That within a year you've become extremely proficient with a non-trivial, math-heavy video compression standard says a lot for your baseline intelligence. Congratulations for sticking at it, although I doubt most of us in the lower 95% could have done the same! :)
I'd say its more a matter of dedication and the sheer amount of time I've spent on it, plus the fact that I was able to skip a whole lot of it by basing my earlier insights off those of others rather than trying the (utterly hopeless) strategy of learning it all myself from the spec.
I'd also say the "math-heavy" is rather exaggerating it; the entire spec has not an ounce of math in it. All the numerical computations are written in pseudocode, not formulas; its basically written as if a computer was reading it instead of a human. Personally I have found this to be a rather terrible attribute, as it makes some of it nearly completely incomprehensible.
I also find this approach is often the kind of thing that leads people to assume they cannot do something; they think that only "really smart" people can possibly do some particular thing, and refuse to try as a result. Of course, it can also go the other way--because someone does something hard, they insist that they must be really smart, or else they couldn't have done it. This only reinforces the problem.
There also seems to be the rather misleading assumption that younger people are somehow less smart on average, and thus if a younger person does something hard, they must be even smarter than they would be assumed to be otherwise. I find this to be completely false; I don't think I've gotten one ounce better at math than I was in middle school, for example. People get more experienced, wiser and more knowledgeable, but I don't think they get much smarter.
Though, ironically, I don't actually think I am that smart; if grades are any indication, my last semester is clear proof that I'm not ;)
I also find this approach is often the kind of thing that
leads people to assume they cannot do something; they think
that only "really smart" people can possibly do some
particular thing, and refuse to try as a result. Of course,
it can also go the other way--because someone does
something hard, they insist that they must be really smart,
or else they couldn't have done it. This only reinforces
the problem.
To be fair though, this isn't exactly a problem - it's ensured you've gotten a whole lot of lucrative work because there's not a whole lot of competition ;-) There are, possibly, contrasting areas I feel able to tackle that would initially intimidate you (as video compression intimidates me) - that's what makes specialization such a great thing.
