opus - Aug 2010 - Just a question on how things are going

Hi Jean-Marc,

I was just wondering if maybe you would consider a "blog-like" text
file
in the codebase where you just jot down your thoughts about why you are 
making a change, and where you think you are headed. For example, I 
noticed today that you completely removed the pitch prediction code. It 
would be nice to know if you did that because you're moving away from 
using it as a speech codec, or you just found that the pitch predictor 
just wasn't making any difference. I realize that such a "blog"
might
elicit endless debate from the peanut gallery on every change you make, 
so I'll understand if you think it's a bad idea.

Also I was hoping you might give us a sense of how close you think you 
are to a 1.0 candidate. I don't want to put you on the spot, but for 
those of us that might be deploying a product with CELT soon, if we 
thought you were just cleaning up we might be willing to wait a little 
while so we could deploy with the frozen bitstream. If, on the other 
hand, you still have a bunch of ideas to try out, we'll work with what 
you have (kindly) given us so far. (I guess one clue is that you're 
quickly running out of 0.x version numbers :-)

Thanks for your consideration (and especially for the codec).

John Ridges

Hi John,

John Ridges <jridges at masque.com> a ?crit?:
> I was just wondering if maybe you would consider a "blog-like"
text file
> in the codebase where you just jot down your thoughts about why you are
> making a change, and where you think you are headed.
Actually, I was planning on commenting more on my LiveJournal blog:  
http://jmspeex.livejournal.com/
> For example, I
> noticed today that you completely removed the pitch prediction code. It
> would be nice to know if you did that because you're moving away from
> using it as a speech codec, or you just found that the pitch predictor
> just wasn't making any difference. I realize that such a
"blog" might
> elicit endless debate from the peanut gallery on every change you make,
> so I'll understand if you think it's a bad idea.
The reasons for the change are:
1) Pitch has always been useful only on a narrow range of bit-rates
2) It's responsible for a large increase in complexity
3) CELT is going to end up merged in the IETF interactive codec, which  
will also include SILK for voice.
> Also I was hoping you might give us a sense of how close you think you
> are to a 1.0 candidate. I don't want to put you on the spot, but for
> those of us that might be deploying a product with CELT soon, if we
> thought you were just cleaning up we might be willing to wait a little
> while so we could deploy with the frozen bitstream. If, on the other
> hand, you still have a bunch of ideas to try out, we'll work with what
> you have (kindly) given us so far. (I guess one clue is that you're
> quickly running out of 0.x version numbers :-)
As things are now, it's quite likely that CELT will eventually cease  
to exist as a stand-alone codec and instead be included in the IETF  
codec. That codec would basically get the best of SILK and CELT. We're  
progressing quickly on this, but I couldn't really tell you when it  
would be frozen (depends on the working group). On the CELT side, I'm  
working hard on pretty much freezing that part of the bit-stream, so  
there's light at the end of the tunnel. For that reason, I'd like to  
see it being tested a lot to make sure that the final bit-stream is  
good.

Cheers,

      Jean-Marc