List of codecs
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The following is a list of compression formats and related codecs.
Audio compression formats
Non-compression
- Linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM, generally only described as PCM) is the format for uncompressed audio in media files and it is also the standard for CD-DA; note that in computers, LPCM is usually stored in container formats such as WAV, AIFF, or AU, or as raw audio format, although not technically necessary. FFmpeg
- Pulse-density modulation (PDM) Direct Stream Digital (DSD) is standard for Super Audio CD foobar2000 Super Audio CD Decoder (based on MPEG-4 DST reference decoder) FFmpeg (based on dsd2pcm)
- Pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM)
Lossless compression
- Actively used Most popular Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) libFLAC FFmpeg Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Apple QuickTime libalac FFmpeg Apple Music Monkey's Audio (APE) Monkey's Audio SDK FFmpeg (decoder only) OptimFROG (OFR) Tom's verlustfreier Audiokompressor (TAK) TAK SDK FFmpeg (decoder only) WavPack (WV) libwavpack FFmpeg True Audio (TTA) libtta FFmpeg Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMAL) Windows Media Encoder FFmpeg (decoder only) Other DTS-HD Master Audio, also known as DTS++ and DCA XLL libdca (decoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only) Dolby TrueHD – Standard for DVD-Audio in Blu-ray (mathematically based on MLP) FFmpeg Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP), also known as Packed PCM (PPCM) – Standard for DVD-Audio in DVD FFmpeg MPEG-4 Audio Lossless Coding (MPEG-4 ALS) SSC, DST, ALS and SLS reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10:2007) FFmpeg (decoding only) MPEG-4 Scalable Lossless Coding (MPEG-4 SLS) – Parts of it are used in HD-AAC. SSC, DST, ALS and SLS reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10:2007) RealAudio Lossless RealPlayer FFmpeg (decoding only) BFDLAC (BFD Lossless Audio Compression). Ongoing development. FXpansion's BFD3 drum software. (2013-2017) L2HC - Huawei Huawei Music NearLink Huawei FreeBuds Oddball ATRAC Advanced Lossless (AAL) – Extremely unpopular FFmpeg (lossy decoder only) Direct Stream Transfer (DST) - Only used for Direct Stream Digital SSC, DST, ALS and SLS reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10:2007) FFmpeg (decoder only) Original Sound Quality (OSQ) - Only used in WaveLab FFmpeg (decoding only)
- Discontinued Lossless Audio (LA) – No update for 10+ years Shorten (SHN) – Officially discontinued. libshn FFmpeg (decoding only) Lossless Predictive Audio Compression (LPAC) – Predecessor of MPEG-4 ALS Lossless Transform Audio Compression (LTAC) – Predecessor of LPAC MPEG-1 Audio Layer III HD (mp3HD) – Officially discontinued RK Audio (RKAU) – Officially discontinued FFmpeg (decoding only)
Lossy compression
- Discrete cosine transform (DCT) Modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT, used in most of the audio codecs listed below)
General/Speech hybrid
- Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC, MPEG-D Part 3, ISO/IEC 23003-3) exhale (encoder only; open source) FFmpeg (decoder only; open source)
- IETF standards: Opus (RFC 6716) – based on SILK vocoder and CELT codec libopus FFmpeg (decoding and experimental encoding)
- IETF Internet Draft IPMR Speech Codec - used in Spirit DSP's TeamSpirit Voice&Video Engine
- Alliance for Open Media Open Audio Codec (OAC; under-development) liboac
Neural audio codecs
- Lyra (codec) - used in Google Duo
- Lyra V2 - based on SoundStream neural codec
- Satin (used by Microsoft Teams)
- Facebook EnCodec
