[theora] NHW Project - some update

[Raphael Canut]

Hello,

Again I thank very much the Xiph forum members for their help and
consideration for the NHW Project, really.I also realize I was a little
unfair with Monty as just saying that Xiph.org can totally give some web
space to document and advertise the NHW Project is already a very big help,
it gives credit to the project,...!

But the reality is that the NHW Project is a nearly dead project... Since
2-3 years so so few people took a look at the NHW Project, and I have
contacted some companies and they were not interested, for example I could
go a little far with Intel thanks to a very nice and impressive engineer
from Intel who wrote an article on the new codecs and quoted my work, he
passed on my work to an Intel video compression director and the answer was
that the NHW Project is not interesting... I must also say that this video
compression director is the Intel MPEG representative...

So very soon, when the new video compression standard: AOM or MPEG
establishes, the NHW Project will quickly disappear (or die of old age), so
finally I don't know if it's really worth to make a website for the NHW
Project whereas it will soon disappear...

There was still the opportunity to replace MotionJPEG, but the author of
the study told me that in fact MotionJPEG is not used for its performance
but because JPEG is widely supported...

So again, despite all the encouragements I had on this channel (and I thank
you so much again), I still think the NHW Project has not and will not find
an interest in the industry and will soon disappear with the new standards
coming.

For now, I am waiting for the confirmation that I will start my new job in
September-October (alternating Master's at University and with a company),
and I don't know if I will really have time for the NHW Project then, I
have also furthermore an other project that interests me a lot...

Are there motivated people who wants to take over the NHW Project from
September-October? Spork? Others?

Cheers,
Raphael

[Raphael Canut]

Hello Spork!

As your answer is highly interesting, I wanted to share it with the Theora
community (hope you don't mind).

You're right I should format the code properly, write more separated
functions, make it a library,... short, turn it into something
professional...

It's a lot of work, and I wanted to finish the codec (very high
compression) first... But any help is very welcome!

I still see your codec being successful, especially in the electrical

engineering field, where system resources are limited.

Really thank you so much for your encouragements!!! But how can I convince
a company of it? I even suspect that companies don't even know that the NHW
Project exists, seeing the so few visits I have on my sites... There's also
that "the problem" is global now, a codec to become successful must also be
supported by web browsers, and I feel that clearly the giants of the
Internet are not interested in the NHW Project... How can I change that?
Would it take 2-3 years or more? Any opinion is really very welcome.

Many thanks again for your answer and for your precious time Spork!!!
Cheers,
Raphael

Ralph,
I would love to take over control of NHW from September to October, but I
simply don’t have the time. With our business we’re starting up, I
hadn’t realized how much there was to running a business properly. Money
has now become an issue, and I need just a little bit more before we don’t
have to purchase anything for a long time.
But I also need to run all the low voltage wires, configure the Cisco core
router, the Cisco wireless APs, the HPE 48-port gigabit managed switch,
setup the VLANs, secure the server, setup the VPSes, learn KMS, etc. We
are so behind that we no longer put due-dates on the stuff that needs to be
done. I’m taking a small break so I don’t burn myself out. I work way
too many hours a day, but feel that I need to right now, in order to get
this business up and running.
If I where in control though, the first thing I would do is standardized
the code, so people in the *nix world could read it, and it was nice and
pretty. I’d replace each tab with four spaces, use a consistent coding
style, and I’d break the code into many more functions.
Secondly, I would be using autotools, and work on making sure it compiles
on Windows and Linux. I’d try replacing declarations like int with
declarations like u_int8, for example, because the size of an integer isn’t
necessarily the same on all systems.
Finally, instead of making it an executable, I would make it a library,
with functions that people could easily call from their code, to encourage
people to use the codec in their projects.
Somewheres along the lines, I’d probably research more about codecs and
see how to “register” one with the various OSes, so programs like Windows
Media Player, VLC, XMBC, mplayer, etc could play a compressed video file by
someone just double clicking.
I still see your codec being successful, especially in the electrical
engineering field, where system resources are limited. Currently
though, could I easily adapt your code into something that works with a
Microchip MCU? No. What about an ARM processor? No. What about
writing code for Android that uses your codec? No. I think for these
reasons, you might not find a lot of companies, such as Intel, as being
interested in your codec. Results are nice, don’t get me wrong. You
have, to me, an extremely impressive “codec”. But I don’t think a
company would call it a codec right now. I think they’d call it a
program. And I doubt many would look at it because 1) It’s not easily
readable. 2) Functions are WAAAY to long. 3) There’s no easy way to
call the functions from someone elses code (ie, it needs to be a library,
and then maybe an exe that’s a viewer or can convert images to your nhw
format) 4) There’s no documentation nor comments that explain what the
functions do.
So, what would I have to do to use your codec in my project? First
thing, fix the formatting. But then, I would have to read through
pretty much the entire code, comment how it works, and maybe break
functions up to smaller ones.
There are programs like DOxygen, where if you comment a function in such a
way, DOxygen can automatically create documentation, in different formats,
none the less (html, PDF, etc I believe), that explain what the functions
do.
You’d still need some example code, that shows people how to call the
library to do different things (stuff like display_video.c, or
convert_jpg_to_nhw.c).
Finally, if I where you, I would read up a bit more on github. When
you implement a feature, you should push the commit, with a message
explaining what you did. When you fix a bug, you should commit. You
should NOT make a whole bunches of changes and then submit one giant push.
If you submit the commits proper like, it makes it much easier to track
down bugs, or to revert to previous code if something goes wrong, and for
other people to help with your code.
That’s a lot of work though, and unfortunetly, with my 20 month old
daughter Chloe and being a new dad, owning a house for the first time,
setting up a fairly large business (but only having three people to work on
it, me, my wife, and my friend), I just don’t have any time available to
help at all.
I did start working on converting the code to make it standardized and
properly formatted. If anyone wants copies of what I did to continue
my work, I would be more than happy to submit my changes to my clone of
Ralph’s repository.
Thanks.
Ken
*Sent:* Wednesday, July 18, 2018 1:58 PM
*Subject:* [theora] NHW Project - some update
Hello,
Again I thank very much the Xiph forum members for their help and
consideration for the NHW Project, really.I also realize I was a little
unfair with Monty as just saying that Xiph.org can totally give some web
space to document and advertise the NHW Project is already a very big help,
it gives credit to the project,...!
But the reality is that the NHW Project is a nearly dead project... Since
2-3 years so so few people took a look at the NHW Project, and I have
contacted some companies and they were not interested, for example I could
go a little far with Intel thanks to a very nice and impressive engineer
from Intel who wrote an article on the new codecs and quoted my work, he
passed on my work to an Intel video compression director and the answer was
that the NHW Project is not interesting... I must also say that this video
compression director is the Intel MPEG representative...
So very soon, when the new video compression standard: AOM or MPEG
establishes, the NHW Project will quickly disappear (or die of old age), so
finally I don't know if it's really worth to make a website for the NHW
Project whereas it will soon disappear...
There was still the opportunity to replace MotionJPEG, but the author of
the study told me that in fact MotionJPEG is not used for its performance
but because JPEG is widely supported...
So again, despite all the encouragements I had on this channel (and I
thank you so much again), I still think the NHW Project has not and will
not find an interest in the industry and will soon disappear with the new
standards coming.
For now, I am waiting for the confirmation that I will start my new job in
September-October (alternating Master's at University and with a company),
and I don't know if I will really have time for the NHW Project then, I
have also furthermore an other project that interests me a lot...
Are there motivated people who wants to take over the NHW Project from
September-October? Spork? Others?
Cheers,
Raphael