Suggestion: new SEEKABLE event and/or message
Submitted by Carlos Rafael Giani
Link to original bug (#758642)
Description
Currently, when one wants to find out if a pipeline is seekable, it is necessary to send out a seeking query, and parse its seekable flag. The problem with this is that it is not always clear when it should be done. In most cases, it should work when the pipeline reaches the PAUSED state, or in case of decodebin, when the pad-added callback is invoked.
However, sometimes, this won't work. One example are AIFF files. It is not known until later if the file is actually seekable. The seeking query will therefore fail (which does not mean that the file isn't seekable, it means it can't be determined, at least not at that time). So, one has to continually issue the seeking query until it no longer fails. No matter how (by using a timer, or by re-issuing the query before a seek attempt, or in a pad probe every time a buffer passes through for example), the result is suboptimal.
For this reason, I think it should be possible for elements to notify the pipeline and application that it is now known if seekable is possible or not. It could send some sort of serialized SEEKABLE event up- and downstream, with one boolean inside, "is seekable yes/no". Somewhere else (in sinks for example), the event could become a message. This way, both elements and the application get the update.
Thoughts?