Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distribution of video content, used by 91% of video industry developers as of September 2019. It supports a maximum resolution of 8K UHD.
x264 is a free and open-source software library and a command-line utility developed by VideoLAN for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
GPAC Project on Advanced Content is an implementation of the MPEG-4 Systems standard written in ANSI C. GPAC provides tools for media playback, vector graphics and 3D rendering, MPEG-4 authoring and distribution.
HTTP Live Streaming is an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple Inc. and released in 2009. Support for the protocol is widespread in media players, web browsers, mobile devices, and streaming media servers. As of 2019, an annual video industry survey has consistently found it to be the most popular streaming format.
Adaptive bitrate streaming is a technique used in streaming multimedia over computer networks. While in the past most video or audio streaming technologies utilized streaming protocols such as RTP with RTSP, today's adaptive streaming technologies are based almost exclusively on HTTP, and are designed to work efficiently over large distributed HTTP networks. Adaptive bitrate streaming works by detecting a user's bandwidth and CPU capacity in real time, adjusting the quality of the media stream accordingly. It requires the use of an encoder which encodes a single source media at multiple bit rates. The player client switches between streaming the different encodings depending on available resources. "The result: very little buffering, fast start time and a good experience for both high-end and low-end connections."
Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), also known as MPEG-DASH, is an adaptive bitrate streaming technique that enables high quality streaming of media content over the Internet delivered from conventional HTTP web servers. Similar to Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) solution, MPEG-DASH works by breaking the content into a sequence of small segments, which are served over HTTP. An early HTTP web server based streaming system called SProxy was developed and deployed in the Hewlett Packard Laboratories in 2006. It showed how to use HTTP range requests to break the content into small segments. SProxy shows the effectiveness of segment based streaming, gaining best Internet penetration due to the wide deployment of firewalls, and reducing the unnecessary traffic transmission if a user chooses to terminate the streaming session earlier before reaching the end. Each segment contains a short interval of playback time of content that is potentially many hours in duration, such as a movie or the live broadcast of a sport event. The content is made available at a variety of different bit rates, i.e., alternative segments encoded at different bit rates covering aligned short intervals of playback time. While the content is being played back by an MPEG-DASH client, the client uses a bit rate adaptation (ABR) algorithm to automatically select the segment with the highest bit rate possible that can be downloaded in time for playback without causing stalls or re-buffering events in the playback. The current MPEG-DASH reference client dash.js offers both buffer-based (BOLA) and hybrid (DYNAMIC) bit rate adaptation algorithms. Thus, an MPEG-DASH client can seamlessly adapt to changing network conditions and provide high quality playback with few stalls or re-buffering events.
VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google.
OpenH264 is a free software library for real-time encoding and decoding video streams in the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. It is released under the terms of the Simplified BSD License.
VisualOn is a Silicon Valley–based multimedia software company that provides high-definition audio and video entertainment to smartphones, tablets, laptops, connected TVs and other mobile and convergent devices. VisualOn's patented technology is modular and platform-agnostic. VisualOn supports streaming, VOD, mobile TV and other multimedia applications.
Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) is a W3C specification for providing a communication channel between web browsers and the Content Decryption Module (CDM) software which implements digital rights management (DRM). This allows the use of HTML5 video to play back DRM-wrapped content such as streaming video services without the use of heavy third-party media plugins like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. The use of a third-party key management system may be required, depending on whether the publisher chooses to scramble the keys.
Media Source Extensions (MSE) is a W3C specification that allows JavaScript to send byte streams to media codecs within Web browsers that support HTML5 video and audio. Among other possible uses, this allows the implementation of client-side prefetching and buffering code for streaming media entirely in JavaScript. It is compatible with, but should not be confused with, the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) specification, and neither requires the use of the other, although many EME implementations are only capable of decrypting media data provided via MSE.
Fraunhofer FDK AAC is an open-source library for encoding and decoding digital audio in the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format. Fraunhofer IIS, developed this library for Android 4.1. It supports several Audio Object Types including MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC LC, HE-AAC, HE-AACv2 as well AAC-LD and AAC-ELD for real-time communication. The encoding library supports sample rates up to 96 kHz and up to eight channels.
Envivio was a software-based video processing and delivery company. It was founded in 2000 in San Francisco by Julien Signes, the president and CEO. In 2015, the company was acquired by Ericsson. In 2019, Ericsson sold its television business unit to One Equity Partners, the resulting company is named MediaKind.
Bitmovin is a multimedia technology company which provides services that transcode digital video and audio to streaming formats using cloud computing, and streaming media players. Founded in 2013, the Austrian company contributes to MPEG-DASH, an open standard that allows streaming video to be played in HTML5 video and Flash players.
The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) is a non-profit industry consortium that develops open, royalty-free technology for multimedia delivery headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts. It uses the ideas and principles of open web standard development to create video standards that can serve as royalty-free alternatives to the hitherto dominant standards of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and its related business model of exploiting intellectual property through patent royalties associated with patent and licensing complications and fees.
JW Player is a New York based company that has developed a video player software of the same name. The player, for embedding videos onto web pages, is used by news, video hosting companies, and for self-hosted web videos. The company has also created the video management software "JW Platform", formerly known as "Bits On The Run".
AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 that includes semiconductor firms, video on demand providers, video content producers, software development companies and web browser vendors. The AV1 bitstream specification includes a reference video codec. In 2018, Facebook conducted testing that approximated real-world conditions, and the AV1 reference encoder achieved 34%, 46.2% and 50.3% higher data compression than libvpx-vp9, x264 High profile, and x264 Main profile respectively.
Versatile Video Coding (VVC), also known as H.266, ISO/IEC 23090-3, and MPEG-I Part 3, is a video compression standard finalized on 6 July 2020, by the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET), a joint video expert team of the VCEG working group of ITU-T Study Group 16 and the MPEG working group of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29. It is the successor to High Efficiency Video Coding. It was developed with two primary goals – improved compression performance and support for a very broad range of applications.
MPEG-5 Essential Video Coding (EVC) is a current video compression standard that has been completed in April 2020 by decision of MPEG Working Group 11 at its 130th meeting.
