This is a listing of open-source

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 da ...

s—that is,

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

implementations of

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

video coding format A video coding format (or sometimes video compression format) is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital video content (such as in a data file or bitstream). It typically uses a standardized video compression algo ...

s. Many of the codecs listed implement media formats that are restricted by patents and are hence not

open format An open file format is a file format for storing digital data, defined by an openly published specification usually maintained by a standards organization, and which can be used and implemented by anyone. Open file format is licensed with open lic ...

s. For example,

x264 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. History ...

is a widely used open source implementation of the heavily patent encumbered

MPEG-4 AVC 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 distri ...

video compression standard.

Video codec A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while a device that only compresses is typically called an '' ...
s

– H.264/MPEG-4 AVC implementation. x264 is not a codec (encoder/decoder); it is just an encoder (it cannot decode video). *

OpenH264 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." History Move to free-to-use binaries On October 30, 2013, Rowan T ...

– H.264 baseline profile encoding and decoding *OpenVVC an VVC /H.266 Real Time-

Decoder Decoder may refer to: Technology * Audio decoder converts digital audio to analog form * Binary decoder, digital circuits such as 1-of-N and seven-segment decoders * Decompress (compression decoder), converts compressed data (e.g., audio/video/im ...

for

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and Android and special Version of

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 ...

, which was used for

Ateme Ateme S.A. is a multinational company that specializes in video delivery, namely software for video compression based on H.265 / HEVC standards; MPEG4; MPEG2 encoding / decoding solutions for contribution links, multi-screen live streaming, OTT ...

Satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...

Broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...

Test. *

x265 x265 is a software codec for creating digital video streams in the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265) video compression format developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC). It is available as a command-line app or a ...

– An encoder based on the

High Efficiency Video Coding 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 compar ...

(HEVC/H.265) standard. *

Xvid Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 video coding standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi mas ...

–

MPEG-4 Part 2 MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally ISO/IEC 14496-2) is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine tr ...

codec, compatible with DivX *

libvpx libvpx is a free software video codec library from Google and the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). It serves as the reference software implementation for the VP8 and VP9 video coding formats, and for AV1 a special fork named libaom that ...

–

VP8 VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008. Initially released as a proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released as an open and royalty-free format in May 2010 after Goo ...

and

VP9 VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google. VP9 is the successor to VP8 and competes mainly with MPEG's High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265). At first, VP9 was mainly used on Google's video platform YouTube. ...

implementation; formerly a proprietary codec developed by On2 Technologies, released by Google under a BSD-like license in May 2010. *SVT-AV1 - An

AV1 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 th ...

encoder originally developed by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

and

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

, which is available as

FLOSS Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

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 VideoLAN is a non-profit organization which develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN Server (VLS), but most of the features of VLS ...

dav1d - An

decoder for decoding videos with AV1 codec * Xiph.Org rav1e - An

encoder written in

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH ...

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

libgav1 - An

decoder by Google * xvc - An open source video codec, aiming to compete with

h.265 H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet. H may also refer to: Musical symbols * H number, Harry Halbreich reference mechanism for music by Honegger and Martinů * H, B (musical note) * H, B major People * H. (noble) (died after 12 ...

and

. The reference implementation is released under the LGPL 2.1 and currently available in version 2.0 (as of 12/2020) *

codecs – Codecs in the

libavcodec libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data. libavcodec is an integral part of many open-source multimedia applications and frameworks. The popular MPV, xine and VLC media players use ...

library from the FFmpeg project (

FFV1 FFV1 (short for FF Video 1) is a lossless intra-frame video coding format. It can use either variable-length coding or arithmetic coding for entropy coding. The encoder and decoder are part of the free, open-source library libavcodec in the pr ...

Snow Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout ...

, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 part 2, MSMPEG-4, WMV2,

SVQ1 Sorenson Media was an American software company specializing in video encoding technology. Established in December 1995 as Sorenson Vision, the company developed technology which was licensed and ultimately acquired from Utah State University. T ...

