Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 04 Jun 1999 22:12:40 +0100 | From | Paul Tomlin <> | Subject | Driver for a different view of a filesystem |
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I'm rattling out an idea to do a driver which will present the data on a drive in a different format. Specifically I am thinking about graphics files but there is no reason the idea can't be extended to other data types.
Essentially the aim is to produce a driver which presents the files in a fashion similar to that used by the DPS Perception driver for NT. The Perception is a video disk recorder for PC's which has its own SCSI bus and MJPEG compressor. The files are stored on the drive in some proprietary format but the drive (as seen by NT) has a directory structure similar to this...
P: --> Project --> TGA --> PROJECT0001.TGA | PROJECT0002.TGA | .... | PROJECT9999.TGA | |-> BMP --> PROJECT0001.BMP | PROJECT0002.BMP | ... | PROJECT9999.BMP | |-> JPG blah | |-> TIFF blah
You get the jist. Basically the driver, with some help from the HW was able to convert the video format into individual frames in various file formats on request.
My thoughts are..
Use an existing fs for the real disk work. It may be possible to create an fs which is ideal for video (large files) but that would weaken any possibiliy of extending the idea to other data types. It is also possible to tune existing fs types to perform better for various, dedicated media types. No point duplicating work.
Creae a new fs type which can be mounted. The driver would then mount the drive using ext2, for example, and present the altered image.
Things troubling me include implementation (I haven't written a driver, bar 'Hello world', before), the data conversion may well be extremely CPU intensive (and does that make it best suited to user/kernel space?), potential tie-ins with other drivers for real HW (say an MPEG card) which could reduce the CPU load, the list goes on.
I am basically looking for some response about the idea. I'm at the point where I am trying to work out if this is a char or block driver so please go easy if this is a *REAL* dumb idea..
Paul
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