- WavTokenizer
General
- Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM, also called adaptive delta pulse-code modulation)
- Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC, used in MiniDisc devices) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- ATSC/ETSI standards: Dolby Digital (AC3, ATSC A/52, ETSI TS 102 366) FFmpeg liba52 (decoder only) Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3, ATSC A/52:2012 Annex E, ETSI TS 102 366 Annex E) FFmpeg DTS Coherent Acoustics (DTS, Digital Theatre System Coherent Acoustics, ETSI TS 102 114) FFmpeg libdca (decoder only) Dolby AC-4 (ETSI TS 103 190)
- Impala Blackbird audio codec
- ITU standards: G.719 G.722 FFmpeg G.722.1 (subset of Siren7) and G.722.1 Annex C (subset of Siren14) libg722_1 libsiren (part of libmsn and msn-pecan) G.722.2 3GPP TS 26.173 – AMR-WB speech Codec (C-source code) – reference implementation opencore-amr (decoder) VisualOn AMR-WB encoder FFmpeg (decoding only) EVS
- MPEG-1 Audio and MPEG-2 Audio layer I (MP1) (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO MPEG-2.5) FFmpeg (decoder only) layer II (MP2) (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO MPEG-2.5) FFmpeg tooLame (encoding only) twoLame (encoding only) layer III (MP3) (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO MPEG-2.5) FFmpeg (decoding only) LAME (encoding only) Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) (MPEG-2 Part 7) FAAC (encoder) and FAAD (decoder) FFmpeg iTunes Nero AAC Codec VisualOn AAC Encoder (a.k.a. libvo_aacenc) Fraunhofer FDK AAC libaacplus
- MPEG-4 Audio Advanced Audio Coding (AAC, MPEG-4 Part 3 subpart 4), HE-AAC and AAC-LD FAAC, FAAD2 FFmpeg iTunes Nero AAC Codec MPEG-4 AAC reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001) Harmonic and Individual Lines and Noise (HILN, MPEG-4 Parametric Audio Coding) MPEG-4 reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001) TwinVQ MPEG-4 reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001) FFmpeg (decoding only) BSAC (Bit-Sliced Arithmetic Coding) MPEG-4 reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001)
- MPEG-H MPEG-H 3D Audio
- Musepack (a.k.a. MPEGplus) Musepack SV8 Tools FFmpeg (decoding only)
- NICAM
- AT&T Perceptual Audio Coder
- Precision Adaptive Subband Coding (PASC; a variant of MP1; used in Digital Compact Cassette)
- QDesign (purchased by DTS) QDesign Music Codec – used in Apple QuickTime FFmpeg (decoding only)
- PictureTel (purchased by Polycom) Siren 7 libg722_1 libsiren (part of libmsn and msn-pecan) FFmpeg (decoder only) Siren 14 libg722_1 vgmstream (decoder only) Siren 22
- NTT TwinVQ FFmpeg (decoder only) NTT TwinVQ Encoder, NTT TwinVQ Player
- Voxware MetaSound (a variant of NTT TwinVQ) Windows Media Player (voxmsdec.ax) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Vorbis aoTuV FFmpeg libvorbis Tremor (decoder only)
- Windows Media Audio (WMA) Windows Media Encoder FFmpeg ADC codec (Adaptive Differential Coding)
- Cook Codec (Cooker; RealAudio 6) FFmpeg (decoder only)
AES3
- SMPTE 302M FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Dolby E FFmpeg (decoder only)
Bluetooth
- Bluetooth Special Interest Group Low Complexity Subband Coding (SBC) BlueZ's SBC library (libsbc) Fluoride Bluetooth stack (successor of BlueDroid) FFmpeg CVSD 8 kHz - used in Hands-Free Profile (HFP) modified SBC (mSBC) - used in Hands-Free Profile (HFP) BlueZ's SBC library (libsbc) Fluoride Bluetooth stack FFmpeg SBC XQ PulseAudio's bluetooth stack (encoder only) PipeWire's bluetooth stack (encoder only) LC3 (Low Complexity Communication Codec) Google's liblc3 (open source) - used in Android 13 and later
