[FFmpeg-devel] FFv1.3 standardization

[Peter B.]

Sorry for joining in so late, but I was AFK until now.


On 10/27/2012 07:39 PM, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> If someone, luca? wants to improve it in some way, its very easy to
> clone the git repo on github and change it to their hearts desire.
> Then just send me a pull request and ill make sure the changes get
> reviewed and integrated. The official FFv1 spec is actively
> maintained by me.
I agree with Michael that a good idea is to (a) have a single entity
which is considered to be "official" in order to avoid havoc and confusion.
As Michael is the original author of FFv1, I also think that it is clear
that this is him.

> about the suggestion of moving it to a wiki, i belive a wiki is a
> poor choice for a specification as a specification must be correct and
> a wiki allows too broad and unchecked editing. We wouldnt want someone
> reword text in it that she might find hard to understand but that
> after the rewording then turns out to have totally different meaning
> and resulting in incompatible implementations.
If it's just about Lyx being the reason for wanting to choose a wiki,
I'd personally rather opt for "let's to a plain TXT file".
Then there's no GUI, no syntax no whatever to be concerned about,
regarding accessibility for contributors.
The content is what matters and the formatting can be added anytime
later. When I look at other IETF drafts or RFCs in plain-text, I think
they're perfectly fine to read and understand [1].

The git-mechanism should be fine for contributing, as it (a) clearly
separates official from rest-of-world and (b) allows reviews. This
should definitely reduce possible confusion, keep the specs sane and
result in a single, reliable source of reference.

If I understood Luca correctly, his concerns were that things could be
too complicated and cumbersome - and a wiki would make it easier.
I agree - but I'm not sure if that's really necessary, because I think
it should be assumed that people who want to contribute to this matter
(=FFv1 specification) should be tech-savvy enough to be able to handle
this :)


> Either way, i see it with great concern that libav started writing a
> ffv1 spec in their doc directory and has already introduced changes
> to ffv1 without any kind of discussion on the nut mailing list.
> seeing that and then seeing libav developers contact you in private
> about moving the spec to a different place and format. Iam not sure
> what i should be thinking about that.
I was the one who asked on the libav-devel list for help regarding
integration of FFv1.3's currently existing code, and Luca was so nice to
take care of it. I did so, as I think that it's in everyone's interest
if not only FFmpeg supports this new FFv1 version.

I've contacted Luca in private regarding an issue Michael had fixed [2]
while Luca was already merging it into Libav, and this started a
conversation about "What are the benefits of FFv1 for lossless video
preservation?", which then led to "What about standardization?". That's
when I pulled Dave in, and Luca the ffmtech-board - and finally led us
to this thread right here :)

Pb


== References:
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-kunze-bagit-01.txt
[2]
https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/4e2e3d943ef01053e45987f7cd7d18e663f15592