Introduction

FFmpeg is the universal multimedia toolkit: a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert, filter and stream audio and video. It is used by a number of media players (including VLC, MPlayer, and Totem through GStreamer), video distribution websites (including YouTube and Vimeo), Internet browsers (including Google Chrome/Chromium), and lots of other software projects in the multi-media field and beyond.

This is our ideas page for ​Google Summer of Code 2015. See the ​GSoC Timeline for important dates.

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Information for Students

Getting Started

1. Get to know FFmpeg. If you are a student interested in contributing to FFmpeg, it is recommended to start by subscribing to the ​ffmpeg-devel mailing-list, visiting our FreeNode IRC channels (#ffmpeg-devel and #ffmpeg although you will find most developers on the first one), and exploring both the codebase and the development workflow. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions. Also do not hesitate to answer questions from other students on our IRC channel if you know the answer to something.

2. Find a project. Listed on this page are mentored and un-mentored projects. Mentored projects are well-defined and mentor(s) have already volunteered. Un-mentored projects are additional ideas you may want to consider, but you will have to contact us to find a mentor. You can also propose your own project, if you can think of one that better fits your interest and skill level. If a project description is unclear or you have any questions, please get in touch with its mentor and/or send an email to the program admins at [​opw@ffmpeg.org].

3. Contact us. If you decide on a project, get in touch with the community and let us know. If you want to work on a qualification task, let the respective mentor know so we can avoid duplicated efforts.

4. Apply. Students should apply by March 27 at the very latest. The "work" period begins on May 25 and ends in August. Take a look at ​GSoC timeline for additional information. Note, make sure you apply to google before the 27th even if you have not yet finished your qualification task.

Note: A friendly reminder that while the application to GSoC is important for you and GSoC, FFmpeg mentors will not base their decision solely on the GSoC application. We will judge the applicant based on their abilities in coding, learning the tools, communication skills etc. So please do not worry about your application being perfect for us. Although it is very important to follow GSoC's application rules so they can pay you.

Qualification Tasks

In order to get accepted you normally have to complete a small qualification task. FFmpeg development can be quite challenging and the qualification task helps us figure out whether you are motivated enough and have the potential to deliver successfully.

The qualification tasks are usually shown in the project description. Contact the respective mentor(s) for assistance on getting a related qualification task or if you want to propose your own. You can also browse the ​FFmpeg Bug Tracker for qualification task ideas. In general qualification tasks should include submitting a patch to the ffmpeg-devel mailing list which passes review and is accepted into the FFmpeg codebase. It will be common for such patches to need multiple iterations of submissions and reviews, so dont wait too long with the first submission! Note, please avoid picking a qualification task which another student is already working on, each student should work on a different qualification task.

Note: The running status of this term's qualification tasks is tracked here.

Contacting FFmpeg

If you have questions or comments feel free to contact us via our mailing list, IRC channel, or e-mail one of the FFmpeg GSoC admins:

• Mailing-list: ​ffmpeg-devel
• IRC: #ffmpeg-devel on ​Freenode
• FFmpeg GSoC Admins: Michael Niedermayer (michaelni in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ​michaelni@gmx.at), Stefano Sabatini (saste in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, stefasab AT gmail DOT com), Reynaldo Verdejo (reynaldo in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, R Verdejo on g mail)

You may also contact a mentor directly if you have questions specifically related to one of the projects listed on this page.

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Mentored Projects

This section lists well-defined projects that have one or more available mentors. If you are new to FFmpeg, and have relatively little experience with multimedia, you should favor a mentored project rather than propose your own. Contact the respective mentor(s) to get more information about the project and the requested qualification task.

AAC Encoder Improvements

Description: Currently, FFmpeg contains an experimental native AAC encoder (native meaning that it doesn't depend on external libraries), but it is lacking in terms of extension support, since it currently only implements AAC-LC (the low-complexity profile). Extending feature support of FFmpeg's native encoder is needed to make it competitive with other encoders.

