Re: [PATCH] media: uvcvideo: Enable full UVC metadata for all devices

[Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>]

Hi,

On 3-Mar-25 5:22 PM, Ricardo Ribalda wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Mar 2025 at 17:11, Laurent Pinchart
> <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 03, 2025 at 04:43:50PM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
>>> On 3-Mar-25 16:13, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Mar 03, 2025 at 03:47:51PM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
>>>>> On 26-Feb-25 14:00, Ricardo Ribalda wrote:
>>>>>> The UVC driver provides two metadata types V4L2_META_FMT_UVC, and
>>>>>> V4L2_META_FMT_D4XX. The only difference between the two of them is that
>>>>>> V4L2_META_FMT_UVC only copies PTS, SCR, size and flags, and
>>>>>> V4L2_META_FMT_D4XX copies the whole metadata section.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Now we only enable V4L2_META_FMT_D4XX for the Intel D4xx family of
>>>>>> devices, but it is useful for any device where vendors include other
>>>>>> metadata, such as the one described by Microsoft:
>>>>>> - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/stream/mf-capture-metadata
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This patch removes the UVC_INFO_META macro and enables
>>>>>> V4L2_META_FMT_D4XX for every device. It also updates the documentation
>>>>>> to reflect the change.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Signed-off-by: Ricardo Ribalda <ribalda@chromium.org>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks, patch looks good to me:
>>>>>
>>>>> Reviewed-by: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>
>>>>
>>>> I don't quite agree, sorry.
>>>>
>>>> The reason why the current mechanism has been implemented this way is to
>>>> ensure we have documentation for the metadata format of devices that
>>>> expose metadata to userspace.
>>>>
>>>> If you want to expose the MS metadata, you can create a new metadata
>>>> format for that, and enable it on devices that implement it.
>>>
>>> Looking at the long list of quirks this removes just for the D4xx
>>> cameras I do not believe that having quirked based relaying of
>>> which metadata fmt is used to userspace is something which scales
>>> on the long term. Given the large amount of different UVC cameras
>>> I really think we should move the USB VID:PID -> metadata format
>>> mapping out of the kernel.
>>
>> If we can find a solution to ensure the metadata format gets documented,
>> sure.
> 
> MS default metadata is already documented:
> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/stream/mf-capture-metadata
> 
> I would not worry too much about vendors abusing the metadata for
> custom magic if that is your concern.
> This would not work with Windows default driver, and that is what most
> camera modules are tested against.
> 
> 
>>
>> When it comes to the MS metadata format, if I recall correctly, Ricardo
>> said there's an XU with a known GUID to detect the metadata format. We
>> therefore wouldn't need quirks.
> 
> There is MXSU control 	
> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/stream/uvc-extensions-1-5
> But not all the vendors use it.

Right so I actually already checked:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/stream/uvc-extensions-1-5

yesterday before my udev hwdb suggestion I was wondering if there was a way
to just get if MSmetadata was used from the camera itself. What I found was this:

"UVC metadata is opt-in. Every IHV/OEM that needs metadata support must be enabled through a custom INF file."

which lead me to the udev + hwdb suggestion.

It is good to know that some cameras have a a way to fet this from a known XU GUID,
but the official way seems to be to have per camera info in .inf files. So for Linux
that would translate to having a list of vid:pid combinations somewhere.

The question then becomes where do we put the vid:pid list and IMHO hwdb is much
better (easier to maintain / update) then hardcoding this in the kernel.

Regards,

Hans