Spaceweather.com always has the most interesting news. The site is run by Dr. Tony Phillips, a science writer for NASA and high school teacher in Bishop, California.
His students launch balloons to the edge of space to conduct research and to carry up trinkets that they sell to fund their missions. If you scroll down on the linked page, you'll see one of the silk roses they sent up on a recent mission.
Back then, it was used to develop algorithms for real-time MPEG-2 encoder silicon. It can also be used to look at strategies used by other encoders (for example, ffmpeg). MPEG-2 video is still being used today, so it's still relevant.
Here's another screenshot showing the options available with the tool. You can switch between the picture (shown), macroblock type, macroblock quantization, number of bits per macroblock, motion vectors (shown in the previous screenshot) and coded block pattern.
His students launch balloons to the edge of space to conduct research and to carry up trinkets that they sell to fund their missions. If you scroll down on the linked page, you'll see one of the silk roses they sent up on a recent mission.
More details in a discussion from last year:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372021