CoreAVC was a proprietary

codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or ...

for decoding the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) video format. In 2010, when CoreAVC was a software-only decoder, it was one of the fastest software decoders, but still slower than hardware-based ones. CoreAVC supports all H.264 Profiles except for 4:2:2 and 4:4:4. From 2009, CoreAVC introduced support to two forms of

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...

hardware acceleration for H.264 decoding on Windows:

CUDA CUDA (or Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) that allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general purpose processing, an approach c ...

(

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

only, in 2009) and

DXVA DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) is a Microsoft API specification for the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms that allows video decoding to be hardware-accelerated. The pipeline allows certain CPU-intensive operations such as iDCT, motion co ...

(Nvidia and ATI GPUs, in 2011). CoreAVC was included as a part of the CorePlayer Multimedia Framework and was being used in the now defunct desktop client by

Joost Joost () was an Internet TV service, created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa). During 2007–2008 Joost used peer-to-peer TV ( P2PTV) technology to distribute content to their Mozilla-based desktop player; i ...

a system that was distributing videos over the Internet using peer-to-peer TV technology.

CoreAVC-For-Linux DMCA complaint

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

project named CoreAVC-For-Linux hosted at

Google Code Google Developers (previously Google Code) , application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources. The site contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs—including discussion groups and blogs for developers usin ...

patches the loader code in the open source media player program

MPlayer MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A port for DOS using ...

and allows it to use the Windows only CoreAVC DirectShow filter in

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

environments. It does ''not'' include CoreAVC, but simply allows MPlayer to make use of it. This project also contains patches to use the proprietary codec in

MythTV MythTV is a free and open-source home entertainment application with a simplified "10-foot user interface" design for the living room TV. It turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital ...

, open source software for Home Theater Personal Computers and the media player

xine xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library (xine-lib) that supports different frontend player applications. xine uses libraries ...

. In May 2008 the CoreAVC-For-Linux project was taken down by Google due to a

DMCA The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...

complaint. There was speculation about this DMCA complaint, because the project as a wrapper did not use any copyrighted material, but maybe

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

techniques were used without prior permission, which CoreCodec, Inc. interpreted as a violation of the DMCA. CoreCodec has stated that reverse engineering was the reason, and it was in error and has apologized to the community. CoreAVC-For-Linux is now back online and is recognized and supported by CoreCodec. Despite this, the project's future is currently in doubt as the developer stated they are quite busy and do not have enough time to continue working on it. The developer is currently requesting help from any developers interested in contributing to the project.

Multi-platform support

In early 2008, due to popular demand, CoreCodec ported the until then Windows-only to a plethora of platforms and CPU architectures. CoreAVC is now supported on the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s Windows, macOS and Linux, as well as mobile-embedded operating systems like Palm OS, Symbian, Windows CE and Windows Mobile - although the Linux version is not available as retail but only for OEMs. CoreAVC runs not only on 32-bit and 64-bit x86, but also on

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM– ...

(including AltiVec support),

ARM9 ARM9 is a group of 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings for microcontroller use. The ARM9 core family consists of ARM9TDMI, ARM940T, ARM9E-S, ARM966E-S, ARM920T, ARM922T, ARM946E-S, ARM9EJ-S, ARM926EJ-S, ARM968E-S, ARM99 ...

ARM11 ARM11 is a group of 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings. The ARM11 core family consists of ARM1136J(F)-S, ARM1156T2(F)-S, ARM1176JZ(F)-S, and ARM11MPCore. Since ARM11 cores were released from 2002 to 2005, they are no lon ...

and MIPS. As for GPUs, supported are

Intel 2700G Intel 2700G (code-named Marathon) is a low power (50 watt, mW max) graphics co-processor for the XScale PXA27x processor, announced on April 12, 2004. It is built on both the PowerVR#Series4_(STMicro), PowerVR MBX Lite chip design (which is a desce ...

, ATI Imageon, Marvell Monahan, (limited) Qualcomm QTv. In February 2009, CoreCodec released an update to CoreAVC that implemented support for

. CUDA allows selected Nvidia graphics cards to assist in the decoding of video. In March 2011, CoreCodec introduced support for

. Like CUDA, DXVA allows ATI and NVIDIA based graphics cards to assist in the decoding of video.

References

External links

*
CoreCodec, Inc.

CorePlayer (multi-platform)

Doom9.org Discussion on CoreAVC

coreavc-for-linux - Google Code
{{Compression software implementations Codecs Multimedia Linux media players MacOS media players Windows media players Symbian software