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In terms of both raw talent and writing ability, Jason's blog is one of my favorites. You can depend on him for solid analysis, clear thinking, and good writing

by cscotta 16y ago

In terms of both raw talent and writing ability, Jason's blog is one of my favorites. You can depend on him for solid analysis, clear thinking, and good writing. This article is worth reading. While I only have a surface-level understanding of video encoding and compression techniques, there are some very good criticisms here. That said, I've been reading through the libvpx source for the past 20 minutes or so. Jason repeatedly slams the quality of the source. The code is much cleaner than he suggests and rather well-commented. Better than H.264/main or not, I'm excited to see where VP8 goes. With implementations in Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Flash, it's off to a good start from day one. We'll see where it heads from there.

kevingadd 16y ago
I think it's reasonable to be overly critical of the source code quality based on the factors he cited (the lack of a real spec and the extreme age of the codebase) - if the code is the only thing we have to go by in many cases, it had better be pristine. Hopefully there's some sort of a real specification forthcoming and it just isn't ready for release yet.
naner 16y ago
> That said, I've been reading through the libvpx source for the past 20 minutes or so. Jason repeatedly slams the quality of the source. The code is much cleaner than he suggests and rather well-commented. It is possible he had an older revision of their code. Since he didn't say how he obtained it early, it may have not been through official channels.
- DarkShikari 16y ago
  I had rc8 through an NDA which has now expired (hence why I waited until now to post the analysis).
- mpk 16y ago
  > It is possible he had an older revision of their code. Unless he had a very ancient version of this codebase it is unlikely that it is different in structure from the current mainline. Adding comments or sanitizing local variable names are only very superficial changes.
  - rpdillon 16y ago
    Except that he goes out of his way to slam the comment quality. Besides, I think the difference between well-commented code and code without comments can be quite vast, especially when you're inlining assembly, as is the case here.

by cscotta 16y ago

kevingadd 16y ago

I think it's reasonable to be overly critical of the source code quality based on the factors he cited (the lack of a real spec and the extreme age of the codebase) - if the code is the only thing we have to go by in many cases, it had better be pristine. Hopefully there's some sort of a real specification forthcoming and it just isn't ready for release yet.

naner 16y ago

> That said, I've been reading through the libvpx source for the past 20 minutes or so. Jason repeatedly slams the quality of the source. The code is much cleaner than he suggests and rather well-commented. It is possible he had an older revision of their code. Since he didn't say how he obtained it early, it may have not been through official channels.

DarkShikari 16y ago
I had rc8 through an NDA which has now expired (hence why I waited until now to post the analysis).
mpk 16y ago
> It is possible he had an older revision of their code. Unless he had a very ancient version of this codebase it is unlikely that it is different in structure from the current mainline. Adding comments or sanitizing local variable names are only very superficial changes.
- rpdillon 16y ago
  Except that he goes out of his way to slam the comment quality. Besides, I think the difference between well-commented code and code without comments can be quite vast, especially when you're inlining assembly, as is the case here.