Re: Fixing mpeg2enc

On Sun, 2010-08-29 at 10:54 -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> Hi Andrew, Steven & gang,
> 
> first off, good to hear from you again! I already read Steven's email
> messages on the ffmpeg-users mailinglist. Steven, sorry if I don't
> respond much on the lists, but there's a big community of people that
> can help with this so I try to focus my limited attention on
> development instead, in addition to the PhD work which takes most of
> my time (Gernot-style, basically :-) ). If you need specific help,
> don't hesitate to email me privately. I do read all my incoming email.
> 
> On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 8:01 AM, Andrew Stevens <[email protected]> wrote:
> > However is really any role for mpeg2enc these days?  I thought ffmpeg
> > did a pretty decent job these days.  Leastways it seems fine when I've
> > transcoded MPEG-2 via MythTV - which I've always assumed uses ffmpeg (I
> > have NO analog video sources anymore..)
> >
> > Ronald: what do you think? You still seem pretty active in the wider
> > open-source multimedia world (a big 'well-done' with those WebM
> > efforts...!!).   Duplicated effort with multipleprojects none of which
> > is really quite production quality is the bane of open-source...
> 
> MythTV can use both, I think. But hm... That's a difficult question to
> ask. :-). A major problem here is that both mpeg2enc as well as
> FFmpeg's MPEG*-encoder are no longer all-that-actively developed at
> this point. FFmpeg's active encoding development focuses more on newer
> formats (e.g. AAC+H264) nowadays. DVD might be the biggest market in
> practice, but developers consider it obsolete already. (Doesn't it
> make you sad how quickly these new technologies become obsolete?)

Yep.  The baroque nature of the standards and their sheer numbers is a
'delight' as well.  I hope VP8 shovels the whole steaming pile into the
hole it belongs.   I occasionally, very peripherally, occasionally had
some insights with MPEG/MPEG-LA via an employer.  Utterly corrupt.
Explicitly (in private, after beer) intended as an end-run around
anti-trust law...

I guess think MPEG-2 in DVD-profile (like MP3) will matter for a long
time because  its the one thing you can expect to play
anything/anywhere.  It passes the 'send Kiddies video to Granny' test...

The fact it runs well on limited HW is a biggy too.   I'm currently
griding my teeth because export of DVB-S2 HD Movies to DVD in MythTV
0.23 is bugged.  Desired so they'll play on my old Centrino laptop to
entertain the Kids on trains and planes...


> I could try to convince you to work on FFmpeg but I'll leave that for
> some other time and place. ;-). VP8 is amazing, I might study+learn
> the art of video encoding using this new "toy" format. After all,
> libvpx is somewhat slow. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Oh,
> fragmentation...

Hmmm... I just glanced over the ffmpeg code-base.  Seems like its been
cleaned up a LOT since the last time (years-n-years ago) I looked at it
(which was a contribution-stopper last time). It seems to be the logical
choice for further development these days.  Its certainly the
'mainstream' choice of encoder these days (its embedded in zillions of
projects) and improvements to 'infrastructure' might flow into other
codecs too..

A good place to start is always scratch personal itches and/or those of
folks you're chummy with.   Lets see if I can work up my own transcode
scripts and make Steven happy ;-) ;-)



cheers,

	Andrew








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