(This information is out of date and no one is maintaining this library
at the moment. Send pull requests.  --ryan.)

			SMJPEG 0.2

This is a sample implementation of the SMJPEG Motion JPEG encoding,
developed by Loki Entertainment Software, and released as open source
under the GNU Library General Public License.

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Why Motion JPEG instead of MPEG?

There are times when you'll want to use MPEG over MJPEG, but MJPEG is
a good alternative to MPEG for software decoding of full-motion video.
MJPEG is especially good in situations where you want arbitrary
frame-rates or video sizes, and quality is not as important a factor.

Advantages of SMJPEG:
* Arbitrary video sizes (not limited to blocks of 16 pixels)
* Arbitrary frame-rate
* User-tuneable compression level
* Much easier to skip a frame
* Much easier to keep timesync
* Easy to seek within the video stream
* Free of patent problems

Disadvantages of SMJPEG
* Not a standard format
* Poorer quality than MPEG at the same file size
* Slightly slower than MPEG at the same framerate
* Not designed for Internet streaming

The SMJPEG file format is documented in the file SMJPEG.txt

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The encoder and decoder can be built by typing 'make'
Currently many encoding parameters are hard-coded into smjpeg_encode.
See the source file for more information on configurable parameters.

The decoder makes use of the cross-platform multi-media library
Simple DirectMedia Layer, which is available under the LGPL at:
	http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/

Example usage:
1.  Place a raw 16-bit mono audio file called "audio.raw" in the current
    working directory.
2.  Create a directory named "input", and place the color JPEG frames of
    your animation in that subdirectory, each named frameN.jpg, where N
    is the index of that frame, starting at 0.
3.  Run "smjpeg_encode" to create the output motion jpeg file "output.mjpg"
    If you want to use a video rate other than the default one (15 fps)
    use the -r command line option.
4.  Run "smjpeg_decode output.mjpg" to play the output file.

I use a modified version of xanim which can export animations that it
plays as raw 16-bit audio and PPM or JPEG frames.  This modified version
of xanim can be downloaded from the Loki open source tools page at:
http://www.lokigames.com/

Enjoy!
Please send feedback to [email protected]

August 11, 1999
Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer, Loki Entertainment Software