Daala Blog-Like Update: Bug or feature? [or, the law of Unintentionally Intentional Behaviors]

Codec development is often an exercise in tracking down examples of "that's funny... why is it doing that?" The usual hope is that unexpected behaviors spring from a simple bug, and finding bugs is like finding free performance. Fix the bug, and things usually work better.

Often, though, hunting down the 'bug' is a frustrating exercise in finding that the code is not misbehaving at all; it's functioning exactly as designed. Then the question becomes a thornier issue of determining if the design is broken, and if so, how to fix it. If it's fixable. And the fix is worth it.

[continue reading at Xiph.Org....]

NetVC BoF and a roundup of things IETF

In case folks hadn't heard the good news from IETF92 in Dallas, hums from the NetVC BoF indicated consensus for forming a NetVC working group. It's now up to the IESG to formally approve or nack formation. Should the working group be formally approved, we'll obviously submit Daala as one of the inputs to the development and standardization process.

• Article at Tom's Hardware
• Article at Heise Online (and an English translation via Google translate)

The articles above are a good summary if a bit overly Daala-centric. It's unlikely that the final codec will be 'Daala', much as the IETF work on Opus drew from our codec CELT, but also drew from other contributors, most notably the SILK codec from Skype. We hope and expect to see substantial input from other participants (such as Cisco and Google).

As a parting mention, any IETF followers or insiders who haven't yet seen ietfmemes are missing their recommended daily allowance of realtime insider process backchannel snark :-)