{"id":1462,"date":"2009-05-17T22:37:37","date_gmt":"2009-05-18T05:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2009-05-17T22:37:37","modified_gmt":"2009-05-18T05:37:37","slug":"musings-of-a-file-format-hacker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/musings-of-a-file-format-hacker\/","title":{"rendered":"Musings of a File Format Hacker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some anonymous hacker recently made a name for himself<\/a> (wait, can you make a name for yourself anonymously?) by ranting against the difficulty of working with certain Adobe file formats. It got me wondering if we could draw more attention to the FFmpeg<\/a> program by littering the code with rants against the file formats we’re trying to re-implement. I’d like to think we’re above that, if only because the average FFmpeg hacker intuitively understands that no one ever meant for us to be able to re-implement these formats, at least not the proprietary formats.<\/p>\n

Ironically, I think you’ll hear the most complaints from the crew where free, open formats<\/a> are concerned.<\/p>\n

You can look at a seemingly bizarre format and generally experience 1 of 2 reactions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What kind of moron thought of this format?! What were they thinking?!<\/li>\n
  2. What did the creator of this format know that I don’t know? What were the original design goals and what problems were they trying to solve.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Over the years, I’ve trained myself to have reaction #2. I’m not saying I’m superior; on the contrary, the philosophy leads me down the wrong path sometimes when it turns out that the format’s originator honestly didn’t<\/em> know what they were doing. In that case, I end up giving them too much credit.<\/p>\n

    Along these same lines, Joel Spolsky’s take is absolutely fascinating: He describes how the Microsoft Office formats<\/a> evolved to their present complexity — not out of spite for third party programmers, but to meet the needs of the applications’ features.<\/p>\n

    Actually, an impromptu and unscientific audit of the FFmpeg code (grep’ing for certain keywords) does seem to indicate a high level of animosity towards Microsoft.<\/p>\n

    Suddenly, I feel revitalized regarding the MultimediaWiki<\/a> and its charter. Someday, someone somewhere is going to want to know about that UMV format<\/a> on Orpheo’s Curse<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What is your attitude towards weird file formats?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[179],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming","tag-file-formats"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t