Re: Web Workers

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 5:34 AM, Alistair MacDonald <al@signedon.com> wrote:

> ROC, I noticed I could not get access to audio data with the MediaStreams
> API without using a Worker thread (using your recent builds and demos).
> Jussi said he believes this the case too. Could you confirm this? If so -
> is this by-design? I am trying to figure out whether there is a technical
> suggestion of dropping JavaScript Processing of audio data from the
> main-thread all-together, or is this was merely a matter of tackling the
> Worker code as a priority.


Main-thread access to audio data may not be necessary, since it's easy for
a Worker to use postMessage to communicate to/from the main thread. For
example, see
http://people.mozilla.org/~roc/stream-demos/analyzing-audio.html
http://people.mozilla.org/~roc/stream-demos/sample-fetcher.js
The worker code is literally
self.onprocessmedia = function(event) {
  var msg = {
    channels: event.audioChannels, rate: event.audioSampleRate,
    samples: event.inputs.length > 0 ? event.inputs[0].audioSamples : null,
  };
  postMessage(msg);
};
If the demo needed any processing at all of the data, performance would
improve by doing that processing in the worker so you'd be winning by
having the worker involved.

There may be scenarios where direct main-thread audio data processing is a
significant win over Worker+postMessage, e.g. due to reduced overhead
and/or convenience. I don't know yet. If those scenarios are non-existent
or extremely rare, then *not* having main-thread audio data processing APIs
is simpler and encourages authors to do the right thing by using Workers as
much as possible.

So right now I do not know whether having API support for main-thread audio
data processing is a good idea.

Rob
-- 
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your Father in heaven. ... If you love those
who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors
doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more
than others?" [Matthew 5:43-47]