- ETSI LC3plus (ETSI TS 103 634) Google's liblc3 (open source)
- Qualcomm Technologies International (formerly CSR) aptX (a.k.a. apt-X) Qualcomm libaptX FFmpeg aptX HD Qualcomm libaptXHD FFmpeg aptX Low Latency aptX Adaptive FastStream - a variant of SBC codec for bi-directional audio transmission
- Sony LDAC libldac (encoder only) - used in Android Oreo libldacdec (decoder only)
- HWA Alliance/Savitech LHDC HWA encoder/decoder LLAC HWA encoder/decoder
- HiBy Ultra Audio Transmission (UAT)
- Samsung Samsung HD/UHQ-BT codec Samsung Scalable codec Samsung Seamless codec
- MQA MQair
Digital radio
- Hybrid Digital Coding - used in HD Radio (a.k.a. NRSC-5) NRSC-5 receiver for rtl-sdr (decoder only) gr-nrsc5 (encoder only)
Voice
(low bit rate, optimized for speech)
- Linear predictive coding (LPC, used in most of the speech codecs listed below) Code-excited linear prediction (CELP) Algebraic code-excited linear prediction (ACELP)
- Xiph.Org Foundation Speex, patent free libspeex FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Dialogic ADPCM (VOX) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- ITU standards: G.711 (a-law and μ-law companding; 64 kbit/s), also known as PCM of voice frequencies Sun Microsystems's public domain implementation FFmpeg (libavcodec) G.711.0 (G.711 LLC) G.711.1 (Wideband extension for G.711; 64/80/96 kbit/s) G.711.1D (Super-wideband extension for G.711.1; 96/112/128 kbit/s) G.718 (8/12/16/24/32 kbit/s) G.718B (Super-wideband extension for G.718; 28–48 kbit/s) G.719 G.721 (superseded by G.726; 32 kbit/s) Sun Microsystems's public domain implementation G.722 (SB-ADPCM; 48/56/64 kbit/s) FFmpeg G.722B (Super-wideband extension for G.722; 64/80/96 kbit/s) G.722.2 (AMR-WB) 3GPP TS 26.173 – AMR-WB speech Codec (C-source code) – reference implementation opencore-amr (decoder) FFmpeg (decoder only) G.723 (24 and 40 kbit/s DPCM, extension to G.721, superseded by G.726) Sun Microsystems's public domain implementation G.723.1 (MPC-MLQ or ACELP; 5.3/6.3 kbit/s) FFmpeg G.726 (ADPCM; 16/24/32/40 kbit/s) Sun Microsystems's public domain implementation FFmpeg (libavcodec) G.727 Sun Microsystems's public domain implementation G.728 (LD-CELP; 16 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only) G.729 (CS-ACELP; 8 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only) G.729a G.729b G.729ab G.729d (6.4 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only) G.729e (11.8 kbit/s) G.729.1 (G.729 Annex J; Wideband extension for G.711; 8–32 kbit/s) G.729.1E (Super-wideband extension for G.729.1)
- Google internet Speech Audio Codec (iSAC) WebRTC
- Nellymoser Asao Codec FFmpeg (libavcodec)
- RealNetworks RealAudio 1 (VSELP 14.4 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only) RealAudio 2 (LD-CELP 28.8 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- PictureTel PT716, PT716plus
- PictureTel PT724
- RTAudio – used by Microsoft Live Communication Server
- SVOPC – used by Skype
- OpenLPC – created by Future Dynamics HawkVoice (libHVDI)
- ANSI/SCTE ANSI/SCTE 24-21 2006 (BroadVoice16) BroadVoice Speech Codec Open Source C Code ANSI/SCTE 24-22 2013 (iLBCv2.0) ANSI/SCTE 24-23 2007 (BroadVoice32) BroadVoice Speech Codec Open Source C Code
- IETF RFCs: Internet Low Bit Rate Codec (iLBC, RFC 3951) – developed by Global IP Solutions/Google WebRTC
- IETF Internet Draft SILK (used by Skype) CELT (developed by Xiph.Org Foundation) libcelt
- MPEG-4 Audio MPEG-4 CELP MPEG-4 HVXC
- Skyphone MPLP
- Inmarsat INMARSAT-M IMBE Inmarsat Mini-M AMBE
- Meta MLow - used in Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
Microsoft DirectPlay
Those codecs are used by many PC games which use voice chats via Microsoft DirectPlay API.
