Speed up PyAVReaderIndexed toc building

[horsto]

I am using pims.PyAVReaderIndexed to create a toc of my video file to eventually index frames precisely in my files.
The problem is that the decoding takes a very long time (too long). See also a previous mention of this #425

I can see two possible ways to gain some speed:

• threading (pyAV references this here: https://pyav.org/docs/stable/cookbook/basics.html#threading)
• build a toc and save it for later, as already mentioned here: Possible to pickle / serialize the index for PyAVReaderIndexed #438, so at least it does not have to be calculated twice on the same file

For the threading part I noticed a weirdness that the last frames are dropped - I have documented the issue here PyAV-Org/PyAV#1098. I am not 100% sure this is a PIMS or a pyAV issue, this is why I am reporting it here again.

The only change I introduced was the stream.thread_type = "AUTO" flag.

class PyAVReaderIndexed_Multi(PyAVReaderIndexed):
    """
    Slightly changed version of "PyAVReaderIndexed" in pims
    Adds multi thread support to toc building as described here
    https://pyav.org/docs/stable/cookbook/basics.html#threading
    """

    def __init__(self, file, toc=None, format=None):
        if not hasattr(file, 'read'):
            file = str(file)
        self.file = file
        self.format = format
        self._container = None

        with av.open(self.file, format=self.format) as container:
            stream = [s for s in container.streams if s.type == 'video'][0]
            stream.thread_type = "AUTO" # This is what enables multithreading
            # Build a toc
            if toc is None:
                packet_lengths = []
                packet_ts = []
                for packet in container.demux(stream):
                    if packet.stream.type == 'video':
                        decoded = packet.decode()
                        if len(decoded) > 0:
                            packet_lengths.append(len(decoded))
                            packet_ts.append(decoded[0].pts)
                self._toc = {
                    'lengths': packet_lengths,
                    'ts': packet_ts,
                }
            else:
                self._toc = toc

            self._toc_cumsum = np.cumsum(self.toc['lengths'])
            self._len = self._toc_cumsum[-1]

            # PyAV always returns frames in color, and we make that
            # assumption in get_frame() later below, so 3 is hardcoded here:
            self._im_sz = stream.height, stream.width, 3
            self._time_base = stream.time_base

        self._load_fresh_file()

Are there any ideas for why the packages are dropped in the multi threading case, and does anybody have suggestions on how to improve toc / decoding?