (which is the core idea for writing
> comments; A maintainable piece of software can be
> extended/bugfixed/etc much easier) as well.) They all agree that it is
> a good thing if done well.
> I also see it as an estimation opposite to other programmers.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Regarding the remark about the volume meter not being correct: Our
> ears are not linear, and there is also a peak sensitivity around
> 300-3000 Hz (Human voice). So I guess taking the mean is okay for an
> approximation but is not very accurate.
> 
> 
> Thanks for reading, happy Sunday.
> Simon
> 
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