Video Compression

http://www.vcodex.com/h264.html
 
Code for generating P-frame: 
http://www.codeforge.com/read/114760/pframe.c__html

Smallest encoder code:
http://www.cardinalpeak.com/blog/?p=488
http://www.cardinalpeak.com/blog/?p=878

CAVLC is supported in all H.264 profiles, unlike CABAC which is not supported in Baseline and Extended profiles.

Multi-pass encoding and single-pass encoding: VBR is created using the so-called single-pass encoding or multi-pass encoding. In the first pass of two-pass encoding, the input data are being analyzed and the result is stored in a log file. In the second pass, the collected data from the first pass are used to achieve the best encoding quality. In a video encoding, two-pass encoding is usually controlled by the average bitrate setting or by the bitrate range setting (minimal and maximal allowed bitrate) or by the target video file size setting.

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Extracting_MPEG-4_Elementary_Stream_from_MP4_Container 

To extract the h264 stream:

$ mplayer file.mkv -dumpvideo

$ ffmpeg -i file.mkv -vcodec copy out.h264

$ ffmpeg -i file.mp4 -vcodec copy -vbsf h264_mp4toannexb out.h264

To play yuv under linux:
http://gettinginsidelinux.blogspot.in/2009/05/play-yuv-files-under-linux.html 


Sample Files:
http://download.openbricks.org/sample/
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/
http://samples.ffmpeg.org/Divx4-bugs/