path: root/converter/ppm/ppmtompeg/HISTORY

The entire ppmtompeg directory was adapted by Bryan from the package
mpeg_encode-1.5b-src (subdirectory mpeg_encode) on March 30, 1999.  The 
program was called mpeg_encode in that package.  It was dated August 16,
1995 and came from ftp://mm-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/multimedia/mpeg/
encode/mpeg_encode-1.5b-src.tar.gz

Changes for Netpbm include:

  - mpeg_encode recognizes two input formats:  "PPM" and "PNM".  For
    PPM, mpeg_encode parses it itself.  For PNM, it uses the Netpbm
    PNM library routines.
    
    In the Netpbm version, PPM is gone and "PPM" is accepted as a 
    synonym for "PNM".  For PNM, it uses the PPM (not PNM) Netpbm
    library routines.

  - mpeg_encode PNM code is broken for maxval != 255 (divides by zero
    if maxval < 255 and overly quantize if > 255 because PNMtoYUV()
    uses an integer divisor = maxval/256).

In November 2004, Bryan rewrote large portions of the code so that he
could read it easily enough to debug some problems.  He eliminated
long subroutines, global variables, gotos, and the like.

See the file LOGIC for some documentation on how the code works.


The following is the README from the aforementioned mpeg_encode subdirectory.


                 MPEG-1 Video Software Encoder
                (Version 1.5; February 1, 1995)

     Lawrence A. Rowe, Kevin Gong, Eugene Hung, Ketan Patel, Steve Smoot
       and Dan Wallach
    Computer Science Division-EECS, Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley

This directory contains the freely distributed Berkeley MPEG-1 Video 
Encoder.  The encoder implements the standard described in the ISO/IEC
International Standard 11172-2.  The code has been compiled and tested 
on the following platforms:

 DECstation 5000 and Alpha
 HP PA-RISC (HP/UX 9.X) (i.e., HP 9000/7XX and 9000/3XX)
 SGI Indigo running IRIX 5.0.1
 Sun Sparc (SunOS 4.X)

In addition, Rainer Menes from the Technical University of Munich has
ported the encoder and decoder to the Macintosh.  You can get that code
directly from him (menes@statistik.tu-muenchen.de), or from the 
Berkeley FTP archive (mm-ftp.CS.Berkeley.EDU).  If you decide to port 
the code to a new architecture, please let us know so that we can 
incorporate the changes into our sources.

This directory contains everything required to build the encoder
and run it.  We have included source code, makefiles, binaries
for selected platforms, documentation, and test data.  Installation 
instructions are given in the file named src/mpeg_encode/INSTALL.  A man 
page is given in the file doc/mpeg_encode.1.  A detailed user 
manual is provided in postscript format in the file doc/user-manual.ps.

The encoder will accept any input file format as long as you provide 
a script to convert the images to PPM, YUV, JPEG, or JMOVIE format.  Input 
file processing is described in the file doc/INPUT.FORMAT.  Options to 
control input file processing and compression parameters are specified in 
a parameter file.  Very little error processing is done when reading 
this file.  We suggest you start with the sample parameter file 
examples/template.param and modify it.  See also examples/default.param.

The convert directory of Mpeg-Tools contains utilities you might find 
useful including: 

programs to do PPM/YUV conversion and programs to convert Parallax
XVideo JPEG files into PPM, YUV, or JPEG frames.

The motion vector search window can be specified, including half-pixel
block matching, in the parameter file.  We have implemented several 
search algorithms for P-frames including: 1) exhaustive search, 
2) subsampled search, and 3) logarithmic search.  We have also implemented
several alternatives for B-frame block matching including: 1) interpolate
best forward and best backward block, 2) find backward block for best
forward or vice-versa (called CROSS2), and 3) exhaustive cross product
(i.e., go out for coffee and a donut!). The search algorithms are controlled
by options in the parameters file.  For tips on choosing the right search
technique, see the user manual.