• AAC native encoder missing extensions
  • Implement ​AAC PNS
  • Implement ​intensity stereo
  • Implement AAC LTP (long term prediction)
  • Implement ​AAC SBR (spectral band replication)

Qualification Task:

• Proof-of-concept PNS. Simplest strategy possible (replace zeroes by noise) and implement bitstream syntax.
• Fix assertion error mentioned in ​#2686 (ffmpeg_anmr_error2.flac, assertion error on diff >= 0 && diff <= 120).

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, knowledge about transform based audio coding are necessary.

Mentor: Claudio Freire (klaussfreire in g mail)

Backup Mentor: Michael Niedermayer (michaelni in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ​michaelni@gmx.at)

API regression testing

Description: FATE is FFmpeg's automated testing suite. However, it only covers users of the ffmpeg executable, and not API users. This means that library users can often have bugs which the ffmpeg executable may hide.

Expected results: Build a suite of tests for API users, including advanced options such as draw_horiz_band

Prerequisites: Good C coding skills, basic familiarity with git

Qualification Task: Write a test for a libavcodec decoder using the API

Mentor: Kieran Kunhya(kierank in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, kieran[at]kunhya.com)

Backup Mentor:

Animated Portable Network Graphics (APNG)

Description: Add encoding support for Animated PNGs. The little bouncing ball animation shown to the right is such an APNG file.

Specification: ​https://wiki.mozilla.org/APNG_Specification

Expected results:

• APNG muxer & APNG encoder
  • use existing PNG encoder code (write encoder in same file)
  • write compliant files, make sure they play correctly in major web browsers that support APNG
  • Optimally choose blend and dispose op for each frame
  • choose offsets and dimension of frame so as to optimize quality per bitrate
  • if time permits add lossy png encoding support
  • add test for FATE

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git.

Qualification Task: Write a basic apng encoder that uses APNG_BLEND_OP_SOURCE and offset_x/y=0 which produces valid apng file which can be displayed correctly

Alternative Qualification Task: Improve the filter selection heuristic in the png encoder so files compress better

Mentor: Paul B Mahol (durandal_1707 in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ​onemda@gmail.com)

Backup mentors: Michael Niedermayer (michaelni in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ​michaelni@gmx.at), Peter Ross (pross in #ffmpeg-devel, ​pross@xvid.org)

directshow digital video capture

Description: FFmpeg today includes support for windows directshow boxes via creating its own dshow graphs, an internal capture sink, etc. This had support added recently for things like analog capture devices and analog TV tuners, but lacks support for digital TV tuner capture devices (ATSC etc.) ​https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd695354(v=vs.85).aspx

The first step will be DVB or ATSC, then vice versa, until it encompasses all the various digital capture options and all parameters for the same.

The next step will be creating a libavfilter that can "pass through" frames to be encoded by a windows directshow encoder (for instance, there are some encoders typically only available in windows as dshow devices, like lagarith).

Another step would be allowing for "DV capture" (i.e. from a live webcam) viz: ​https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd373388(v=vs.85).aspx

It would also be nice to refactor the directshow code so that it can take multiple inputs instead of just two today. Input would look like "-i video=name=Webcam:show_input_video_options=true:framerate=25:audio=name=Audio Device:rate=44100:video=name=Webcam 2:show_input_options=false" etc.

Finally, it would be nice to implement the libav "enumerate devices" API to at least show which devices exist on the system. Initially return just the devices, then return the devices along with any options they have like "name=Capture device:input_crossbar_device_number=3" (one each for each option) as a follow on.

Expected results: It will have the ability to capture video and audio from digital TV tuner devices. This basically involves setting up the right filter graph and sending it a tuning request, and exposing the output to FFmpeg with the right codecs presented.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, desire to learn, access to windows native box, and eventually, a digital capture device.

