Daala Quickstart

This is a guide to getting a copy of the latest code and encoding a video.

There is also a Daala Quickstart Windows page.

Installation

Obtaining dependencies

Linux

You'll need:

Standard build tools (autoconf, automake v1.11 or later, libtool, pkg-config, and a C compiler)
git
libogg (v1.3 or later)
libpng
libjpeg
libcheck (v0.9.8 or later, can be skipped if you pass --disable-unit-tests to ./configure)
libsdl (1.2, not 2!) (can by skipped if you pass --disable-player to ./configure)

Do not use linuxbrew.

Instructions for installing these packages are OS-specific (feel free to contribute some here, especially if you tried installing these somewhere and ran into difficulties; you will likely save other people some pain). If you have a package manager that has separate -dev versions with the public headers, make sure you install those in addition to the actual libraries.

Mac OS X

Install Apple's command line developer tools. E.g. install Xcode from the App Store and select 'Command Line Tools' from the Preferences::Downloads panel, or download and install the pkg directly from developer.apple.com.

Install Homebrew

Run the following command to install dependencies:

 brew install autoconf automake libtool libogg libpng libjpeg check sdl

Installation Procedure

Just run these commands:

   git clone https://git.xiph.org/daala.git
   cd daala
   ./autogen.sh
   ./configure
   make

Note that the git clone can take several minutes to complete.

And optionally

   make tools

Make sure you run the git clone operation on the same machine where you intend to use the code. Checking out a copy on Windows and then trying to use it on Linux will not work, as executable permissions and line-endings will not be set properly.

Encoding a Video

Test Media

Get a sample video or two in .y4m format from media.xiph.org.
These videos are relatively large and will take a long time to encode.

There are subsets of 1-second-long videos for faster encoding:

Xiph also maintains a set of still-image collections in .y4m format:

Subset 1 (50 images, small training set)
Subset 2 (50 images, small testing set)
Subset 3 (1000 images, large training set)
Subset 4 (1000 images, large testing set)

Using the encoder

Encode the video:

   ./examples/encoder_example -v 30 video.y4m -o video.ogv

where

-v ??? specifies the amount of compression (currently from 0 to 511, where 0 is lossless, 511 is very lossy)
video.y4m is the input video you want to encode
-o video.ogv is the name of the encoded video file to output.

Use encoder_example.exe -h for the in-built help.

Decoding/Playing a Video

Play the video in a window:

   ./examples/player_example video.ogv

For information on the controls available while playing, run

   ./examples/player_example --help

If you want to use a different player, you can decode the video back to .y4m with

   ./examples/dump_video video.ogv -o decoded_video.y4m

Or you can pipe the raw video stream directly to the player of your choice:

   ./examples/dump_video video.ogv | mpv -

Many other players can play back these .y4m files, and other tools can convert them to various other formats.

The Stream Analyzer

There is also a bitstream analyzer. To run it:

   ./examples/analyzer video.ogv

where video.ogv is the file you want to open. If you omit it, you can open it via the analyzer's GUI.

Using PNG Images

To encode a series of images:

   make tools
   ./tools/png2y4m video%05d.png -o video.y4m

where %05d means your input images are named video00000.png, video00001.png, etc. You can leave out the %05d tag if you only want to convert a single image (which does not need to be numbered).

To convert a y4m back to PNGs:

   ./tools/y4m2png video.y4m -o video%05d.png

If you are converting a .y4m file that only contains a single frame (e.g., from one of the still-image subsets linked above), you can leave out the %05d tag. Conversion from PNG to Y4M uses the Rec 709 matrix with video levels, a box filter for chroma subsampling, and a triangular dither. Conversion back from Y4M to PNG uses the same matrix, levels, and box filter, but does not dither.

Creating y4m from other formats

You can use the ffmpeg tool to generate y4m from any of it supported video formats:

   ffmpeg -i video.webm -pix_fmt yuv420p video.y4m

Note that ffmpeg is optimized for speed. You may not get repeatable results across machines.