The encoder can be run on one computer (i.e., sequential) or on several
computers (i.e., parallel).  Our goal is to produce a portable, easy-to-use
encoder that we can use to encode large volumes of video material for
the Berkeley VOD system (see paper VodsProp93.ps.Z on the FTP archive).
The parallelism is done on a sequence of pictures.  In other words, you 
can spawn one or more children to encode continuous runs pictures. The 
uncompressed data can be accessed either through NFS or TCP sockets.  
The goal is to allow you to encode using multiple processors, think 
spare cycles on workstations, to speed up the encoding time.  Although
performance depends on the speed of individual processors, the file system
and network, and the P/B frame search methods, we have encoded 3.75
frames/second on 8 HP Snakes running in parallel as compared with 0.6
frames/second on 1 Snake.  These are preliminary results. We are continuing 
to experiment with and tune the code.  Instructions to run the parallel system 
are given in the man page and the parallel.param example parameter file.

We have done some tuning to produce a reasonable encoder, but there are
many more optimizations that we would like to incorporate.  These 
extensions are listed in the file doc/EXTENSIONS.  If you succeed in 
implementing any of them, please let us know! 

Send bug reports to:

mpeg-bugs@CS.Berkeley.EDU
   Problems, questions, or patches should be sent to this address.

Anyone interested in providing financial support for this research or 
discussing other aspects of this project should contact Larry Rowe at 
Rowe@CS.Berkeley.EDU (+1 510-642-5117).

This software is freely distributed.  That means, you may use it for 
any non-commercial purpose.  However, patents are held by several companies 
on various aspects of the MPEG video standard.  Companies or individuals
who want to develop commercial products that include this code must
acquire licenses from these companies.  For information on licensing, see
Appendix F in the standard.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

We gratefully thank Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu who provided financial
support for this work.  We also want to thank the following people and
organizations for their help:

    Jef Poskanzer who developed the pbmplus package.
    ---------
    Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 by Jef Poskanzer.

    Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
    documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided
    that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
    copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
    documentation.  This software is provided "as is" without express or
    implied warranty.
    ---------

    Eiichi Kowashi of Intel and Avideh Zakhor of U.C. Berkeley who
    provided valuable suggestions on motion vector searching.

    Chad Fogg of the University of Washington who has helped us 
    understand many issues in MPEG coding and decoding.

    Rainer Menes of the Technical University of Munich who has ported the
    the Berkeley MPEG encoder and decoder to the Macintosh, and he has 
    provided us with many suggestions to improve the code.

    Robert Safranek of ATT for comments, suggestions, and most of the
    code for custom quantization tables.

    Jim Boucher of Boston University for jmovie2jpeg.

    The San Diego SuperComputing Center for providing facilities to 
    develop some of the code contained within.


This is the TODO file from the original Berkeley package:


TODO list for next release
--------------------------

Add option to do searches in Cr/Cb as well as Lum blocks
jpeg5! (below)
last-frame must be P/I error, and pattern interact badly
add gnuconfigure so the Makefile is cake
YUV correct (cf mail below)
fix the "ifdef BUGGY_CODE" code in bframe.c
Change sizing stuff so it works with non multiples of 16
Does "RESIZE WxH" work?  Seems to for PPm but not JPG.  Fix it.  Document it
mpeg_encode in parallel generates a "zero size warning"  It should 
    exit(1) here, when not in parallel, and not warn when in parallel.
     sometimes it generates a 0x0 MPEG!
Give time estimates for parallel encoding
Verify YUV file sizes with stat() call (when not STDIN)

--------------------

YUV mail:
Please have a look on these few lines extracted from the ISO
mpeg2encode/readpic.c/read_ppm() available on 
ftp.netcom.com:/pub/cf/cfogg/mpeg2 :

    .........

     /* convert to YUV */

     y = cr*r +cg*g +cb*b;
     u = cu*(b-y);
     v = cv*(r-y);
     yp[j] = (219.0/256.0)*y + 16.5;  /* nominal range : 16..235 */
     up[j] = (224.0/256.0)*u + 128.5; /* nominal range : 16..240 */
     vp[j] = (224.0/256.0)*v + 128.5; /* nominal range : 16..240 */
    ...........

