VisualOn is a

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Cou ...

based multimedia software company that provides high-definition audio and video entertainment to

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

, tablets,

laptops A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

connected TV A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features, which allows users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TVs are a techn ...

s and other mobile and convergent devices. VisualOn's patented technology is modular and platform-agnostic. VisualOn supports streaming, VOD,

mobile TV Mobile television is television watched on a small handheld or mobile device. It includes service delivered via mobile phone networks, received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations, or via satellite broadcast. Regular broadcast stand ...

and other multimedia applications. VisualOn customers include content providers, technology companies and hardware manufacturers. The company partners with a range of technology companies to ensure streaming media workflow interoperability.

History

VisualOn was founded in 2003 by Dr. Yang Cai and Dr. Bill Lin. The company is headquartered in San Jose, CA, with offices in Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, South Korea, Germany and Finland.

Memberships and affiliations

* VisualOn joined the

Open Handset Alliance The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) is a consortium of 84 firms to develop open standards for mobile devices. Member firms include HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Google, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, ...

in 2010. * VisualOn is also a member of the

Consumer Electronics Association The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) is a standard and trade organization representing 1,376 consumer technology companies in the United States. CTA works to influence public policy, holds events such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CE ...

. * VisualOn also supports the promotion of MPEG-DASH through its involvement in th
DASH Industry Forum

Products

* OnStream MediaPlayer+ (OSMP+) is a multimedia player development kit enabling cross-platform content delivery and playback on connected devices including mobile handsets, tablets, desktops, laptops, set-top boxes, and smart TVs. * OnStream Analytics Foundation (OnStream AF) is designed to measure, and track audio and video playback quality of service (QOS) at the client endpoint.

AAC encoder

VisualOn provided a simple

Advanced Audio Coding Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 encoders at the same bit rate. AAC has been stan ...

(AAC) encoder in early versions of Android. The encoder was derived from the 3GPP reference encoder and supported only the AAC-LC profile in mono or stereo. Google added a more advanced AAC codec library to Android as of the 4.1 ''Jelly Bean'' release. The VisualOn encoder remains in the Android source code, but development appears to have ended. VisualOn no longer markets any commercial encoder products. VisualOn software codecs listed on its website are software based decoders and not encoders. A cross-platform source distribution was maintained by Martin Storsjö as . The latest release is 0.1.3 (2013-07-27). The code compiles into a shared library, . The media framework

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of vid ...

supported AAC encoding through , but that support was removed in version 3.0 as the native AAC encoder surpassed it and

FAAC FAAC or Freeware Advanced Audio Coder is a software project which includes the AAC encoder FAAC and decoder FAAD2. It supports MPEG-2 AAC as well as MPEG-4 AAC. It supports several MPEG-4 Audio object types (LC, Main, LTP for encoding and SBR, ...

in quality, and is currently the second best available encoder supported, and the only one built by default, as FDK-AAC's license is incompatible with the GPL. The VisualOn AAC encoder has been shown to be very low quality in

ABX test An ABX test is a method of comparing two choices of sensory stimuli to identify detectable differences between them. A subject is presented with two known samples (sample , the first reference, and sample , the second reference) followed by one unkn ...

ing. Of the four AAC encoders that have been supported in FFMpeg, it was the least recommended option.

References

External links

* {{Open Handset Alliance Members, state=collapsed Internet properties established in 2003 Companies based in San Jose, California