CCExtractor

What should my proposal look like?
This reply is more or less specific to CCExtractor. I'll update this page as I get more questions from interested students.
Obviously, look at the ideas page for a starting point. Your proposal should take a few of those ideas and detail a plan to implement them. The plan should be specific, because it shows that you've given it some thought.

Can I use _this_ or _that_ to implement...?
CCExtractor is intended to be portable and stand-alone. Basically this means no dependencies, except for ffmpeg if you jump on the ffmpeg cross-project task. Of course this doesn't mean you cannot use anything from other projects. I means that whatever you take must be added to CCExtractor's source code. We already do this with a number of things, such as libpng.
You cannot use Java, by the way. Don't take me wrong, it's a great language and all, but CCExtractor is written in C, and we don't want to add such a big dependency.

What tasks in the ideas page are the more important?
We've seen that many students are focusing on the tasks that don't require to get their hands dirty with the existing code. For example, most of you want to start with the Linux and/or OSX GUI. While we want those to happen, they are the less impressive things you can add to your proposal. After all, each of those GUIs would take at most a week, and GSOC lasts 3 months :-)

I'd rather not spend too much time in the actual closed captioning stuff, what else can I do?
Well, there's a few tasks that require more generic skills. For example, being able to process more than one stream at a time requires some knowledge on multithreading, multiprocess or both. Some networking too.
The real time uploading and the global repository will need some networking, even some state-of-the-art web programming (since we want to display data in a website as it happens).

I don't have any experience with Open Source projects, do I still qualify?
Yes, we are not disqualifying anyone based on experience, since GSOC is about students. But if you don't have any experience you have to make up for it by making a proposal that really stands out, and you need to ace the interviews.

Wait, interviews?
Yes. We are not going to give our very few slots (we'll have just 1 or 2) to anyone based on a proposal alone. We want to talk to you and discuss things over.

How can I talk with ccextractor's mentors?
You can find us at #ccextractor in freenode (IRC). At least Carlos will be connected (CFS-MP3), even if often just idling. But you can ask questions there and we will reply when we are around.
You can also email (see contacts page) or use Google hang-outs.

Wow, I looked at the code and you guys really need to clean up.
We know. So what's your plan to help? :-)

Is there something I can do, besides the interviews, to show that I know what I'm doing?
OK - this is pretty much a winner. We have a bug in the sorting algorithm that causes one specific video sample to output garbled results. However, it plays fine in VLC so we are assuming the problem is in CCExtractor and not in the stream.
If you are able to send us a patch we will be quite impressed.

You can download the sample stream here.

Note: If you cannot fix that don't get discouraged. This is really non trivial.

Can we meet in person?
If you are in Spain, or willing to come to Spain, then you can meet most of us.
If you are in the US West coast at any time before the end of May then you can meet David. Or if you are in the US West Coast in June you can meet Carlos and Andreu, who will be there for Google's developer conference (Google I/O).

I plan to do other things over the summer, is that OK?
Depends. GSOC should be your primary activity, since after all, you are being paid to code. You should at least be able to put 30 hours or so on any given week. If you also have other projects on the side that's fine, but GSOC should have priority - don't plan to do your GSOC work when other stuff allows, that's probably not going to work.

Do I have to work on a specific schedule?
No. Of course the mentors will want to talk to you every day (and be available to you every day) so we will have to find 1-2 hours every day that work OK for everyone and in which we can discuss things. Other than that, it's up to you to organize your own schedule as long as there's progress.

Can I contact mentors in anything other than English?
Yes, you can use Spanish too, but be aware that documentation (and of course, code comments) must be in English.
Are there any guides I can use on GSOC?
Yes. Check this out:
The DOs and DON’Ts of Google Summer of Code: Student Edition