[xiph-rtp] Merge all metadata in one single packet.

[Michael Smith]

On 10/4/05, Luca Barbato <lu_zero at gentoo.org> wrote:
> I'd like to merge all the 3 headers in one since the comment packet
> should be always empty or at least about 2 order lesser than the
> codebook size. That way should simplify the transmission logic a bit and
>   could make sense since codebook and setup should change together quite
> often. I'm a bit afraid about the comment changes, since they could be
> abused and really don't belong to the vorbis audio stream (and thus
> should be delivered with a different medium)

I think this is a bad idea. We should either disallow comment headers
altogether, or allow them at arbitrary points.

Doing otherwise will lead to the abuse we've seen with vorbis-in-ogg -
starting a new logical stream, with a full new set of headers, simply
to update the metadata shown in the client.

Given that we now have the opportunity to avoid this problem the
second time around, we should take it. Allowing comment headers at
arbitrary points solves the problem neatly, but your argument that
this should really be handled in a seperate stream is somewhat
compelling - hence my suggestion to just disallow them entirely.

Either way, packing the two really-mandatory setup packets (primary
and 'codebook') together seems reasonably sensible.

Mike