In the rearview
A host of friendly faces – old and new. I’m in Seoul this week for Video Dev Days and some needed time off. The leaves are turning, the food is predictably remarkable, and the conversations could not be more different from those at Demuxed – swap CMCD, DRM, and CMAF HAM for AVX2, dav1d checkasm, and mailing list Shenanigans.
Figure 1: VDD ‘24 @ Kwangwoon University
One discussion in particular stuck with me: “how do we teach people assembly ’the VLC way’”. This topic boarders on the perennially popular discussion of “how do we teach video?” – one that I personally wrestle with on a weekly basis as someone trying to learn video comprehensively.
I would never claim to understand pedagogy more than your average tutor, but I did some reading on the subject while writing an essay on ‘Citizen Syallbi’ (work in progress). To give a new developer a series of goal-oriented tasks would, in my opinion, do them a disservice. People learn in all sort of ways – reading, teaching, doing, observing – and teaching with the specific target of “molding new VLC ASM developers” would fall, I think, into the trap bootcamps have for the last decade.
Maybe I’m wrong; time will tell. In any case, I’m all for starting somewhere as opposed to bikeshedding the conversation into oblivion. Written guides, recorded lectures, and study groups can all be added after-the-fact.
Figure 2: 94x speedup, or how to enrage X
Otherwise, I’m in Seoul so that’s pretty neat. The city is extremely public-transit friendly (as far as I can tell) and there’s never a shortage of things to see. My legs are exhausted from marching around palaces, temples, national parks, bars, and fish markets. But a good kind of tired, ya know?
Figure 3: Euljiro Brewing @ Myeongdong, Seoul
On a totally unrelated note, I found a street with nothing but camera shops. I couldn’t not poke my head in, and now I have a new-to-me Nikon FM2. It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve shot an analog camera, so pray that these scans come out semi-salvageable.
Figure 4: Nikon FM2 AM
Media Diet
Between flights and down moments to hotel, I’ve put a sizable dent in ReFantazio – Atlus has done it again. With the new film camera in-hand, I’ve had to remind myself how to actually take a half decent photo. graincheck, Adam Missed Focus, and Cody Mitchell have been tremendously effective at getting me excited to go shoot.
I don’t have a book lined up at the moment. I’ll be picking my way through “the h264 book” soon which may or may not qualify as reading depending on your definition.
Looking forward
I’m excited for some stability but I’m not sure how much can be found in the fragmented weeks between now and the near year. I want to try my hand at squashing some VLC issues and maybe implementing CENC in FFmpeg. Onward and upward…
⏭️