MainConcept GmbH is a

software company A software company is a company whose primary products are various forms of software, software technology, distribution, and software product development. They make up the software industry. Types There are a number of different types of softw ...

founded in Germany by

Markus Moenig Markus Moenig (german: link=no, Markus Mönig), is a German Entrepreneur and Computer scientist. He is the CEO of BrainDistrict GmbH, a Graphics software manufacturing company. He was the founder of MainConcept, a video/audio codecs developing c ...

and Thomas Zabel. They specialize in developing

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

audio codec An audio codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream (a codec) that encodes or decodes audio. In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompres ...

s and also applications and plug-ins related to video/audio encoding. They are a subsidiary of

Endeavor Streaming Endeavor Streaming is a digital video technology company headquartered in Plainview, New York, USA. Founded in 2004 as NeuLion, the company was acquired in 2018 by sports and entertainment company, Endeavor, and rebranded Endeavor Streaming ...

, with employees in Germany, Russia, United States and Japan.

History

MainConcept is a video codec supplier founded in 1993 in

Aachen, Germany Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...

and a board member of the MPEG Industry Forum. The Russian video codec company Elecard discussed an opportunity to become part of the company between April 2005 and August 2006. In November 2007 MainConcept became a wholly owned subsidiary of DivX, Inc. In June 2010, Sonic Solutions acquired DivX and its subsidiaries in a cash and stock deal valued at $323 million.

Rovi TiVo Corporation, formerly known as the Rovi Corporation and Macrovision Solutions Corporation, was an American technology company. Headquartered in San Jose, California, the company is primarily involved in licensing its intellectual property ...

Corporation acquired Sonic Solutions (including the MainConcept business) in February 2011 and later sold off the DivX and MainConcept businesses in April 2014. In February 2015, NeuLion, Inc. acquired DivX, LLC including the MainConcept business. The company has specialized in video codecs since 1995 with a focus on standards, e.g. H.264/AVC,

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

AVC-Intra AVC-Intra is a type of video coding developed by Panasonic, and then supported in products made by other companies. AVC-Intra is available in Panasonic's high definition broadcast products, such as, for example, their P2 card equipped broadcast c ...

etc. MainConcept delivered its first MPEG-1/2 Codec in 2001 and its first H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Codec in 2004. In August 2007,

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

licensed the H.264 and AAC technology developed by MainConcept for integration into its

Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is Software, computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming media, streaming audio and vide ...

software. In April 2010 MainConcept signed a strategic collaboration agreement with

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

to accelerate digital video encode. In September 2010, the company launched ''MainConcept Reference 2.1 for Mac/Windows'' providing enhanced support for

Mac OS 10.5 Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5) is the sixth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X Tig ...

/ 10.6, Apple

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

. On June 4, 2013, Rovi Corporation released the MainConcept

HEVC High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In compari ...

SDK 1.0. SDK 1.0 supports Smart Adaptive Bitrate Encoding Technology (SABET) which allows for the simultaneous encoding of up to 10 video output streams with reduced computing cost. SDK 1.0 is available for Windows and SDK 1.0.1, which will be released in July 2013, will add support for Linux and Mac OS X. SDK 1.0 supports the Main profile while SDK 2.0, which will be released in Q4 2013, will add support for the Main 10 profile.

IP licensing and SDK products

Application and plug-in products

Supported Formats

Awards

*2007, 2008 and 2009 - the

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

ranked MainConcept's

H.264 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 distr ...

codec first in its annual H.264-codec comparison.

References

{{reflist

External links

mainconcept.com
Software companies established in 1999 Software companies of Germany Audio codecs Video codecs MPEG 1999 establishments in Germany