Qualification Task: Study all links on digital video capture graphs: ​http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14150210/having-trouble-capturing-digital-tv-using-directshow and create some test graphs using MSVC graphedit that capture digital video successfully. Also add an IPersistStream option to and from file for the dshow code base for video basefilter (basically, you can call this to "serialize" it's setting to a file after setting them, and then read them from a file to get back to what they were set to previously). This also involves a new command line option as well. ref: ​http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14050074/how-to-change-directshow-filter-properties-c/27931102#27931102

Mentor: Roger Pack (​rogerdpack@gmail.com) the dshow module maintainer.

Backup Mentor: Ramiro Polla (ramiro in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ramiro DOT polla AT gmail DOT com)

FFv1 P frame support

Description: FFv1 is one of the most efficient intra-only lossless video codecs. Your work will be to add support for P frames with motion compensation and motion estimation support (the existing motion estimation code in libavcodec can be reused here). Then fine-tune it until the best compression rate is achieved. This will make FFv1 competitive with existing I+P frame lossless codecs like lossless H.264.

Expected results: State of the art P frame support in the FFv1 encoder and decoder implementation.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, solid understanding of video coding especially with motion compensation.

Qualification Task: Implement support for simple P frames without motion compensation in FFv1. That is so that each frame stores the difference to the previous frame.

Alternative Qualification Task: Improve the compression of the existing FFV1 Intra frames, you can change any part of the algorithm but it must be practical, the more improvement you can achieve, the better

Mentor: Michael Niedermayer (michaelni in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ​michaelni@gmx.at)

Backup mentor: Derek Buitenhuis (Daemon404 in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, derek.buitenhuis ut gmail)

Postproc optimizations

Description: FFmpeg contains libpostproc, which is used to postprocess 8x8 DCT-MC based video and images (jpeg, mpeg-1/2/4, H.263 among others). Postprocessing removes blocking (and other) artifacts from low bitrate / low quality images and videos. The code though has been written a long time ago and its SIMD optimizations need to be updated to what modern CPUs support (AVX2 and SSE2+).

Expected results:

• Convert all gcc inline asm in libpostproc to YASM.
• Restructure the code so that it works with block sizes compatible with modern SIMD.
• Add Integer SSE2 and AVX2 optimizations for each existing MMX/MMX2/3dnow optimization in libpostproc.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, good x86 assembly coding skills, basic familiarity with git.

Qualification Task: convert 1 or 2 MMX2 functions to SSE2 and AVX2.

Mentor: Michael Niedermayer (michaelni in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ​michaelni@gmx.at)

Backup Mentor:

MPEG-4 Audio Lossless Coding (ALS) encoder

Description: A MPEG-4 ALS decoder was implemented several years ago but an encoder is still missing in the official codebase. A rudimentary encoder has already been written and is available on ​github. For this project, that encoder is first to be updated to fit into the current codebase of FFmpeg and to be tested for conformance using the ​reference codec and specifications. Second, the encoder is to be brought through the usual reviewing process to hit the codebase at the end of the project.

Expected results:

• Update the existing encoder to fit into the current codebase.
• Ensure conformance of the encoder by verifying using the reference codec and generate a test case for ​FATE.
• Ensure the FFmpeg decoder processes all generated files without warnings.
• Enhance the rudimentary feature set of the encoder.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git. A certain interest in audio coding and/or knowledge about the FFmpeg codebase could be beneficial.

Qualification Task: Add floating point support to MPEG-4 ALS decoder

Mentor: Thilo Borgmann (thilo DOT borgmann AT mail DOT de)

Backup Mentor: Paul B Mahol (durandal_1707 in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ​onemda@gmail.com), Stefano Sabatini (saste in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, stefasab AT gmail DOT com)

Hardware Acceleration API Software / Tracing Implementation

Description: Our support for hardware accelerated decoding basically remains untested. This is in part due to FFmpeg only implementing part of the required steps, and in part since it requires specific operating systems and hardware.

