Let the user pick a container and codecs independently, and remux without re-encoding

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Author	SHA1	Message	Date
JMR-devandClaude Opus 5	2e0cf2f5d6	Let the user pick a container and codecs independently, and remux without re-encoding OutputFormat was a closed enum of twelve (container, videoCodec, audioCodec) triples, defended on the grounds that a closed set was what made routing decidable. Two things it could not express: changing the container while copying the streams, and choosing codecs per track. OutputSpec replaces it as the vocabulary; OutputFormat stays as presets over it. Decidability moves to ContainerCapabilities, which is explicit and unit-tested rather than implicit in whichever combinations somebody enumerated. The matrix is indexed by (container, codec, trackType, mode), not one boolean. "Can MP4 carry AV1" and "can this app encode AV1" have different answers, and copy is where the difference shows: a single flag would refuse a legitimate remux or promise an encode neither engine can deliver. COPY is a codec value rather than a flag, so every exhaustive `when` in the codebase had to say what it does about copying. CopyPlanner resolves it before anything else reads the request, and inherits ConcatPlanner's rule that an unproven match is never a copy — a needless re-encode costs time, a wrong stream copy costs a file that will not play. Container now drives -f, the extension and the SAF MIME type, so Matroska without video is .mka and MP4 without video is .m4a without a preset for each. FLAC was declared as Container.MKV with a .flac extension, inert only while nothing read the container; it now has its own. Six containers added: MOV, MKV audio, MPEG-TS, AVI, FLV and WMV/ASF. Routing asks the plan, never the request. COPY belongs to none of the capability sets, so testing the request directly sends every remux to FFmpeg on the first check — and nothing notices, because -c copy produces a correct file, just on the CPU. The router also learns what Media3 can carry as opposed to encode: its MP4 muxer takes AAC, Opus, Vorbis and PCM but neither MP3 nor FLAC. MediaProbe now separates "no video track" from "could not parse" and reports the source container, which MediaExtractor cannot supply at all. FFprobe runs on every pick for that reason, not as a fallback. The Advanced picker shows the whole matrix and lets an impossible combination be selected on purpose, then explains it and offers alternatives. Convert is what blocks the job. ConversionWorker validates too, so a stale queued spec fails with the reason rather than being coerced into something else. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>	2026-08-22 07:07:52 -05:00

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JMR-devandClaude Opus 5

2e0cf2f5d6

Let the user pick a container and codecs independently, and remux without re-encoding

OutputFormat was a closed enum of twelve (container, videoCodec, audioCodec)
triples, defended on the grounds that a closed set was what made routing
decidable. Two things it could not express: changing the container while copying
the streams, and choosing codecs per track.

OutputSpec replaces it as the vocabulary; OutputFormat stays as presets over it.
Decidability moves to ContainerCapabilities, which is explicit and unit-tested
rather than implicit in whichever combinations somebody enumerated.

The matrix is indexed by (container, codec, trackType, mode), not one boolean.
"Can MP4 carry AV1" and "can this app encode AV1" have different answers, and
copy is where the difference shows: a single flag would refuse a legitimate
remux or promise an encode neither engine can deliver.

COPY is a codec value rather than a flag, so every exhaustive `when` in the
codebase had to say what it does about copying. CopyPlanner resolves it before
anything else reads the request, and inherits ConcatPlanner's rule that an
unproven match is never a copy — a needless re-encode costs time, a wrong stream
copy costs a file that will not play.

Container now drives -f, the extension and the SAF MIME type, so Matroska
without video is .mka and MP4 without video is .m4a without a preset for each.
FLAC was declared as Container.MKV with a .flac extension, inert only while
nothing read the container; it now has its own. Six containers added: MOV, MKV
audio, MPEG-TS, AVI, FLV and WMV/ASF.

Routing asks the plan, never the request. COPY belongs to none of the capability
sets, so testing the request directly sends every remux to FFmpeg on the first
check — and nothing notices, because -c copy produces a correct file, just on
the CPU. The router also learns what Media3 can *carry* as opposed to encode:
its MP4 muxer takes AAC, Opus, Vorbis and PCM but neither MP3 nor FLAC.

MediaProbe now separates "no video track" from "could not parse" and reports the
source container, which MediaExtractor cannot supply at all. FFprobe runs on
every pick for that reason, not as a fallback.

The Advanced picker shows the whole matrix and lets an impossible combination be
selected on purpose, then explains it and offers alternatives. Convert is what
blocks the job. ConversionWorker validates too, so a stale queued spec fails with
the reason rather than being coerced into something else.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-08-22 07:07:52 -05:00

Let the user pick a container and codecs independently, and remux without re-encoding #3