Files
jellytau/docs/specs/read-through-media-cache.md
T
dtourolle 32043a2152 docs: fold shipped specs into the architecture docs and delete them
A spec was a promise; sixteen of them had become descriptions of code that
already shipped, sitting beside four that describe work still outstanding, with
nothing in the file telling the two apart. Half the statuses were also wrong —
audio-equalizer read "Accepted" with the EQ live on both platforms, the native
video spec said the flag stays off after the default was flipped on.

The shipped designs move into docs/architecture, which is the maintained
description of the build, and the spec files go. Git history keeps the
originals; what a future change still needs is carried across:

- 01-rust-backend: favourites rewritten (the old section named a file that no
  longer exists and called shipped buttons "planned"), domain vocabulary owned
  by Rust (SearchScope, exclusions, the bitrate ladder), background workers
- 02-svelte-frontend: app shell and chrome, library mosaic, series/episode
  navigation, downloaded browse, safe-area insets, native-video store, logging
- 03-data-flow: locally-indexed search
- 05-platform-backends: audio settings on ExoPlayer, the equalizer's band
  vocabulary, native video compositing, the background-audio handoff
- 06-downloads-and-offline: one storage model, offline catalog visibility
- 09-security: path confinement and input binding

docs/specs/README.md now says what the directory is for and where each shipped
design went. Deferred work the specs recorded is kept beside the code it
concerns rather than lost: season-bounded autoplay, the two dead search
commands, why indexing is a full crawl.

requirements.md had fourteen stale statuses — Android audio parity still read
"Linux only", DR-150 still said the native-video default was off, DR-190 was
Proposed after DR-196 implemented it, and five tooling requirements were
Proposed after landing. Three unbuilt specs suggested requirement ids that have
since been allocated to other work; each now carries a warning.
2026-08-21 18:15:58 +02:00