The idea would be to start with a simple stub implementation of an API like e.g. VDPAU that provides only the most core functions. These would then serialize out the function calls and data to allow easy comparison and regression testing. Improvements to this approach are adding basic input validation and replay capability to allow testing regression data against real hardware. This would be similar to what ​apitrace does for OpenGL.

A further step would be to actually add support for decoding in software, so that full testing including visual inspection is possible without the need for special hardware.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git

Qualification Task: Anything related to the hardware acceleration code, though producing first ideas and code pieces for this task would also be reasonable

Mentor: Reimar Doeffinger (reimar in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, but since I'm rarely there better email me first: Reimar.Doeffinger [at] gmx.de)

Backup Mentor: Stefano Sabatini (saste in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, stefasab AT gmail DOT com)

MXF Demuxer Improvements

Description: The MXF demuxer needs a proper, compact way to map EssenceContainer ULs to WrappingKind. See ​ticket #2776 in our bug tracker, and ​ticket #1916 contains additional relevant information.

Essence in MXF is typically stored in one of two ways: as an audio/video interleave or with each stream in one huge chunk (such as 1 GiB audio followed by 10 GiB video). Previous ways of telling these apart have been technically wrong, but worked and we lack samples demonstrating the contrary.

Expected results: The sample in ticket ​ticket #2776 should demux correctly. Add a test case in ​FATE. The solution should grow libavformat by no more than 32 KiB.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git. Knowledge of MXF would be useful

Qualification Task: Investigate if there may be a compact way of representing the UL -> WrappingKind mapping specified in the ​official RP224 Excel document. The tables takes up about half a megabyte verbatim which is unacceptable in a library as large as libavformat.

Mentor: Tomas Haerdin (thardin in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, tomas.hardin a codemill.se)

Backup Mentor: Stefano Sabatini (saste in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, stefasab AT gmail DOT com)

VDPAU filter

Description: VDPAU is not only about hardware-accelerated decoding but also allows some postprocessing - most notably deinterlacing. Other features of the API include scaling, noise removal, and a sharpening filter. See the API documentation for more information on some of the features: ​http://http.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vdpau/doxygen/html/

Expected results: Implement a filter that allows usage of the postprocessing features as defined by the VDPAU API. This should particularly include the deinterlacer, and ideally all features should be usable to allow comparing the quality and performance of different hardware and hardware vs. software.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, and you will need hardware that allows VDPAU post-processing.

Qualification Task: Show that you are familiar with the FFmpeg filter system by implementing a very simple inverse telecine filter under LGPL that allows reversal of the effect of the telecine filter.

Mentor: Carl Eugen Hoyos (cehoyos in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ce AT hoyos.ws)

Backup Mentor: Reimar Doeffinger (reimar in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, Reimar.Doeffinger [at] gmx.de)

Basic servers for network protocols

Description: libavformat contains clients for various network protocols used in multimedia streaming: HTTP, RTMP, MMS, RTSP. Your work will be to implement the server side for one or several of these protocols.

The libavformat framework is not designed to build general-purpose server applications with several clients, and nothing similar to the configuration features of real servers like Apache is expected, but libavformat should be able to stream a single predefined bytestream to/from a single client.

Note: server support is already implemented for the receiving side of RTSP.

Expected results: basic servers for network protocols capable of interoperating with third-party clients.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, network programming.

Qualification Task: proof-of-concept server for one of the protocol, capable of interacting with a particular client in controlled circumstances; or anything network-related, e.g. fixing a ticket in our ​bug tracker.

Mentor: Nicolas George (george ad nsup dot org)

Backup mentor: Reynaldo Verdejo (reynaldo in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, R Verdejo on g mail)

HTTP/2

Description: the ​final draft for the HTTP/2 protocol has been published. It contains various new features that will probably be used to enhance distribution of multimedia contents. Therefore, FFmpeg needs an implementation.

