Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

The goal of this list is to list the potential encoders and decoders that are available to use, and review what the potential licensing and/or patent issues there might be with each of them. We will be focusing only on codecs that may be suitable for review. The hope is to identify what could be included in precompiled applications without requiring any licensing costs, or side effects (like GPL).

...

SourceCodecsEncoderDecoderDescriptionLicense
https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdkh264/h265 (See patent licenses)xxHardwareDesignWorks_SDKs_Samples_Tools_License_distrib_use_rights_2017_06_13.pdf
x264, the best H.264/AVC encoder - VideoLANh264 (See patent licenses)xxsoftwareGPL - 
x265, the free H.265/HEVC encoder - VideoLANh265 (See patent licenses)xxsoftwareGPL - 

AV1xxHardware (more limited hardware support, see Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix | NVIDIA Developer )

nvJPEG2000 Documentation — nvJPEG2000 0.6.0 documentation (nvidia.com)



jpeg-2000
xHardware - see Accelerating JPEG 2000 Decoding for Digital Pathology and Satellite Images Using the nvJPEG2000 Library | NVIDIA Technical Blog - see also Karleener/FreeDcpPlayer: Free Dcp Player Nvidia GPU based for independent filmmakers (github.com)Software License Agreement — nvJPEG2000 0.6.0 documentation (nvidia.com)
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/videotoolboxh264/h265/Prores  (See patent licenses)xxHardware support Mac only?
AV1AV1xxSoftware
xiph/rav1e: The fastest and safest AV1 encoder. (github.com)AV1x
rust based encoderBSD
https://github.com/videolan/dav1dAV1
xSoftware
Intel® Media SDKh264, h265, VP9, VC-1, MVC, and Motion JPEG (MJPEG)xxhardware windows and linux libraries.End User License Agreements (intel.com) - note this still may not cover the licensing.

AV1 - on ARC series GPU
x

ffmpeg DNxHD encoder/decoderDNxHD DNxHRxxThis seems to be the only open-source library for DNxHD.lgpl - FFmpeg/dnxhdenc.c at master · FFmpeg/FFmpeg (github.com)  - this was developed as part of ffmpeg, with sponsorship by BBC Research. See also: ⚓ T91 Help evaluate/understand Avid DNxHD codec situation (apertus.org)


Patent Licenses


Audio Codecs

TODO - 


Other External Libraries