Archive for February, 2011

Almost full Bink support

Sunday, February 13th, 2011

Thank to the efforts of Peter Ross we finally got Bink version b video support. Now I can stop nagging him about it and he may work on something else. I think it’s almost a year since we had game decoders added to FFmpeg, we should do that more often.

P.S. Why I say almost full? There is still some issue with audio in Bink-b, after Peter resolves it FFmpeg will have complete Bink decoding support.

Update: thanks to Peter’s effort we have full Bink-b support now, including both video and audio.

Politically incorrect sayings about some European countries

Sunday, February 13th, 2011

I have a few harsh words about the countries I’ve visited and I think it’s a good time to present them (well, not worse than any other time).

Germany

Generally it’s a nice country except for big (by German standards) cities. Though I’d like their trains to be more punctual (yes, people abroad think all German trains are always in time while in reality even bahn.de has special mark for trains they suppose to be punctual). And I apologize to Turks who live in Germany but I believe the biggest problem with emigrants in Germany is with people from ex-USSR countries.

Switzerland

People there have bigger ego than Argentinians. First thing I noticed is their national symbolic on locomotives — I don’t know any other country that does it. And their products often have special ingredients like “Swiss milk” or “Swiss beef” (but they are equally expensive even without them). Too bad that no Swiss chocolate contains cocoa grown in Switzerland.

Speaking about products, their prices make me think rösti was invented by/for hundred foreigners who could afford only one frying pan of potatoes together.

Also I find that all Swiss products are overhyped — is any of them much better than elsewhere? Clocks – you have good ones in Japan or Germany (and even cuckoo clock was not invented in Switzerland). Cheeses — again, there are much better ones in other countries, notably Netherlands and Sweden (the latter just doesn’t produce or export much). Chocolate — French, Italian or Swedish chocolate is not worse.

Norway

I’ve been only to Oslo but from what I’ve seen people there should invest money they get from oil into inviting people with sense of taste. All nice buildings in Oslo (yes, all twelve or so) were build by Swedish or Danish architects. And please make sculpting a major criminal offense (at least before you learn the meaning of “lagom” from your neighbours).

France

It doesn’t matter what I think about them because French people (and their ticket vending machines) seem to completely ignore anybody not speaking French (that includes me).

Belgium

From what I saw I conclude they are trying to build another Ukraine (and they are succeeding at it). It’s not hard, just forget that you should maintain buildings, clean streets or that plain concrete is not the best decorating material. Brussels would probably be better had it been built by architects from Oslo.

Douglas Adams was absolutely right.

Sweden

When I heard Russian pop in Skärholmen mall I realized that Skärholmen is, indeed, not a part of Sweden anymore (I was told so before but found it hard to believe, not anymore).

But my main concern is that there’s no proper E4 rail equivalent so I could not travel from Sundsvall to Umeå or Luleå directly (and I’d like less travelling time on route Stockholm-Sundsvall too).

And I wonder what’s better, lutefisk in winter or surströmming in summer?

FOSDEM

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

I’ve attended FOSDEM-2011 solely because of friends. I thought that Belgium is a sad country and Brussels is shitty but it turned out to be even worse than Ukraine in perception so I’m not sure if I’ll visit it again (Berlin is much nicer by comparison even if it still has Ukrainishy feeling).

av500 advertises his new 15'' laptop

av500 advertises his new 15'' laptop

Even if I spent not so much time there it’s always nice to see fellow FFmpeg developers and other related people — VLC people, BeagleBoard people, the small guy on the photo.

And shortly after that I’ve managed to get a new decoder accepted (the one used in Wing Commander IV). It was in RE since 2002 or 2003 but people were too lazy to actually complete it. But now it may serve as a memory that while I was at FOSDEM it was reviewed. Hopefully we’ll get more codecs to come even if not from me.