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  • Hans Verkuil's avatar
    [media] v4l2-ctrls: implement new volatile autocluster scheme · 5626b8c7
    Hans Verkuil authored
    
    
    The problem tackled in this patch is how to handle volatile autoclusters
    correctly. A volatile autocluster is a cluster of related controls where one
    control is the control that toggles between manual and auto mode and the other
    controls are the values for the manual mode. For example autogain and gain,
    autoexposure and exposure, etc.
    
    If the hardware lets you read out the automatically calculated manual values
    while in automode, then those manual controls should be marked volatile.
    
    gain value as calculated by the autogain circuitry, then you would mark the
    gain control as volatile (i.e. continuously changing).
    
    The question in such use cases is what to do when switching from the auto
    mode to the manual mode. Should we switch to the last set manual values or
    should the volatile values be copied and used as the initial manual values.
    
    For example: suppose the mode is manual gain and gain is set to 5. Then
    autogain is turned on and the gain is set by the hardware to 2. Finally
    the user switches back to manual gain. What should the gain be? 2 or 5?
    
    After a long discussion the decisions was made to keep the last value as
    calculated by the auto mode (so 2 in the example above).
    
    The reason is that webcams that do such things will adapt themselves to
    the current light conditions and when you switch back to manual mode you
    expect that you keep the same picture. If you would switch back to old
    manual values, then that would give you a suddenly different picture,
    which is jarring for the user.
    
    Additionally, this would be difficult to implement in applications that
    store and restore the control values at application exit and start.
    
    If you want to keep the old manual values when you switch from auto to
    manual, then there would have to be a way for applications to get hold
    of those old values while in auto mode, but there isn't.
    
    So this patch will do all the heavy lifting in v4l2-ctrls.c: if you go
    from auto mode to manual mode and the manual controls are volatile, then
    g_volatile_ctrl will be called to get the current values for the manual
    controls before switching to manual mode.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarHans Verkuil <hans.verkuil@cisco.com>
    Acked-by: default avatarHans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarMauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@redhat.com>
    5626b8c7