, MJPEG, HuffYUV and others). Decoders in the libavcodec (H.264, SVQ3, WMV3, VP3, Theora, Indeo, Dirac, Lagarith and others). * Lagarith – Video codec designed for strong lossless compression in RGB(A) colorspace (similar to ZIP/RAR/etc.) *libtheora – A

reference implementation In the software development process, a reference implementation (or, less frequently, sample implementation or model implementation) is a program that implements all requirements from a corresponding specification. The reference implementation o ...

of the

Theora Theora is a free file format, free Lossy compression, lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis ...

format, based on

VP3 On2 TrueMotion VP3 is a (royalty-free) lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies. There is no formal specification for the VP3 bits ...

, part of the Ogg Project *

Dirac Distributed Research using Advanced Computing (DiRAC) is an integrated supercomputing facility used for research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology in the United Kingdom. DiRAC makes use of multi-core processors and provides a variety o ...

as dirac-research, a

wavelet A wavelet is a wave-like oscillation with an amplitude that begins at zero, increases or decreases, and then returns to zero one or more times. Wavelets are termed a "brief oscillation". A taxonomy of wavelets has been established, based on the num ...

based codec created by the

BBC Research BBC Research & Development is the technical research department of the BBC. Function It has responsibility for researching and developing advanced and emerging media technologies for the benefit of the corporation, and wider UK and European m ...

, and Schrödinger, an implementation developed by David Schleef. * Huffyuv –

Lossless Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistic ...

codec from BenRG *

Daala Daala is a video coding format under development by the Xiph.Org Foundation under the lead of Timothy B. Terriberry mainly sponsored by the Mozilla Corporation. Like Theora and Opus, Daala is available free of any royalties and its reference imp ...

– Experimental

Video codec A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while a device that only compresses is typically called an '' ...

which was under development by the

Xiph.Org Foundation Xiph.Org Foundation is a nonprofit organization that produces free multimedia formats and software tools. It focuses on the Ogg family of formats, the most successful of which has been Vorbis, an open and freely licensed audio format and codec d ...

and finally merged into

. *

Thor Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding æsir, god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology, sacred groves ...

– Experimental royalty free video codec which was under development by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

, and merged technologies into

. *Turing - A

(HEVC/H.265) encoder implemented by

. * libaom –

Reference implementation In the software development process, a reference implementation (or, less frequently, sample implementation or model implementation) is a program that implements all requirements from a corresponding specification. The reference implementation o ...

for the royalty free

video coding format by AOMedia, inheriting technologies from

and

. * Kvazaar – An academic open-source encoder based on the

(HEVC/H.265) standard. *UVG266 academic

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 sof ...

VVC/H.266-Encoder based on Kvazaar. (on 3 Clause BSD License for

MacOs macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and in Development) *VVenC & VVdeC – An open-source encoder and decoder released by

Fraunhofer HHI The Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute, HHI, also known as Fraunhofer HHI or Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, is an organization of the Fraunhofer Society based in Berlin. The institute engages in applied re ...

based on the Versatile Video Coding (VVC/H.266) standard available on GitHub. *XEVE (the eXtra-fast Essential Video Encoder) MPEG-5 Part 1:

Essential Video Coding 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. The standard consists of a royalty-free subset and individually switch ...

*XEVD (the eXtra-fast Essential Video Decoder) MPEG-5 Part 1:

*REVC – a

-based MPEG-5 Part 1:

baseline encoder and

decoder Decoder may refer to: Technology * Audio decoder converts digital audio to analog form * Binary decoder, digital circuits such as 1-of-N and seven-segment decoders * Decompress (compression decoder), converts compressed data (e.g., audio/video/im ...

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

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

– Lossless codec developed by Xiph.Org Foundation. *

LAME Lame or LAME may refer to: Music * "Lame" (song) by Unwritten Law * ''Lame'' (album) by Iame People * Ibrahim Lame (born 1953), Nigerian educator and politician * Jennifer Lame (), American film editor * Quintín Lame (1880–1967), Colombian ...

– Lossy compression (MP3 format). *

TooLAME TooLAME is a free software MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) audio encoder written primarily by Mike Cheng. While there are many MP2 encoders, TooLAME is well-known and widely used for its particularly high audio quality. It has been unmaintained since 2003, ...

/ TwoLAME – Lossy compression (MP2 format). *

Musepack Musepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 (manual set allows bitrates up to 320) kbit/s. It was formerly known as MPEGplus, MPEG+ or MP+. ...