232 lines
12 KiB
Markdown

# Spec: Two-path media — selectable playback bitrate, independent whole-file download
**Status:** Partially implemented. Landed: the cache/download unification
(DR-126, DR-127 — a cache entry *is* a `downloads` row with a shorter life, and
eviction only reclaims the temporary tier), local playback of downloaded media
(DR-128), and the one-path/one-row invariants that followed (DR-133 … DR-138).
DR-123 is in progress. Still open: the **player quality selector** and the
read-through capture itself — DR-121, DR-122, DR-124, DR-125. The separate
settings-level bitrate cap (DR-162, shipped —
[01-rust-backend.md](../architecture/01-rust-backend.md#streaming-quality-ladder))
covers a *settings-level*
ceiling (DR-162), which serves part of UR-070 but is not the per-playback
selector specified here.
**Requirements:** UR-070, UR-071 → DR-121, DR-122, DR-123, DR-124, DR-125; IR-032
**UX spec:** player quality selector — needs a `ux-flows.md` section before build
**Related:** the locally-indexed search and downloaded-browse work, both
shipped — see
[03-data-flow.md](../architecture/03-data-flow.md) and
[06-downloads-and-offline.md](../architecture/06-downloads-and-offline.md)
## Summary
Two things that are today tangled become explicitly separate:
- **The playback path** streams at a bitrate the viewer can change from the
player. It is ephemeral and its rendition is volatile.
- **The download path** fetches the whole file at one canonical quality, in the
background, independently of whatever playback is doing.
Bytes fetched for playback are kept **only** when the playback rendition happens
to be the same artifact the download path would produce — i.e. direct play.
Otherwise playback bytes are discarded and the download path does its own fetch.
## Motivation
The appealing version of this — "stream and download at once, switch when enough
has arrived" — breaks the moment the viewer can change bitrate. A capture taken
while the rendition changes underneath it is a splice of two encodings: not a
playable file, and not something that can be honestly recorded as a download.
Once bitrate is selectable, one stream cannot serve both jobs.
Separating the paths also removes the thing that made the original idea
expensive: there is no mid-playback source swap to engineer, because the download
never has to take over the live session. It lands on disk and is used at the next
natural boundary — next episode, or next time the item is played.
What exists already and is *not* this: `SmartCache` predictively downloads *other*
items, `player_preload_upcoming` warms the next one, and
`refresh_queue_local_sources` swaps queue entries to local at boundaries. All of
it concerns items you are not currently playing.
## Layer assignment
| Logic / responsibility | Layer | Why it belongs there |
|------------------------|-------|----------------------|
| Available bitrate options for an item | **Rust** | Derived from Jellyfin's media sources and playback-info negotiation; changes with the API. |
| Mapping a chosen bitrate to transcode parameters | **Rust** | Domain vocabulary. `get_video_download_url` already owns the quality→params mapping; playback must reuse it, not restate it. |
| Deciding whether playback bytes are keepable (direct play vs transcode) | **Rust** | Depends on the negotiated session. |
| Canonical download quality | **Rust** | Policy over domain data. |
| Cache eviction, storage budget, sparse-range bookkeeping | **Rust** | Storage policy. |
| Promotion to a `downloads` row, and what invalidates a cache entry | **Rust** | Domain state. |
| Rendering the quality selector; remembering the last choice | **Frontend** | Presentation and a view preference. The *list* comes from Rust. |
| WiFi-only / opt-in toggles | **Frontend collects, Rust enforces** | The control is UI; the gate must hold even if the UI never calls. |
Borderline, recorded: the **default** playback bitrate could look like a user
preference (frontend). It goes to Rust because it must be reconcilable with what
the server can actually produce for a given media source — a preference the
backend has to validate is not a preference the frontend can own alone. The
frontend stores the user's *choice*; Rust decides what that choice resolves to.
## Design
### DR-121 — Bitrate selection in the player
The player exposes the qualities Rust reports for the current item. Changing it
re-negotiates the stream URL at the new quality and resumes at the current
position. This is a deliberate, user-initiated interruption — a brief rebuffer is
expected and acceptable, unlike the involuntary swap the earlier design would
have needed.
Constraints that must not be broken:
- On Linux, video playback must keep using the HLS `master.m3u8` URL. CLAUDE.md
records that returning `stream.mp4` means transcoded playback never starts.
A quality change re-negotiates *within* HLS.
- The quality→transcode-parameter mapping already exists in
`get_video_download_url` ([online.rs:1702-1717](../../src-tauri/src/repository/online.rs#L1702-L1717)).
Playback must call into the same mapping. Two copies of that table will drift.
- Track selection (audio/subtitle) already survives a stream re-negotiation
elsewhere in the player; a quality change must preserve it too.
### DR-122 — The playback path is ephemeral
Playback bytes are not persisted unless DR-124 says they are keepable. No partial
capture is ever retained across a quality change: on change, any in-flight capture
for that session is abandoned and its partial file deleted.
### DR-123 — The download path is independent
Downloading the whole file is a separate operation through the existing download
manager, at one canonical quality (default `original`, the direct static copy),
using `/Videos/{id}/stream.mp4` — progressive and Range-capable, which is what
the resumable download worker relies on. It is unaffected by what playback is
doing, and playback is unaffected by it.
Once complete it becomes an ordinary download row, so everything already built on
top of downloads — offline browsing, `refresh_queue_local_sources`, the Downloads
page — picks it up with no further work.
