FFmpeg Summer Of Code 2007

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Revision as of 10:36, 19 March 2007 by Multimedia Mike (talk | contribs) (→‎Current Status: clarify app deadline)
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Google is sponsoring their third annual Summer of Code for the summer of 2007. This entails sponsoring students to work on assorted open source projects as well as sponsoring mentors in those same projects. Everyone wins.

FFmpeg was a Summer of Code participant in the summer of 2006 (here is the corresponding Wiki page).

Mike Melanson (mike -at- multimedia.cx) is the administrator and main point of contact for matters relating to the FFmpeg Summer of Code.

How to apply

Before you can apply make sure you are qualified enough to apply. Last year 50% of the applicants weren't qualified for the task they applied for.

  • You have to know how to program in C fairly well.
  • We would like you to submit a patch that fixes a bug or adds a feature to FFmpeg. By doing that we will know that you are qualified for the task or not. On this page there is a list of Qualification Tasks that can be done. But you are free to submit anything you feel might be of value to FFmpeg. The qualification task can be done after you have filed you application.
  • Submit a good application through the formal Google Summer of Code process during the application timeframe (March 14-24, 2007).
  • You have to have >35 hours per week to put into the project.
  • You can't have another job at the same time as the SoC project.

Current Status

  • March 5-12, 2007: Application period for mentoring organizations.
  • March 6, 2007: Mike Melanson submitted FFmpeg mentoring application.
  • March 14, 2007: Google are now accepting student Applications.
  • March 15, 2007: FFmpeg got accepted as mentoring organization; now accepting student applications until March 24, 2007. Note that this is NOT the deadline to complete a qualification task; final student selections are to be made by April 9.

Project Proposals

Overview

Qualifications for a good Summer of Code proposal:

  • discrete, well-defined, modular
  • comprised of a series of measurable sub-goals
  • based on open specs that are available free of charge
  • based on complete specs

An example of a good proposal is the implementation of a decoder or demuxer for an as yet unsupported multimedia format, or an encoder or muxer for a format that can already be demuxed/decoded by FFmpeg.

An example of a less desirable proposal is one that's not as measurable, such as refactoring APIs. Bad proposals tend to be ones that would require touching a lot of core code.

To re-iterate:

  • Localized/isolated code projects = good
  • Global code refactoring = bad

Note

THIS LIST IS NOT THE PROPOSALS WE ARE SUBMITTING!

Most of this list is just some ideas we are kicking around.

Projects with Mentors (official projects)

QCELP Decoder

Mentor: Benjamin Larsson

Matroska Muxer

Mentor: Aurelien Jacobs; Backup mentors: Steve Lhomme, Ronald S. Bultje

MPEG TS/DVB Muxer

  • Specification: ISO 13818-1

Mentor: Baptiste Coudurier

MXF Muxer

  • Specification: SMPTE 377M

Mentor: Baptiste Coudurier

RV40 Decoder

  • RealVideo 4 is steadily being reverse engineered and should be a reasonable candidate for re-implementation by the summer.

Mentor: Mike Melanson

PAFF decoding for H.264/AVC

Mentor: Loren Merritt

Dirac Encoder AND Decoder

Mentor: Luca Barbato

E-AC3 Decoder

Mentor: Justin Ruggles

Ideas for more projects to be determined

JPEG2000

Monkey's Audio Decoder

Finish LC AAC decoder and implement HE-AAC(+)


GSM Decoder

i263 Decoder

VP6 Encoder

NUT Muxer

DPX/Cineon Encoder AND Decoder

OpenEXR Encoder AND Decoder

HD Photo Encoder AND Decoder

Qualification tasks

Add a note if you choose to work on a Qualification task to avoid duplicate work.

TIFF encoder

Vivo demuxer

IFF/8SVX 8-bit audio demuxer

Tyler Williams is working on this task.

Port SGI image support to new API

FFmpeg changed image format APIs, but the SGI file format was never ported to the new API.

Optimize some code

Do you think some code in ffmpeg could run faster? We would love to get some faster decoders or encoders.

This requires some ASM skills and using timer code to benchmark.

Speedups needed in:

  • h264 decoder
  • vc-1 decoder


BFI Playback System

Add FFmpeg playback capability for the BFI format. This entails writing a new file demuxer and simple video decoder.

DrV said he was working on this.

THP Playback System

Add FFmpeg playback capability for the THP format. This entails writing a new file demuxer and leveraging existing JPEG and ADPCM decoders to handle the video and audio data inside.

Bethsoft VID

Add FFmpeg playback capability for the Bethsoft VID format (new demuxer, new video decoder).

I will take a shot at VID, but anyone else should feel free to try --Gatoatigrado 18:13, 17 March 2007 (EDT)

Other Game Formats

Several game formats are documented in this Wiki, but not yet implemented in FFmpeg. Investigate via the Category:Game Formats page.

Theora in Matroska

The current mkv demuxer supports Vorbis but not Theora. Add support for Theora. This requires parsing the matroska extradata to extract the three header packets, and correctly passing these to the Theora decoder. You might want to read this thread on the MPlayer list:

See Also

FFmpeg Wishlist for more tasks or ideas.

FFmpeg bugs for ffmpeg bugs.