{"id":2933,"date":"2010-10-04T22:20:53","date_gmt":"2010-10-05T05:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/?p=2933"},"modified":"2011-12-02T11:23:51","modified_gmt":"2011-12-02T19:23:51","slug":"the-worst-vp8-encoder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/the-worst-vp8-encoder\/","title":{"rendered":"Announcing the World’s Worst VP8 Encoder"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted to see if I could write an extremely basic VP8 encoder. It turned out to be one of the hardest endeavors I have ever attempted<\/strong> (and arguably one of the least successful).<\/p>\n

Results<\/strong>
\nI started with the Big Buck Bunny title image:<\/p>\n


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And this is the best encoding that this experiment could yield:<\/p>\n


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Squint hard enough and you can totally make out the logo. Pretty silly effort, I know. It should also be noted that the resultant .webm file holding that single 400×225 image was 191324 bytes. When FFmpeg decoded it to a PNG, it was only 187200 bytes.<\/p>\n

The Story<\/strong>
\nRemember my post about a naive SVQ1 encoder<\/a>? Long story short, I set out to do the same thing with VP8. (I wanted to do the same thing with VP3\/Theora for years. But take a good look at what it would entail to create even the most basic bitstream<\/a>. As involved as VP8 may be, its bitstream is absolutely trivial compared to VP3\/Theora.)
\n<\/p>\n

With the naive SVQ1 encoder, the goal was to create a minimally compliant SVQ1 encoded bitstream. For this exercise, I similarly hypothesized what it would take to create the most basic, syntactically correct VP8 bitstream with the least amount of effort. These are the overall steps I came up with:<\/p>\n