x264 Development Notes

Getting Started

Books

• H.264 and Mpeg-4 Video Compression: Video Coding for Next Generation Multimedia, Iain E. G. Richardson

Advice

Suggestions

• Be willing to learn
• Experiment
• Ask Questions (irc.freenode.net/#x264dev)
• Sample clips: http://media.xiph.org/video/derf
• check out elecard streameye

Potential Projects

• Performance improvements (asm optimization, etc), particularly wanted: NEON stuff.
• Algorithmic improvements. Examples of past projects: viterbi, b-adapt, macroblock-tree, ratecontrol, psy-rd
• support for new features in the h.264 spec, such as: MBAFF, 4:2:2/4:4:4, weightp, 10-bit
• Support for new enconder features independent of the spec, such as: sliced threads, low-latency output, threadpools, etc
• new external-to-the-main-encoder features (x264 features), such as audio support, new output muxers, new input modules, filters, etc

Tools

• valgrind
• oprofile