[FFmpeg-user] NEVERMIND!!! Re: WTF? Not getting VC-1 output...

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg <at> tristatelogic.com> writes:

> Just out of curiosity, why isn't there a VC-1 encoder?

Because you haven't sent a patch!
(Several people in the past found this answer offensive: 
Please understand that developers may may consider the 
question offensive and that imo, the question indicates 
that you misunderstand both free software development 
and - more specifically - FFmpeg development. So please 
don't take the answer personally, just try to understand 
that FFmpeg is not a "product" in the sense that I suspect 
you expect it to be. And consider reading its license, it 
contains a few useful hints…)

More specifically, because nobody continued work on this 
patch:
http://lists.ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2007-June/031326.html

> Is this just another thing on a (probably big) TO-DO list for ffmpeg?

There is no TODO list in this sense.

> Or are the evil forces of darkness and proprietary patents 
> making development of such a thing, um, problematic?

You mean compared to mpeg-1, mpeg-2, mpeg-4, aac, ac3?
(And Nellymoser!!)

There is a VC-1 specification, there is a decoder inside FFmpeg, 
there is reference software, so this has nothing to do with 
reverse engineering.

> Just curious.  (I haven't read much about either audio or video codecs,
> but what little I have read seems to indicate that this whole area is
> replete with patent and proprietary-ness legal land-mines.)

This is 100% correct, but looking at the libavcodec subdirectory of the 
source code, it has only limited affect on FFmpeg development.

Carl Eugen