- Voxware MetaVoice Windows Media Player (voxmvdec.ax)
- Truespeech Windows Media Player (tssoft32.acm) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- MS GSM Windows Media Player (msgsm32.acm) libgsm FFmpeg (decoder only)
- MS-ADPCM Windows Media Player (msadp32.acm) FFmpeg
Digital Voice Recorder
- International Voice Association (IVA) standards: Digital Speech Standard / Standard Play (DSS-SP) FFmpeg (decoding only) Digital Speech Standard / Quality Play (DSS-QP)
- Sony LPEC
- Truespeech Triple Rate CODER (TRC) – used in some pocket recorders
- Micronas[de] Intermetall MI-SC4 - used by voice recorders such as RadioShack Digital Recorder and I-O DATA[ja] HyperHyde FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Sanyo LD-ADPCM - used by Sanyo ICR series FFmpeg (decoder only)
Mobile phone
Generation 2
- European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) GSM Full Rate (GSM 06.10, RPE-LTP) libgsm FFmpeg (decoder only) Half Rate (GSM 06.20, VSELP 5.6 kbit/s) Enhanced Full Rate (GSM 06.60, ACELP 12.20 kbit/s, compatible with AMR mode AMR_12.20)
- Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) IS-95 (a.k.a. cdmaOne) IS-96A (QCELP 8 kbit/s) IS-127 (EVRC 8 kbit/s) IS-733 (QCELP 13 kbit/s)
- Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) IS-54/IS-136 (a.k.a. Digital AMPS) IS-85 (VSELP 8kbit/s) ITU-T G.191's IS-54 implementation IS-641 (ACELP 7.4 kbit/s, compatible with AMR mode AMR_7.40)
- Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) RCR STD-27 (PDC) PDC-HR (PSI-CELP 3.45 kbit/s) PDC-FR (VSELP 11.2 kbit/s) PDC-EFR CS-ACELP 8 kbit/s (a.k.a. G.729) PDC-EFR ACELP 6.7 kbit/s (compatible with AMR mode AMR_6.70)
Generation 3/4
- 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) AMR-NB 3GPP TS 26.073 – AMR speech Codec (C-source code) – reference implementation opencore-amr (one may compile ffmpeg with—enable-libopencore-amrnb to incorporate the OpenCORE lib) FFmpeg (by default decoder only, but see above the compiling options to incorporate the OpenCORE lib) AMR-WB 3GPP TS 26.173 – AMR-WB speech Codec (C-source code) – reference implementation opencore-amr (decoder), from OpenCORE (one may compile ffmpeg with—enable-libopencore-amrwb to incorporate the OpenCORE lib) vo-amrwbenc (encoder), from VisualOn, included in Android (one may compile ffmpeg with—enable-libvo-amrwbenc to incorporate the VisualOn lib) FFmpeg (by default decoder only, but see above the compiling options). AMR-WB+ 3GPP TS 26.273 – AMR-WB+ speech Codec (C-source code) – reference implementation Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) 3GPP TS.26.443 – Codec for Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) – ANSI C code (floating-point)
- 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) Enhanced Variable Rate Codec (EVRC, a.k.a. IS-127) – based on RCELP FFmpeg (decoder only) Enhanced Variable Rate Codec B (EVRC-B) QCELP (Qualcomm Code Excited Linear Prediction) QCELP-8 (a.k.a. SmartRate or IS-96C) FFmpeg (decoder only) QCELP-13 (a.k.a. PureVoice or IS-733) FFmpeg (decoder only) Selectable Mode Vocoder (SMV) Variable Multi Rate – WideBand (VMR-WB)
Professional mobile radio
- APCO Project 25 Phase 2 Enhanced Full-Rate (AMBE+2 4400bit/s with 2800bit/s FEC) Project 25 Phase 2 Half-Rate (AMBE+2 2450bit/s with 1150bit/s FEC) – also used in NXDN and DMR mbelib (decoder only) Project 25 Phase 1 Full Rate (IMBE 7200bit/s) mbelib (decoder only)
- European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) ETS 300 395-2 (TETRA ACELP 4.6kbit/s)
- TETRAPOL RPCELP 6 kbit/s
- D-STAR Digital Voice (AMBE 2400bit/s with 1200bit/s FEC) mbelib (decoder only)
- Professional Digital Trunking System Industry Association (PDT Alliance) standards: NVOC – used in China
- Spirit DSP RALCWI
- DSPINI SPR Robust TWELP Robust
- Codec2 libcodec2
- RL-CELP (used in Japanese railways)
Military
- U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Federal Standard: FS-1015 (a.k.a. LPC-10) HawkVoice (libHVDI) FS-1016 (CELP) HawkVoice (libHVDI) FS-1023 (CVSD 12kbit/s)
- United States Military Standard (MIL-STD) MIL-STD-188 113 (CVSD 16 kbit/s and 32 kbit/s) SoX (libsox) MIL-STD-3005 (a.k.a. MELP) Texas Instruments' 2.4 kbit/s MELP Proposed Federal Standard speech coder
- NATO STANAG 4198 (a.k.a. LPC-10e) SpanDSP (open source) STANAG-4591 (a.k.a. MELPe) Microsoft Speech coder