I think there is a slight misunderstanding in the Berkeley's mpeg1 codec about
what the YUV format looks like, exactly about how to translate from PPM to YUV 
and vice versa : the dynamic of YUV format has to be reduced as described
above. Otherwise, on a full color display a Berkeley's MPEG bitstream has not 
exactly the right colors if played by an ISO compliant player.

Best regards


                            Thierry GODIN

--------------------
And just for fun, kevin's list:
To-do list	(in no particular order)
----------
	- should delete decoded frame files when done with them
		(need to make sure no one else needs it)
	- port to CM5
	- try on Snake cluster, and other clusters (FDDI -- 100Mb/s)
	- fix bug on snakes (look at header file for queue length)
	- look at 24-bit display
	- try having I/O server getting things in order, and asking Master
		where to send them
	- bug:  closing connections at end (on DEC 5000)
	- GOP on space in input list
	- pnm convolve
	- telescopic search
	- include system layer
	- update documentation
	- show error images
	- graphical interface (showing motion vectors, etc.)
	- use DCT-space when computing error terms
	- vary the q-scale according to the error term
	- modify the program to have a finer-grained parallelism option -- we
	  can probably encode slices in parallel (this will only be useful if
	  we want to do a few B-frames using exhaustive search)
	- make search technique stop at x.5, not x.0
	- pel aspect ratio in parameter file (2.4.3.2)
	- skipped blocks options?
	- recover from parallel machine errors?
	- subsample B-search
	- bug:  decoded with 1 machine can freeze
	- malloc bug:  hello.param, with DECODED frames only
	- portability:
		times() function
		popen/pclose

Oh yes, I liked the concept of a spiral for your full search algorithm,
however I thought this code a little difficult to read.  What about
using a look up table (pre generated at compile time) to generate
the coord offsets that would then spiral around the location in question?

	+ change MAXPATHLEN to something else
	+ put ./ in test in Makefile

Currently, the IPPBPBB sequence is fixed for the entire sequence.  A later
version should probably either test for scene changes or allow the user to
specify them.

	+ check all << and >> to make sure they are used properly
		(note truncation of >>)
	+ allow variable bit rate
	+ allow size of video sequences to be set
	+ make REMOTE usage more clear
	+ fix bug:  when I-frame only, and decoded, does a lot of extra work
	+ replace ZAG[i] with a pointer? (in quantization)
		(and speed up by using 31 times the space (one for each
		 q-value)
	+ add interrupt handler to parallel encoder
	+ should pad black instead of truncating
	- graph histogram of motion vectors
	- allow new PATTERN statements inside of file listing
	- put in run-time checks for size of int32, int16, etc.
	- replace pnm crap with ppm.dwallach
	- add option to allow different p-search in b-search
	- allow -frames option along with parallel option (shouldn't be
		too difficult)
	- incorrect compression rates given if do -frames option

	- enforce:  >Hmmm...I will have to look at the standard.  I did find something earlier --
>"forced updating" makes it illegal to have more than 132 P-frames without an
>I-frame.  But "forced updating" does not disallow any number of consecutive
>B-frames.  I'll have to check on limits for GOP lengths...

	- rectangular search windows

	- make parallel stats to 4 digits

One of my friend just fixed the problem.....she 
retype the whole parameter file and it is working
now.  I think the problem was there were some 
spacing problem......for example, if there
are some space is the line, when the 
program read in....it just mess everything up.

It really become a problem if there is space after the image name...
or even after the path name.

	Subject: may not want to >> 4	in postdct.c

------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. In the future versions (is one already been released), you could add
option for encoder to remove picture after encoding it & therefore saving
space on disk + option to sleep while picture it's waiting for is not done.
I've hacked this: (in readframe.c)

        while ((tempfile = fopen(fullFileName, "r")) == NULL) {
            fprintf(stderr, "Cannot open '%s', retrying...\n", fullFileName);
            sleep(120);
        }

        fclose(tempfile);

arijan@kette.fer.uni-lj.si