Weekly Glossary updates: 29 February 2008

Rich Fiscus
29 Feb 2008 14:37

It's time again for my weekly Glossary updates. This week's highlights include some things you may already have on your computer, such as libavcodec and MPEG-4 encoders. If you're not already familiar with libavcodec I recommend starting there. It has become one of the cornerstones of software media players, and has even become a viable option for encoding video.
In an attempt to make it easier to keep Track of the various industry and special interest groups that seem to be in the news all the time I'm also adding entries for many of them to the Glossary. This week's entry, the White Spaces Coalition, is trying to develop WAN (Wide Area Network) technology that uses DTV frequencies. They're promising the capability for 80Gbps

Broadcasters are opposed to the new technology, citing concerns about interference with TV broadcasts. While this is certainly something that must be taken into account, you have to wonder if their real worry isn't the potential to deliver high quality video using white space networking.

• libavcodec - ibavcodec is a code library developed as part of the FFmpeg project. Many free and open source media players and encoders use it to support various audio and video formats.... (Read More)


• MPEG-4 ASP - MPEG-4 ASP, or Active Simple Profile, is a video Compression standard defined in MPEG-4 Part 2. The most common implementations of MPEG-4 ASP are probably DivX and XviD.... (Read More)


• White Spaces Coalition - The White Spaces Coalition is a group of companies working together to win FCC approval for use in the United States of devices that use the frequencies in between DTV broadcasts, the so-called "white spaces" where no Channel is being broadcast, for wireless communication.... (Read More)

Feedback on our Glossary, or any other content, is always welcome. You can leave comments that will be displayed below each term's definition. If you'd like to suggest Glossary terms you can use our submission form.