FFmpeg is open source, licensed largely under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), though certain parts, for various reasons, are General Public License (GPL), version 2. There are certain provisions about when you must provide source code if you use the program. Some programs do not follow these rules.

We have started tracking these violators in the FFmpeg Hall of Shame. Each violator is listed with a link to its case in the FFmpeg issue tracker. We’re actively trying to work with all violators to resolve these issues. The Hall of Shame seems to be reserved for particularly unresponsive violators.

Today was supposed to be the the last day that students could apply to participate in Google’s 2008 Summer of Code. That deadline, however, along with all of the program’s deadlines, have been pushed back by a week. The new submission deadline is next Monday, April 7. The new deadline for the FFmpeg mentoring crew to pick students in April 18, so be sure to have your qualification code in SVN well before then in order to be considered for a project slot.

Regarding qualification tasks, 2 more students have qualified. First, the more graphically interesting: Eli Friedman completed an RPL/ARMovie demuxer and Escape-124 video decoder:

This is the container/codec combo that was seen in the first Tomb Raider PC game. ARMovie is a format that was apparently used on Acorn RISC PCs. If anyone happens to have any ARMovie files that don’t come from Eidos games, I would be interested it seeing them.

Next is a demuxer/decoder pair for the Amiga IFF format that supports the PCM and Fibonacci encodings, prepared by Jai Menon. No real graphics of course, so here’s ffplay’s graphical interpretation of the PCM amplitude:

There is still time to both apply for GSoC 2008 and work on a qualification task. I have been scavenging the MultimediaWiki for game-related formats that have long been documented but not re-implemented in FFmpeg. Hopefully, the supply will hold up for all the students who want to try their hand at FFmpeg.

The application process for Google’s Summer of Code 2008 season is not even open yet, but people interested in participating with FFmpeg are already busy on their qualification tasks.

Ramiro Polla submitted a system that can demux captured MSN video streams and play them back using a video codec known as Mimic. Here is the system in action:

Sascha Sommer has completed a playback system for the RL2 file format, which figured heavily into a CD-ROM game called Voyeur:

There are still some qualification tasks left unclaimed on the FFmpeg GSoC page. And if we run out, we can make more, so don’t despair.

The 2008 Google Summer of Code participating organizations have been selected. Like last year, I wanted to survey what other multimedia-type projects are doing. Fortunately, instead of clicking on each individual project in the official Google listing to figure out which ones might be vaguely multimedia-related, the GenMAPP project (also a participating organization) has organized the various projects by category.

Multimedia category projects include BBC Research, FFmpeg, GStreamer, Neuros Technology, XBMC, and Xiph.org. Tangential to multimedia are the 2 TV & Video category projects, Dirac Schroedinger (separate from BBC) and VideoLan.

Check out XBMC’s SoC project page. If you have been active with FFmpeg’s own SoC page, it should seem charmingly familiar. Eh, it’s all GFDL, I guess.

Then there is the Audio & Music category: Atheme, Audacity, CLAM, Mixxx, and XMMS2. I hadn’t heard of Atheme before. I can’t quite nail down what it is they do, but they seem to have a number of ambitious software projects under their umbrella. And one of their proposed SoC endeavors is “Support for RealAudio: Implement an input plugin for the RealAudio codec, preferably with support for streaming as well as files.” Seems a bit understated.

These are some other projects that caught my eye at a cursory glance:

• Our VideoLAN brothers are also sponsoring projects for x264 improvements.
• Audacity proposes a project for better FFmpeg integration.
• Schroedinger proposes a project to implement Dirac in Java.
• Xiph proposes several projects that directly improve upon FFmpeg itself, including fixing my mistakes in the existing VP3/Theora decoder.
• The Gnash project is not directly involved but seems to be an adjunct of at least 3 projects that I have found: Neuros Technology, GNU, and OLPC.

Speaking of Neuros Technology, this is the first time I have heard of them. They produce an open platform as a digital media center. GSoC participants will receive one of the items. Tantalizing. No such perks for working on FFmpeg. But I would like to remind prospective GSoC participants that FFmpeg offers valuable real world experience in the form of working long, thankless hours for a set of abusive, anti-social, impossible-to-please bosses on a rarely acknowledged piece of backend software. This is training you don’t get in school.

The application process begins bright and early on Monday morning (March 24). And don’t forget your qualification task.