Before getting to the code, you need to understand the principles, which are getting quite complex. I would start by reading how mpeg-2 worked, it’s sufficientl

Before getting to the code, you need to understand the principles, which are getting quite complex. I would start by reading how mpeg-2 worked, it’s sufficiently simple. Then move on to h.264, you’ll see a shitload of innovation there, not all of which is easy to grasp. And then look into state of the art stuff. The recent video codecs are incredibly complicated, and as a solo developer, it would be pretty hard to develop a codec by yourself. You may be able to invent some feature that improves the coding slightly, but coding efficiency is getting pretty hard to beat. What to read and what code to learn is difficult to say depending on your objective. If your objective is getting a job in video coding, it’s not too hard cause these jobs are quite academic and you don’t get paid much, so if you know some coding and show some interest in learning the field, I don’t think it’d be too hard for you to find an intern position in a lab or something.