x264 and MVC encoding

[kabelbrand]

Once in a while this question is asked and today I'll do it: Are there any news about a MVC implemenation in x264?
The GSoC 2011 project seems discontinued mid way and Fixstars' patch was never mentioned again.

It might be a niche but it would be great to have an alternative encoder for 3D Blu-ray. The video quality on recent discs is quite underwhelming and if the main/left view is used for 2D output as well it gets even worse.

I'm no specialist but wouldn't it be a start by having two separate encodes (same settings/structure) and adding the appropriate SEI messages only without the need for features like inter view prediction? Or is that mandatory?

Thank you.

[JEEB]

It just means that to license x264 in a non-GPL way for MVC, or those certain other things, costs extra :P All changes done to the actual libx264 library in case of non-GPL licensing have to be released to the main developers, and they then generally end up in a pastebin somewhere (or merged if deemed useful and possible to merge without breaking anything). So definitely not some "secret patch" or a way not to have changes be public.

And no, I don't think anything went forward with either the GSoC or the Fixstars patch, at least the latter was pretty messy but I guess it got used in their product for the short while it was available. Pegasys then bought up Fixstars' encoding side of things and now is the side giving support for that given product.

[kabelbrand]

Thanks for your remarks.

Originally Posted by kabelbrand

two separate encodes (same settings/structure) and adding the appropriate SEI messages only without the need for features like inter view prediction? Or is that mandatory?

Any comments on this statement?