• Question: What would you like to acheive the most in your engineering carer?

    Asked by Hannah to Rik, Alex, Chris, Mohamed, Victoria on 8 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Rik Allen

      Rik Allen answered on 8 Mar 2015:


      Hi.
      My main interest is in video compression – making the computer files that store movies smaller while keeping the quality high. There are a couple of different approaches to doing this, and lots of variations on each of those, but I’d love to come up with the next big idea that changes the way people think about that problem.
      That’s getting harder all the time because so many people are looking at it. I was lucky to be involved in work on the most recent main “standard”, where a couple of hundred people sat in dark rooms for days on end every 10 weeks to discuss how it should all work, and I learnt a huge amount. However, most of the big details had been decided before I started. Next time it will be my idea we are all getting excited about,

      It’s not a grand answer, but it would top off the career I’ve been working through for quite a few years now.

      Thanks for the question. I had to think for a bit about it.

      Rik

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