x264 is a free library under license GNU LPG resulting from the project VideoLAN making it possible to code flows Vidéo H.264 (or MPEG-4 AVC). The code was entirely written by Laurent Aimar, Loren Merritt, Eric Petit (OS X), Min Chen (vfw/nasm), Justin Clay (vfw), Måns Rullgård, Radek Czyz, Christian Heine (asm), Alex Izvorski (asm), and Alex Wright.

Capacities

In October 2006, it is one of the coders the most advanced public AVC. It is also one of the only coder AVC High Profile publicly available. It supports:

• CABAC (Context-based Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding) and CAVLC (Variable Context-based Adaptive Length Coding)
• MRF (Multiple Frames Refers)
• All types of intrapolated macro-blocks (16x16, 8x8 and 4x4 -- 8x8 belongs to AVC High Profile)
• All the types of interpolated P-frame macro-blocks
• the types of B-interpolated macro-blocks of 16x16 with 8x8
• Optimization of the rate of distortion
• Of multiple modes of control of rate: constant quantification, constant quality, simple or multipass ABR with option VBV
• Detection of the cuts of scenes
• Adaptive B-frame placement, with the option off keeping B-frames ace refer/arbitrary frame order
• adaptive space Transformée 8x8 and 4x4 (High Profile)
• Mode without losses
• Matrice of quantification personalized (High Profile)
• parallel Encodage on several processors
• Support of interlacement

Comparison with others codecs

x264 received rewards in the comparative ones of codec S following:

• Doom9' S 2005 codec shot-out
• Second annual MSU MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codecs comparison
Subjective
• MSU Comparison off Modern Video Codecs

Projects using x264

• Avidemux
• Ffdshow
• FFmpeg
• MEncoder
• VLC media player
• MPlayer
• VirtualDub

References

Random links:

Kabar | Saint-Michel-Loubéjou | Jacopo da Bologna | Eugene Dieudonné | Castle of the Large Garden