Expected results: HTTP/2 client over TLS and TCP for reading and writing, capable of interacting with stock servers, including using the same connection for simultaneous requests.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, network programming.

Qualification Tasks:

• Rework current HTTP/1 client code to make it input-driven and support non-blocking mode.

• Implement the Websocket protocol on top of the HTTP/1 client code.

Mentor: Nicolas George (george ad nsup dot org)

Backup mentor: TBA

TrueHD encoder

Description: FFmpeg currently does not support encoding to TrueHD, one of the lossless audio formats used on Bluray discs. A nearly functional Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP) encoder has already been written and is available on ​github. The MLP codec is the basis for TrueHD. For this project, that encoder is first to be updated to fit into the current codebase of FFmpeg and to be tested for conformance against Surcode's MLP encoder. Second, the encoder is to be updated to implement TrueHD functionality, allowing it to losslessly encode audio to play it on hardware devices capable of TrueHD decoding. Finally, the encoder is to be brought through the usual reviewing process to hit the codebase at the end of the project.

Expected results: a TrueHD encoder that allows to losslessly encode audio to play it on hardware devices capable of TrueHD decoding with a competetive compression rate

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git

Qualification Task: Update the MLP encoder so that it produces a valid bitstream that can be decoded by FFmpeg without errors to silence. Find out how to validate the generated bitstream besides using FFmpeg.

Mentor: Ramiro Polla (ramiro in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ramiro DOT polla AT gmail DOT com)

Backup mentor: Stefano Sabatini (saste in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, stefasab AT gmail DOT com)

Implement full support for 3GPP Timed Text (movtext, QuickTime) subtitles

The standard subtitle format used in MP4 containers is 3GPP timed text, as defined in ​3GPP TS 26.245. It is the only subtitle format supported in Apple's media players on OS X and iOS, and the only format that's part of the mpeg4 standard. As such it is important for FFmpeg to support the format as fully as possible. Currently, it supports a limited subset of the format without any rich text formatting or the ability to position text on the screen. For this project, the goal would be to implement complete support for these features and have the implementation fully reviewed and merged into FFmpeg.

Expected Results:

• A display window for subtitles can be specified by the user when encoding or transcoding subtitles
  • A default window size based on the primary video stream will be implemented
• As much text formatting metadata as can be expressed in ASS will be supported for both transcoding to and from timed text, including positional metadata
  • The OSX QuickTime player should be used to evaluate the behaviour of formatting metadata. (This appears to be the most feature complete player with respect to the formatting features of 3GPP Timed Text)
• Subtitle merging for overlapping subtitles will be implemented

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, access to the OS X QuickTime player for playback verification.

Qualification Task: Implement support for transcoding bold, italic, and underline formatting to and from ffmpeg's internal ASS format. (Will require temporary patches (which already exist) for display window sizing/positioning)

Mentor: Philip Langdale (philipl in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, philipl AT overt DOT org)

Backup mentor: Carl Eugen Hoyos (cehoyos in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ce AT hoyos.ws)

Improve Selftest coverage

Description: FFmpeg contains many selftests, still more code is not tested than tested thus more such tests are needed to ensure regressions and platform specific bugs are quickly detected. Examples of existing self tests can be seen under #ifdef TEST in various files

Expected results: Significantly improve selftest code coverage

Prerequisites: Good C coding skills, basic familiarity with git

Qualification Task: Improve selftest code coverage by at least 1% of two of the main libs (libavcodec, libavformat, libavdevice, libavfilter, libavutil, libswresample, libswscale) as listed at ​http://coverage.ffmpeg.org/index.html

Mentor: Michael Niedermayer (michaelni in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, ​michaelni@gmx.at)

Backup Mentor:

Improve Closed Caption support

Description: FFmpeg contains some support for Closed Captions, the goal of this project would be to improve the support.

