High Priority Libav Projects

Once I’ve stumbled upon High Priority Free Software Projects at FSF. The idea appealed to me so here I present similar thing for Libav. It also has one or two sane proposals (hopefully) and offers the same level of support (i.e. none). But maybe in some cases we or I can help with it.

User tools

  • Working avserver;
  • Proper filter system. When I say “proper” I mean the one that allows dynamic reconfiguring, handles errors and works for arbitrary inputs and outputs;
  • libswscale replacement. The one that doesn’t sap sanity when you look at its code. Maybe with a nicer API too. And better pixel format support.

RealMedia support

  • Improve RM demuxer or maybe rewrite it from scratch;
  • Add proper support for multirate RM streams;
  • Add IVR format demuxer;
  • Add ClearVideo decoder (that’s the last codec in RM that we don’t support, hopefully not for long).

Other Intel codecs support

  • Improve Indeo4 decoder (it still has some features lacking);
  • AddImprove Intel Audio Coder decoder.

On2 codecs support

  • On2 VP7 decoder (we still can implement it faster than certain Baidu rival releases its source code);
  • On2 VP4 decoder;
  • On2 AVC decoder (that stands for “Audio for Video Codec”).

Too bad I cannot even find a decoder for On2 AVC nowadays. We have some samples though.

Micro$oft (screen) codecs support

This company has at least four screen codecs that we don’t support (MSA1, MSS2, MTS2 and CGDI).

  • Add M$ Screen Codec 1 decoder;
  • Add M$ Screen Codec 2 decoder;
  • Add M$ Expression Encoder Screen Codec decoder;
  • Add beta Windows Media Video 9 interlaced decoding.
  • Fix beta Windows Media Video 9 P-frames decoding.

QuickTime codecs support

  • Add Rottenfruit Intermediate Codec decoder;
  • Add any other codec decoder.

Other codecs

  • Add GoToMeeting 2-4 decoder;
  • Add more screen codec decoders;
  • Add more game format decoders (especially Discworld Noir BMV);
  • Add more audio (especially speech) codec decoders.

7 Responses to “High Priority Libav Projects”

  1. I don’t know if it’s relevant, but it would be great to have a high quality, reliable, industry standard codec available for video’s profesionnals.

    I think about either DNxHD (the 10bit version), prores 422 and 444 (altough, there ay be licensing issues), or maybe dirac.

    Having a patent free codec for editing and high quality archival, with an open source implementation is imho a very high priority. We need a way to store reliably all the films, umatic, BETA SP tapes that are gathering dusts on shelves.

    Contact me if you need some use cases 🙂

  2. Kostya says:

    Reliably? We do that by making it possible to decode all those formats. And if you have opensource decoder and codec description you can decode it later. It’s more about physical medium to store it reliably.

  3. aviad says:

    I would also appreciate the following:

    * better UDP handling [useful for for MPEG-TS]
    * IGMP v3 broadcast
    * working avplay on windows [currently frame rate is terrible, probably a problem with SDL]
    * better RTMP handling [problems with timestamps]
    * better RTSP handling [problems with timestamps]
    * resampling and remixing audio channels to be finally merged in
    * GPU GPU GPU – perhaps allow H264 decode or encode using the intel media libraries?

  4. Mans says:

    aviad,

    Proper resampling and mixing should be merged Real Soon Now(tm). GPU might be useful for colourspace conversion and scaling but not much else. From what I’ve hear, those Intel codecs are terrible.

  5. When I say reliably, I mean having a good solution to archive high quality tape / negative films. It means 444 or 422 colors space, low compression artifacts, and futureproofness.

    Open source codec is one of the required conditions ta be able to read those films in 50 years. Libav has the opportunity to play a role in this.

  6. compn says:

    i still say we need a vivo decoder, its h263! you’ll love it! no pesky keyframes!