1. Plugins

Plugins do most of the actual audio and video processing.

A plugin accepts audio and video streams and provides any number of the same as output.

All plugins honor the --help option, which is the first place to look for information about how a plugin works.

Plugins vary greatly in complexity. In order to allow simple plugins to be simply written, JANE allows the folowing types of simplified plugins:

filters

Filters modify frames as they pass through, one frame at a time. They output one frame for each one they are given as input.

sinks

Sinks consume JANE A/V frames, by encoding them to a file, displaying them, or otherwise disposing of them.

More complex plugins are possible, but they must be full-featured plugins, including frame request handling. JANE will provide wrappers to turn filters and sinks into full-featured plugins.