- BBN NRV – developed in DARPA program
Video games
- Bink Audio, Smacker Audio FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Actimagine (Nintendo European Research & Development) FastAudio MobiclipDecoder (decoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Nintendo GCADPCM (a.k.a. DSP ADPCM or THP ADPCM) - used in GameCube, Wii and Nintendo 3DS. vgmstream (decoder only) VGAudio FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Sony VAG (a.k.a. Sony PSX ADPCM) vgmstream (decoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Sony HEVAG - used in PS Vita. vgmstream (decoder only)
- Sony ATRAC9 - used in PS4 and PS Vita. VGAudio (decoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Microsoft XMA - WMA variants for Xbox 360 hardware decoding. FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Xbox ADPCM vgmstream (decoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- CRI ADX ADPCM vgmstream (decoder only) VGAudio FFmpeg
- CRI AHX
- CRI HCA/HCA-MX - used in CRI ADX2 middleware. vgmstream (decoder only) VGAudio FFmpeg (decoder only) libcgss HCADecoder (decoder only)
- FMOD FADPCM vgmstream (decoder only)
Text compression formats
- BiM
- Continuous Media Markup Language (CMML)
- MPEG-4 Part 17 (e.g. 3GPP Timed Text)
- ttyrec
Video compression formats
Non-compression
- RGB 4:4:4 (only linear, transfer-converted and bit-reduced also sort of compression up to about 3:1 for HDR)
- YUV 4:4:4/4:2:2/4:1:1/4:2:0 (all lower 4:4:4 is spatially compressed up to 2:1 for 4:2:0 with specific colour distortions). Intel IYUV
- 10-bit uncompressed video
- Composite digital signal - used by SMPTE D-2 and D-3 broadcast digital videocassettes
- Avid DNxUncompressed (SMPTE RDD 50)
- V210 - defined by Apple and used by Serial digital interface Input/output video cards
Analog signals
- PAL broadcast signal Pyctools-PAL (open source)
- NTSC broadcast signal gr-ntsc (open source)
- LaserDisc RF signal ld-decode (open source)
- VHS / S-VHS / U-Matic RF signal VHS-Decode (open source)
- Composite Video Baseband Signal (CVBS) VHS-Decode's CVBS-Decode (open source)
Lossless video compression
- ITU-T/ISO/IEC standards: H.264 lossless x264 (encoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only, uses x264 for encoding) NVDEC/NVENC (for NVIDIA GPU) H.265 lossless x265 (encoder only) UHDcode (decoder only, uses x265 to read HEVC encoded files) FFmpeg (decoder only, uses x265 for encoding) NVDEC/NVENC (for NVIDIA GPU) Motion JPEG 2000 lossless libopenjpeg JPEG XS lossless FastTICO-XS
- IETF standards: FFV1 (RFC 9043) – FFV1's compression factor is comparable to Motion JPEG 2000, but based on quicker algorithms (allows real-time capture). Written by Michael Niedermayer and published as part of FFmpeg under GNU LGPL. FFmpeg
- SMPTE standards: VC-2 HQ lossless (a.k.a. Dirac Pro lossless) libdirac libschroedinger
- Alparysoft Lossless Video Codec (Alpary)
- Apple Animation (QuickTime RLE) QuickTime FFmpeg
- ArithYuv
- AV1 libaom
- AVIzlib LCL (VfW codec) MSZH and ZLIB FFmpeg
- Autodesk Animator Codec (AASC) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- CAI Format
- CamStudio GZIP/LZO FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Chennai Codec (EVX-1) Cairo Experimental Video Codec (open source)
- Dxtory FFmpeg (decoder only)
- FastCodec
- Flash Screen Video v1/v2 FFmpeg
- FM Screen Capture Codec FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Fraps codec (FPS1) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Grass Valley Lossless Grass Valley Codec Option FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Huffyuv Huffyuv (or HuffYUV) was written by Ben Rudiak-Gould and published under the terms of the GNU GPL as free software, meant to replace uncompressed YCbCr as a video capture format. It uses very little CPU but takes a lot of disk space. See also ffvhuff which is an "FFmpeg only" version of it. FFmpeg
- IgCodec
- Intel RLE
- innoHeim/Rsupport Screen Capture Codec FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Lagarith A more up-to-date fork of Huffyuv is available as Lagarith Lagarith Codec (VfW codec) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- LOCO - based on JPEG-LS FFmpeg (decoder only)
- MagicYUV MagicYUV SDK FFmpeg
- Microsoft RLE (MSRLE) FFmpeg
- MSU Lossless Video Codec
- MSU Screen Capture Lossless
- CorePNG[de] - based on PNG FFmpeg