Expected results: To be defined

Qualification Task: Not yet defined, a starting point would be to look at related tickets: ​https://trac.ffmpeg.org/query?status=new&status=open&status=reopened&keywords=~+cc&order=priority

Mentor: TBA

Unmentored Projects

This is a list of projects that students are encouraged to consider if a mentored project is unavailable or not within the students skill or interests. The student will have to find a mentor for the project. A student can also propose their own project.

Missing AAC decoder features

Description: FFmpeg contains an AAC decoder which is missing some features. The task is to rebase existing implementations to the current FFmpeg code-base, test them and fix the remaining bugs.

• AAC BSAC decoder: This has already been started, but the existing decoder still fails on many samples
• AAC SSR decoder
• AAC 960/120 MDCT window

Qualification Task: See the ​FFmpeg bug tracker for AAC issues, fixing one of them or rebasing the existing incomplete BSAC decoder for current git head and fixing one or more existing bugs are possible qualification tasks.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, knowledge about transform based audio coding would be useful.

Mentor:

Backup Mentor: Reynaldo Verdejo (reynaldo in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, R Verdejo on g mail), Sascha Sommer (saschasommer at freenet de)

DTS / DCA Improvements

Description: FFmpeg contains a DTS decoder, but its missing several features

• DTS-HD decoder improvements:
  • Add support for X96 extension (96khz)
  • Add support for pure DTS-HD streams that do not contain a DTS core
  • Add support for multiple assets
  • Add support for LBR extension

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git. Good understanding of DTS and related audio coding is a strict requirement.

Qualification Task: A possible qualification task is to implement ticket ​#1920

Mentor:

Backup Mentor: Stefano Sabatini (saste in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, stefasab AT gmail DOT com)

VC-1 interlaced

Description: The FFmpeg VC-1 decoder has improved over the years, but many samples are still not decoded bit-exact and real-world interlaced streams typically show artefacts. This task is difficult.

Expected results:

• Implement missing parts of interlacing
• Make more reference samples bit-exact

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, ability to read and understand the vc1 specification and align that knowledge with the existing code

Qualification Task: Find a bug in the current decoder implementation and fix it.

JPEG 2000

Description: FFmpeg contains an experimental native JPEG 2000 encoder and decoder. Both are missing many features, see also the FFmpeg bug tracker for some unsupported samples. This task is difficult

Expected results: A jpeg 2000 decoder which can decode most lossy samples without artifacts and lossless samples exactly.

Qualification Task: Fix an issue (for example from the bug tracker) to show that you are capable of improving the codec implementation.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, good knowledge of Jpeg-2000

Hardware Accelerated Video Encoding with VA-API

Description: FFmpeg already supports hardware accelerated decoding for multiple codecs but still lacks support for hardware accelerated encoding. The aim of the project is to add support for encoding with VA-API specifically, while keeping a generic enough approach in mind so that other hardware accelerators (TI-DSP, CUDA?) could be supported as well. This means that new hwaccel hooks are needed and two operational modes are possible: either (i) driver or hardware pack headers themselves, or (ii) lattitude is left to perform this task at the FFmpeg library level.

Expected results: Allow MPEG-2 and H.264 encoding with VA-API, while supporting variable bitrate (VBR) by default, and allowing alternate methods like constant bitrate (CBR) or constant QP (CQP) where appropriate or requested.

