[Mp4-tech] Starting with mpeg

[Simon]

Hi there,
  I've been following the list for a while and I'm still dazzled with
questions.  I've already started a project that displays movies on
screen and I'm having trouble with the compression ratio, quality and
others like this.  I've been practicing with a stream of images and
sound file, trying to synchronize them in a clever way.  But as the
project grows it becomes much more important to move on to a better
solution.
  Development is done under linux, main target platform is windows and
possibly macosx too.  I'm wondering if there are any requirements to
follow in order to have a compiled library to work with.  If there are
tutorials that start from the very basics, that would be great as
well.
  Also, on a legal note, I'm wondering if it would take a license to
use such library in an application.  And if so, since the project is
still under development and since there is not much budget for it now,
I was wondering if there were such things as developer licenses (free
to use for development with the library) where I could simply purchase
a full featured license the moment the project goes in bizness.
  Here, if you could reply to me with a couple starting pointers, that
would be awesome!
Thanks,
  Simon