A hands-on introduction to video technology: image, video, codec and more
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderVideo compression is not understood well enough throughout the whole stack yet. I recently got a 1080p projector for home use, so now movies / TV series in my home are viewed on a 100" screen. Content is mostly from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Netflix does a really good job with encoding. I cannot say the same for Amazon Prime Video; even with their exclusive (in UK) offerings, like American Gods or Mr Robot, the quality of the encode…
If you're interested in more "hands on" or practical video codec learning, I recommend writing a H.261 decoder. Only two supported frame sizes, no B-frames, and no intra prediction (effectively a subset of JPEG) make for a simple yet possibly quite rewarding weekend project that can be completed in around 700 lines of C (my attempt). Unfortunately not much existing media is available in 261, but I think watching a video being decoded entirely by code you wrote is a…
A+
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 1299
- Total comments
- 126
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-03-22 | A hands-on introduction to digital video technology | dreampeppers99 | 26 | 4 |
| 2017-06-03 | A hands-on introduction to video technology: image, video, codec and moreFirst breakout · Best thread | manorwar8 | 694 | 74 |
| 2018-12-28 | A hands-on introduction to video technology: image, video, codec and more | febin | 5 | 0 |
| 2019-09-21 | Explore an H264 Video File in Binary Level | dreampeppers99 | 2 | 0 |
| 2019-11-21 | How does a video codec work?Hall induction · Latest 20+ point return | dreampeppers99 | 561 | 48 |
| 2019-11-24 | A hands-on introduction to video technology: image, video, codec and ffmpeg | selvan | 3 | 0 |
| 2020-06-29 | Introduction to Digital Video Through Visual Simple Explanation | manorwar8 | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-08-26 | Digital Video Introduction | asgeir | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-07-21 | A Hands-On Introduction to Video Codec Technology and FFmpeg | dreampeppers99 | 5 | 0 |