List of open-source codecs
This is a listing of open-source codecs—that is, open-source software implementations of audio [coding format|audio] or video coding formats, audio codecs and video codecs respectively. Many of the codecs listed implement media formats that are restricted by patents and are hence not open formats. For example, x264 is a widely used open source implementation of the heavily patent encumbered MPEG-4 AVC video compression standard.
Video codecs
- x264 and x265 – H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and High Efficiency Video Coding implementation. x264 or x265 is not any codec ; it is just an encoder.
- OpenH264 – H.264 baseline profile encoding and decoding
- OpenVVC an VVC /H.266 Real Time-Decoder for Mac OS, Windows, Linux and Android and special Version of FFmpeg, which was used for Ateme Satellite Broadcast Test.
- Xvid – MPEG-4 Part 2 codec, compatible with DivX
- libvpx – VP8 and VP9 implementation; formerly a proprietary codec developed by On2 Technologies, released by Google under a BSD-like license in May 2010.
- SVT-AV1 – An AV1 encoder originally developed by Intel and Netflix, which is available as FOSS now. SVT-AV1 is generally considered to be the most optimized and fastest free AV1 encoder, which is why it serves as the base for the development of new, free, general-purpose and production-ready implementations in the AOMedia Software Implementation Working Group. While SVT-AV1 already performs very well in constrained quality mode and is economically usable for many scenarios, as of the time being commercial implementations like Aurora1 may still beat it.
- VideoLAN dav1d – An AV1 decoder for decoding videos with AV1 codec
- Xiph.Org rav1e – An AV1 encoder written in Rust
- Google libgav1 – An AV1 decoder by Google
- xvc – An open source video codec, aiming to compete with h.265 and AV1. The reference implementation is released under the LGPL 2.1 and currently available in version 2.0
- FFmpeg codecs – Codecs in the libavcodec library from the FFmpeg project. Decoders in the libavcodec.
- Lagarith – Video codec designed for strong lossless compression in RGB colorspace
- libtheora – A reference implementation of the Theora format, based on VP3, part of the Ogg Project
- Dirac as dirac-research, a wavelet based codec created by the BBC Research, and Schrödinger, an implementation developed by David Schleef.
- Huffyuv – Lossless codec from BenRG
- Daala – Experimental Video codec which was under development by the Xiph.Org Foundation and finally merged into AV1.
- Thor – Experimental royalty free video codec which was under development by Cisco Systems, and merged technologies into AV1.
- Turing – A High Efficiency Video Coding encoder implemented by BBC Research.
- libaom – Reference implementation for the royalty free AV1 video coding format by AOMedia, inheriting technologies from VP9, Daala and Thor.
- Kvazaar – An academic open-source encoder based on the High Efficiency Video Coding standard.
- UVG266 academic open-source VVC/H.266 encoder based on Kvazaar.
- VVenC & VVdeC – An open-source encoder and decoder released by Fraunhofer HHI based on the Versatile Video Coding (VVC/H.266) standard available on GitHub.
- XEVE MPEG-5 Part 1: Essential Video Coding
- XEVD MPEG-5 Part 1: Essential Video Coding
- REVC – a Rust-based MPEG-5 Part 1: Essential Video Coding baseline encoder and decoder.