CODEWITHSUNDEEP
h.264
Martin Kersten
Martin Kersten

Reputation: 5513

H264 Encoder / Decoder Writing from Scratch?

I think about writing a H264 encoder / decoder from scratch to be able to integrate the tech into a composite product. The first implementation would be written in Java.

I am used to implement scientific papers and such so I should at least bring in the basic math understanding.

What would be the best start and what should I focus on. I know that basically H264 is a mix of existing techniques.

What is are the most important things to implement?

Any idea about how much hours of work the first useful version will take.

The main objective is very fast while maintaining good compression.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2014

Answers (2)

Martin Kersten
Martin Kersten

Reputation: 5513

After consideration :), I now will still use my own solution based on PNG and JPEG while not using motion vectors. I simply wrote a small solution I can compress parts of the image based on those and use filters to degrade the quality by applying sorts of blur or reduce the number of colors or even resolution. Works well enough for now.

If I need better quality I start looking at VP9 in more detail.

The only draw back is no hardware encoding support which might force me / us to look into H264 again.

Currently I can deliver 60+ frames for every days situation and scale down to 15 frames per second for video content along with bad quality but it is good enough to grab a security cam screen and see if something is wrong.

Upvotes: 0

szatmary
szatmary

Reputation: 31101

How many hours? Maybe 20,000. The decoder specification alone is over 750 page document. And the decoder is the easy part.

Upvotes: 5

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