– Lossy compression; based on MP2 format, with many improvements. *

Speex Speex is an audio compression codec specifically tuned for the reproduction of human speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm.Xiph.OrIntrodu ...

– Low bitrate compression, primarily voice; developed by Xiph.Org Foundation. Deprecated in favour of Opus according to www.speex.org. *

CELT The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient ...

– Lossy compression for low-latency audio communication * libopus – A reference implementation of the

Opus ''Opus'' (pl. ''opera'') is a Latin word meaning "work". Italian equivalents are ''opera'' (singular) and ''opere'' (pl.). Opus or OPUS may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Opus number, (abbr. Op.) specifying order of (usually) publicatio ...

format, the IETF standards-track successor to CELT. (Opus support is mandatory for

WebRTC WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a free and open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication to wor ...

implementations.) * libvorbis – Lossy compression, implementation of the

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...

format; developed by Xiph.Org Foundation. *

iLBC Internet Low Bitrate Codec (iLBC) is a royalty-free narrowband speech audio coding format and an open-source reference implementation (codec), developed by Global IP Solutions (GIPS) formerly Global IP Sound (acquired by Google Inc in 2011). It w ...

– Low bitrate compression, primarily voice * iSAC – Low bitrate compression, primarily voice; (free when using the WebRTC codebase) *

TTA TTA may refer to *Tan Tan Airport, Morocco, IATA code *Teacher Training Agency, former name of the Training and Development Agency for Schools, England * Technical Theatre Awards, UK *Terran Trade Authority, the setting for a series of science-fict ...

– Lossless compression *

WavPack WavPack is a free and open-source lossless audio compression format and application implementing the format. It is unique in the way that it supports hybrid audio compression alongside normal compression which is similar to how FLAC works. I ...

– Hybrid lossy/lossless * Bonk – Hybrid lossy/lossless; supported by fre:ac (formerly BonkEnc) *

Apple Lossless The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), also known as Apple Lossless, or Apple Lossless Encoder (ALE), is an audio coding format, and its reference audio codec implementation, developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. ...

– Lossless compression (MP4) *

Fraunhofer FDK AAC 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 ...

– Lossy compression (AAC) * FFmpeg codecs in the libavcodec library, e.g. AC-3, AAC, ADPCM, PCM, Apple Lossless, FLAC, WMA, Vorbis, MP2, etc. *

FAAD2 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 S ...

– open-source decoder for

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 ...

. There is also

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 S ...

, the same project's encoder, but it is proprietary (but still

free of charge The English language, English adjective ''free'' is commonly used in one of two meanings: "at no monetary cost" (''gratis'') and "with little or no restriction" (''libre''). This ambiguity of ''free'' can cause issues where the distinction i ...

). *

libgsm Full Rate (FR or GSM-FR or GSM 06.10 or sometimes simply GSM) was the first digital speech coding standard used in the GSM digital mobile phone system. It uses linear predictive coding (LPC). The bit rate of the codec is 13 kbit/s, or 1.625 bits/a ...

– Lossy compression (

GSM 06.10 Full Rate (FR or GSM-FR or GSM 06.10 or sometimes simply GSM) was the first digital speech coding standard used in the GSM digital mobile phone system. It uses linear predictive coding (LPC). The bit rate of the codec is 13 kbit/s, or 1.625 bits/a ...

) * opencore-amr – Lossy compression ( AMR and AMR-WB) *

liba52 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 u ...

– a free ATSC A/52 stream decoder (AC-3) *

libdca libdca (formerly libdts) is a free library for decoding DTS Coherent Acoustics streams. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, and is developed by Gildas Bazin of the VideoLAN team. The library is based on the DTS Coher ...

– a free DTS Coherent Acoustics decoder *

Codec2 Codec 2 is a low-bitrate speech audio codec (speech coding) that is patent free and open source. Codec 2 compresses speech using sinusoidal coding, a method specialized for human speech. Bit rates of 3200 to 450 bit/s have been successfully cre ...

- Low bitrate compression, primarily voice

References

{{Compression formats

Codecs 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 da ...

Video codec A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while a device that only compresses is typically called an '' ...s

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

See also

References

Video codec A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while a device that only compresses is typically called an '' ...
s

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