[whatwg] Proposal: downsample while decoding image blobs in createImageBitmap()

[David Flanagan]

On 12/17/13 10:55 PM, Rik Cabanier wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 9:36 PM, David Flanagan <dflanagan at mozilla.com 
> <mailto:dflanagan at mozilla.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 12/17/13 8:36 PM, Rik Cabanier wrote:
>>     Hi David,
>>
>>     is there a reason why you are completely decoding the image when
>>     you create the imageBitmap? [1]
>     I assume that that is the intent of calling createImageBitmap() on
>     a blob. Since JPEG decoding probably takes significantly longer
>     than blocking on memory access, I assume that lazy decoding is not
>     really allowed.
>
>
> No, nothing in the spec says that you *must* decode the bits:
>
>     The exact judgement of what is undue latency of this is left up to
>     the implementer, but in general if making use of the bitmap
>     requires network I/O, or even local disk I/O, then the latency is
>     probably undue; whereas if it only requires a blocking read from a
>     GPU or system RAM, the latency is probably acceptable.
>
>
> In your case, things are reversed. Allocating system ram will kill 
> performance and cause undue latency. Reading the JPEG image on the fly 
> from a Flash disk will be less disruptive and faster.
>
>     But that misses my point. On the devices I'm concerned with I can
>     never completely decode the image whether it is deferred or not. 
>     If I decode at full size, apps running in the background are
>     likely to be killed because of low memory. I need the ability to
>     do the downsampling during the decoding process, so that there is
>     never the memory impact of holding the entire full-size image in
>     memory.
>
>
>>     If you detect a situation where this operation causes excessive
>>     memory consumption, you could hold on to the compressed data URL
>>     and defer decoding until the point where it is actually needed.
>>     Since exhausting VM will create "undue latency", this workaround
>>     follows the spirit of the spec.
>>
>>     If you really want to have the downsampled bits in memory, you
>>     could create a canvas and draw your image into it.
>     I can't do that because I don't have (and cannot have) a full-size
>     decoded image.  I've got a blob that is a JPEG encoded 5 megapixel
>     image.  And I want to end up with a decoded 320x480 image.  And I
>     want to get from A to B without ever allocating 20mb and decoding
>     the image at full size
>
>
> The downsampling happens *during* the drawimage of the imageBitmap 
> into the canvas. At no point do you have to allocate 20mb.
>
>
Ah. I see what you're saying now.  My first reaction was "that's 
brilliant!".  Unfortunately, my second reaction was that drawImage() 
would then block on the image decoding, and unless this was being done 
in a Worker, I'm almost certain that would be an unacceptable 
performance hit. (One of my use cases is scanning an SD card for 
hundreds of images and generating thumbnails for each of them.  If doing 
this used drawImage() calls that blocked the main thread, my UI would be 
completely non-responsive.)

I also suspect that adding an async version of drawImage() to the canvas 
API is a non-starter because that API is pretty fundamentally synchronous.

   David