[FFmpeg-devel] snow developement - donations

[Robert Swain]

On 26 May 2007, at 20:06, Attila Kinali wrote:
> On Sat, 26 May 2007 00:11:15 +0200
> Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
>
>> also i really would wish more people would contribute to snow,  
>> there are so
>> many simple things people could do, some examples:
>> * read the code and ask questions about what you dont understand,  
>> then
>>   document these things or simplify the code so others have less  
>> problems
>>   understanding it
>
> If you call that simple....
> I read parts of the theory behind wavelet based codecs.
> Though, fourier was a piece of cake for me, i don't think
> i fully understood how wavelets work in practice. It might
> very well be that i'm just dumb, but i don't think that
> working on video codecs in general and on wavelet based
> codecs in particular is an easy task.
>
> Ok, a lot of the difficulty comes from the lack of
> good documentation and learning material. The multimedia
> wiki is a good start but IMHO just a drop in a bucket.
>
> IMHO this is also the reason why there are so little
> video codec/player/etc developers. It is very hard to
> learn by yourself and you need a very high frustration
> limit.
>
> IMHO we should write our own book on how video codecs
> muxers/demuxers etc work so that people interested in
> it can have an easier path to learn. I started such a
> book years ago, but failed, mostly due to lack of time
> and lack of material to read and learn from. But given
> the amount of knowledge here on ffmpeg-devel it should
> be possible to write such a book in no-time, if a few
> people would work together.

That's the aim of the Multimedia Wiki. As you say, it's currently  
mainly a drop box for snippets of information but as we add more to  
it, it could well grow into (and I believe it has always been Mike's  
intention that this be the case) _the_ online reference for video  
coding. :) At the moment I'm adding a few things about MPEG codecs  
slowly with pretty diagrams and throughout LinuxTag will be writing  
about/coding AMR. :D

See you later. ;)

Rob