• MPEG-2 encoding:
  • Add basic encoding with I/P frames (handle the -g option)
  • Add support for B frames (handle the -bf option)
  • Add support for constant bitrate (CBR, i.e. maxrate == bitrate and bufsize set)
  • (Optionally) add support for interlaced contents
• H.264 encoding:
  • Add basic encoding with I/P frames (handle the -g option)
  • Add support for B frames (handle the -bf option)
  • Add support for constant bitrate (CBR, i.e. maxrate == bitrate and bufsize set)
  • Add support for constant QP (CQP, i.e. handle the -cqp option)
  • Add support for more than one reference frame, while providing/using API to query the hardware capabilities
  • Work on HRD conformance. May require to write an independent tool to assess that
  • (Optionally) add configurability of the motion estimatation method to use. Define new types for HW accelerated encoding with at least two levels/hints for the accelerator.
• FFmpeg applications:
  • Define common hwaccel interface for encoding
  • Add initial support for hardware accelerated encoding to the ffmpeg application

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, hardware supporting VA-API for encoding.

Qualification Task: Anything related to the Hardware Acceleration (hwaccel) API, or to its related users. e.g. port VDPAU acceleration to use hwaccel, add JPEG decoding support with VA-API, etc.

Mentor: TBA

Backup Mentor: TBA, possibly Tushar Gohad

H.264 Multiview Video Coding (MVC)

Description: MVC samples exist and the codec is used on Blu-ray media, but FFmpeg is missing a decoder. Since this project also consists of some changes in the current architecture, it is especially important that this project is discussed on the ffmpeg-devel mailing list.

Expected results: Create MVC decoder and add a test for ​FATE.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, familiarity with git/source code control systems. Knowledge of H.264 and MPEG-TS would be helpfull

Qualification Task: Perform work that demonstrates understanding of MVC and that is a subpart of the whole MVC implementation.

Mentor: TBA

Backup mentor: TBA

Browsing content on the server

Description: libavformat supports network protocols like FTP, SFTP, HTTP.

The libavformat framework is able to read, seek and write to files located on server as they were local files. The libavformat is not able to list files nor directories located on remote servers. Your work will be to implement browsing files on remote servers.

Note: the libavformat will be prepared with suitable API and only protocol related code will need to be implemented.

Expected results: Application that uses libavformat will be provided with an API to list files and directories (with their attributes like size, creation date, etc) located on remote servers. Implementation for FTP, HTTP and SFTP is required. Optionally file protocol can be also implemented.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git, basic knowledge about FTP and HTTP protocols and libssh library.

Qualification Task: Implement browsing routine for one of mentioned protocols (implementation may cover file/directory names only, work with specific servers and under defined conditions).

Mentor: TBA

Backup mentor: TBA, possibly Lukasz Marek (lukaszmluki in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC, lukasz.m.luki on g mail)

Subtitles

Description: FFmpeg has been working on improving its subtitles support recently, notably by adding the support for various text subtitles and various hardsubbing (burning the subtitles onto the video) facilities. While the theme may sound relatively simple compared to audio/video signal processing, the project carries an historical burden not easy to deal with, and introduces various issues very specific to its sparse form.

Expected results:

• Add support for new subtitles formats. Example: a VobSub muxer, a demuxer and decoder for EBU-TT, or even Kate subtitles (Xiph).
• Improve text subtitles decoders. Typically, this can be supporting advanced markup features in SAMI or WebVTT.
• Proper integration of subtitles into libavfilter. This is the ultimate goal, as it will notably allow a complete subtitles rendering for applications such as ffplay.

Prerequisites: C coding skills, basic familiarity with git. Some background in fansubbing area (notably ASS experience) would be a bonus but is not strictly required.

Qualification Task: write one subtitles demuxer and decoder (for example support for Spruce subtitles format). This is in order to make sure the subtitles chain is understood.

Mentor: TBA

Backup Mentor: TBA, possibly Nicolas George (Cigaes in #ffmpeg-devel on Freenode IRC)

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Your Own Project Idea

A student can propose a project. Ideas can also be found by browsing bugs and feature requests on our bug tracker. The work should last the majority of the GSoC internship duration, the task must be approved by the developers, and a mentor must be assigned.

Students can discuss an idea in the ffmpeg-devel mailing-list, the #ffmpeg-devel IRC channel, or contact the FFmpeg GSoC admins for more information.