Thank you very much again!
The "final" goals ive setup for the future is to get enough experience to write some encoders for formats like MP3, MPEG2-video, JPEG (incl MJPEG) and maybe also file compression (zip/rar). i'll start out with the format that i'll consider easiest, and most well-documented.

...i have an old 10mhz Intel 8088 with 768KB ram and a superslow 30MB HDD, in the basement - that could handle playback of videos in resolution 160x100 / 8-bit color (no sound), with a nice framerate and almost no compression artefacts - on a regular vga card with no acceleration...
thats why i think the current encoders/decoders for the "newly" developed OMAP3430 (430mhz DSP) cant be properly optimised.
i will study all those different video formats and choose the one that puts as little strain on the DSP as possible.
Phone manufacturers seem to consider small filesizes, over output quality.
Many regular digital camera manufacturers instead seem to consider output quality first, and use older formats like MJPEG (i think) which make bigger output files but less compression artefacts.
if i can get 800x600 (or even 1024x768) video encoded from the n900 camera on the fly in a HQ format like MJPEG i will be very satisfied with that.
hopefully the system bus/storage will be able to cope with outputing video in ~1-2 MB/s(+all other memory transfers for encoding).

this is the major reason im studying low-level programming - but like you said: maybe its a better idea to first make the encoder in C, and while doing that, i can decide which algorithms will need asm optimization ...if i write portable C code i will also try it out on the CortexA8 to compare execution speed

PS. sorry if this reply look like a mess. ive been studying asm 10 hours straight (the whole night) and can barely write proper english now...

i will probably make the next post in this thread when i get a "hello world" app working (like a calculator / Pi engine) in C on the DSP.
If i encounter problems worthy of a gods attention, i'll get in touch. thanks again