[MPlayer-DOCS] [PATCH] XviD documentation reaching almost completeness

[The Wanderer]

Guillaume POIRIER wrote:

> Le mar 07/09/2004 à 12:08, The Wanderer a écrit :
> 
>> The difficulty appears to have been that we were talking about
>> different sentences, and thus different problems. <grin> Rather
>> explains the confusion... is it any clearer now?
> 
> Heck... I'm not even sure! Using compensate that way still seem
> fairly unnatural to me.

Just consider it one of the quirks of the language; English has so many
special cases and context-based exceptions, it's hardly even funny
anymore.

> I updated the patch so that there aren't any "compensate foo" but
> only "compensate for foo", hoping that not this is right. Anyway,
> once the patch will be committed, I guess it doesn't mean those can't
> get fixed.

Indeed; if there turn out to be problems later, they can be corrected
when they get noticed. ('Tis how I got my start...)

> You'll get also on the patch the 3 little babies that were previously
> marked "FIXME".

I missed noticing those...

> I don't plan to commit this patch unless you give my your go-ahead as
> these descriptions are new.

Well, I haven't gone through the patch itself in detail before (just
what people have commented on), but I'll do that now. I'm not in
high-nitpick mode, but there will probably be a few things...

> +.B bf_threshold=<-255\-255>
> +Sometimes B frames do not look good, and introduce artifacts when most of
> +the frame is static and some small zones have high motion (in a static
> +scene with a man talking, his mouth will probably look bad if what is
> +surrounding the man and his mouth is completly static).

Typo - that's "completely".

> +This setting allows you to favorize or not, the use of B frames.
> +The higher the value, the higher the probability of B frames being used.
> +(default: 0)

"Favorize" isn't a word, at least not in English. Going by what I think
you mean, I'd suggest something like "This setting allows you to specify
what priority to place on the use of B frames.".

Apropos of that last bit, in an earlier part of the patch you use
"I-frames", but here and in at least one place below you use "B frames".
I have no strong preference about whether or not to include the hyphen
(both forms feel bad to me in different ways), but I would prefer for
the usage to be consistent.

> +.B frame_drop_ratio=<0\-100>
> +XviD keeps track of block coding type (skipped, predicted, intra).
> +The skipped block counter can be used to choose whether a frame is so close
> +to its reference that it can be

I don't think "choose" is the verb you want in this case... but I don't
know what would be better. Diego? Any ideas?

> +.I completly
> +skipped.

Typo again.

> +.B curve_compression_high=<0\-100>
> +This settigs control how much the upper part of the curve has to get
> +closer to the average bitrate value.

"settigs" - typo. You want either "This setting" or "These settings",
probably the former.

> +The upper part of the curve is the set of values that are higher than
> +the curve average.
> +Think of that setting like a shrinking factor for the upper part of
> +the curve (default: 0).

"the setting" in this case.

These two corrections apply identically to the "low" version of the same
option.

> +.B overflow_control_strength=<0\-100>
> +During two pass, a scaled bitrate curve is computed.

Is "two pass" a noun? It seems like an adjective to me. Regardless, this
needs a little rephrasing.

> +The difference between that expected curve and the result obtained during
> +encoding is called overflow.
> +Obviously, the two pass Rate Controller tries to compensate for that overflow
> +distributing it over next frames to be encoded.

You might add a comma before "distributing".

> +MPEG4 defines 5 standard Pixel Aspect Ratio and one extended
> +one, giving the opportunity to specify a specific pixel aspect
> +ratio.

"Ratio" needs to be pluralized, since five is not singular.

There are many small things at which I could pick, but which I did not
point out, because this has stretched out long enough already; if I
decide that they really need to be corrected, I can go back and do it
myself later on, and avoid arguing hyphenation six times as often as I
need to.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

A government exists to serve its citizens, not to control them.