**Prerequisite:** downloaded *video* is currently never played locally.
`repository_get_video_stream_url` goes straight to the online repo and
[player/[id]/+page.svelte:316](../../src/routes/player/[id]/+page.svelte#L316)
calls it with no local check — so a completed video download is still streamed.
This must be fixed or the whole feature is invisible for video.
### DR-124 — Keep playback bytes only when they *are* the download
Capture is enabled only where the played bytes and the canonical download artifact
are the same thing — a **direct-play** session. Then:
| Path | Mechanism |
|---|---|
| Android / ExoPlayer | `SimpleCache` + `CacheDataSource`, keyed by item id **and** media-source id so renditions never collide. LRU evictor sharing the existing smart-cache budget — not a second budget over the same disk. |
| Linux audio / MPV | `stream-record`, set through the existing `set_property` plumbing. |
| Linux video (HLS transcode) | **Not captured.** Segments are not a file; assembling one needs ffmpeg, which is not a dependency and which CI is forbidden from installing at job time. The download path (DR-123) covers this case instead. |
Two abandonment rules, both of which must delete the partial rather than promote
it:
- **Seek during an mpv capture.** `stream-record` is documented as intended for
linear streams; seeking breaks the recording. Straight-through listening
captures, scrubbing does not.
- **Any quality change** (DR-122).
### DR-125 — Promotion, rendition, and invalidation
A capture is promoted to a `downloads` row (`status = 'completed'`) only when it
covers the whole resource. Partial captures stay cache and remain evictable.
A new `downloads.source_rendition` column records the negotiated
quality/container/codec of whatever produced the bytes; `NULL` for rows fetched by
the existing paths, which are always `original`. This is what makes an "upgrade to
original" action possible later, and what stops a 720p capture and a 4K download
being indistinguishable rows.
**Invalidation.** A quality change never touches a file that already exists —
neither a permanent download nor a completed temporary one. Both remain valid
copies of the rendition they hold, and deleting either would throw away bytes
already paid for.
What a quality change *does* invalidate is an **in-flight** capture or background
download of cached media: it is abandoned and restarted at the newly chosen
quality, because a capture spanning a rendition change is a splice of two
encodings rather than a playable file (DR-122).
So the rule is about *ongoing* work, not stored files. Nothing in this spec
deletes user data.
### Gating
Capture and background download obey the existing WiFi-only gate and storage
budget, and are off unless opted in. Enforcement is in Rust.
## Out of scope
- **Mid-playback switch onto a completing download.** Two independent paths make
it unnecessary; the download is used from the next boundary.
- **Backfilling the unplayed remainder of a capture.** Watch 40 minutes and you
have 40 minutes; completing it needs sparse-range bookkeeping and a resumable
tail fetch. The DR-123 download path already produces a complete file, which is
the reason this can wait.
- **Bundling ffmpeg** to make transcoded video capturable. Real option, large
packaging decision, its own proposal.
- **Routing Linux video playback through `stream.mp4`.** Regresses a documented,
hard-won fix.
## Acceptance criteria
- [ ] The player offers the qualities Rust reports, and changing one resumes at
the same position with audio/subtitle selection preserved.
- [ ] A quality change abandons any in-flight capture and leaves no partial file.
- [ ] A quality change never deletes a `downloads` row.
- [ ] A completed background download of a video is *played from disk* on the next
play (the DR-123 prerequisite).
- [ ] A direct-play session played start-to-finish leaves a complete local file
with no second fetch; replaying it fetches no media bytes.
- [ ] Seeking during an mpv capture abandons it; no truncated file is promoted.
- [ ] A transcoded Linux video session is never captured, and never partially
promoted.
- [ ] Promoted rows record their rendition; existing paths still record
`NULL`/`original`.
- [ ] Gates hold with the setting off *and* with the frontend never sending it.
- [ ] Eviction cannot delete bytes backing a promoted download row.
- [ ] `bun run check`, `bun run test`, `cargo fmt`, `cargo clippy`,
`bun run test:rust`, `bun run check:boundary` pass; `bindings.ts`
regenerated if Rust types changed.
## Testing
Rust, table-driven and pure where possible: quality→params resolution shared with
the download path; keepability (direct play vs transcode vs gate off); promotion
(complete → promoted, partial → not, seek-abandoned → not, quality-changed → not);
invalidation (evicts cache, never a download row); rendition round-trip.
Android: instrumented — a played direct-play item yields cache entries, and a
replay issues no media network request.
Frontend: the quality list renders from backend data with no item-type or
codec taxonomy in `src/`; the selector's remembered choice is a view preference.
## TRACES
| Piece | Tag |
|---|---|
| Quality selector + re-negotiation | `// TRACES: UR-070 \| DR-121` |
| Ephemeral playback / capture abandonment | `// TRACES: UR-070 \| DR-122` |
| Independent whole-file download + local video playback fix | `// TRACES: UR-071 \| DR-123, IR-032` |
| ExoPlayer cache / mpv stream-record / keepability | `// TRACES: UR-071 \| DR-124` |
| Promotion, `source_rendition`, invalidation | `// TRACES: UR-071 \| DR-125` |
## Notes for the implementer
- **A parallel Claude session is active in this repo.** `git diff` before
"repairing" anything you did not write.
- Do not duplicate the quality→transcode-parameter table. Call the existing one.
- Reuse the smart-cache storage budget; two budgets over one disk is how devices
fill up.
- The `downloads` FK to `items` is relaxed (migration 005) — exercise promotion
for an item that was never cached.
- Build DR-123's local-playback fix first. Without it nothing in this spec is
observable for video.