- ScreenPresso (SPV1) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- ScreenPressor - a successor of MSU Screen Capture Lossless FFmpeg (decoder only)
- SheerVideo FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Snow lossless FFmpeg
- TechSmith Screen Capture Codec (TSCC) EnSharpen Video Codec for QuickTime FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Toponoky
- Ut Video Codec Suite libutvideo FFmpeg
- VBLE FFmpeg (decoder only)
- VP9 by Google libvpx FFmpeg (decoder only)
- YULS
- ZeroCodec FFmpeg (decoder only)
- (Zip Motion Block Video) Codec - used by DOSBox FFmpeg
Lossless game codecs
- DXA ScummVM Tools (encoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only)
Lossy compression
- Discrete cosine transform (DCT, used in Digital Betacam and most of the video codecs listed below)
General
- ITU-T/ISO/IEC standards: H.120 H.261 (a.k.a. Px64) FFmpeg H.261 (libavcodec) Microsoft H.263 MPEG-1 Part 2 (MPEG-1 Video) FFmpeg MainConcept MPEG-1 TMPGEnc H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2 (MPEG-2 Video) Canopus ProCoder Cinema Craft Encoder FFmpeg InterVideo Video Decoder MainConcept MPEG-2 Microsoft H.263 TMPGEnc NVDEC (for NVIDIA GPU) H.263 FFmpeg H.263 (libavcodec) MPEG-4 Part 2 (MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile) 3ivx DivX libavcodec HDX4 Nero Digital Xvid H.264/MPEG-4 AVC or MPEG-4 Part 10 (MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding), approved for Blu-ray CoreAVC (decoder only; limited to below Hi10P profile) MainConcept Nero Digital QuickTime H.264 Sorenson AVC Pro codec, Sorenson's new implementation OpenH264 (baseline profile only) x264 (encoder only; supports some of Hi422P and Hi444PP features) FFmpeg (decoder only) NVDEC/NVENC(for NVIDIA GPU) MPEG-4 AVC variants: MPEG-4 Web Video Coding or MPEG-4 Part 29 – a subset of MPEG-4 AVC baseline profile XAVC HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding, H.265, MPEG-H part 2) x265 (encoder only) NVDEC/NVENC (for NVIDIA GPU) Versatile Video Coding (H.266, VVC) VVC Test Model (VTM reference software for VVC; open source) Fraunhofer Versatile Video Decoder (open source; decoder only) Fraunhofer Versatile Video Encoder (open source; encoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only) Video Coding for Browsers (VCB)/VP8 (MPEG-4 Part 31, ISO/IEC 14496-31, RFC 6386) libvpx FFmpeg NVDEC (for NVIDIA GPU) Internet Video Coding (ISO/IEC 14496-33, MPEG-4 IVC) Essential Video Coding (EVC; MPEG-5 Part 1; under-development) eXtra-fast Essential Video Encoder (open source; encoder only) eXtra-fast Essential Video Decoder (open source; decoder only)
- IETF Internet Draft (NETVC) xvc Divideon's reference implementation (open source) Thor (forms the basis of AV1) Cisco's reference implementation (open source)
- SMPTE standards: VC-1 (SMPTE 421M, subset of Windows Media Video) FFmpeg (decoder only) NVDEC (for NVIDIA GPU) Dirac (SMPTE 2042-1) Schrödinger dirac-research FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Alliance for Open Media AV1 (AOMedia Video 1) libaom SVT-AV1 rav1e (encoder only) dav1d (decoder only) libgav1 (decoder only) NVDEC (for NVIDIA GPU) AV2 (AOMedia Video 2; under-development)
- Xiph.Org Foundation Daala (under development, basis (alongside other formats) of AV1) libdaala (open source) Theora (based on VP3) FFmpeg (decoding only) libtheora (open source)
- Apple Video (Apple RPZA) QuickTime FFmpeg
- Blackbird FORscene video codec
- Firebird Original FORscene video codec
- Digital Video Interactive standards: RTV 2.1 (a.k.a. Indeo 2) FFmpeg (decoder only) PLV (Production Level Video) ActionMedia II driver (decoder only)
- Indeo 3/4/5 FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Microsoft Video 1 (MSV1, MS-CRAM, based on MotiVE) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Open Media Commons standards: OMS Video (based on H.261)
- On2 Technologies TrueMotion VP3/VP4, VP5, VP6, VP7; under the name The Duck Corporation: TrueMotion S, TrueMotion 2, TrueMotion RT 2.0 FFmpeg (decoder only)
- RealVideo 1, G2, 8, 9 and 10 FFmpeg RealMedia HD SDK
- RealVideo Fractal Codec (a.k.a. Iterated Systems ClearVideo) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- RealMedia HD (a.k.a. RealVideo 11 or RV60) RealMedia HD SDK FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Snow Wavelet Codec
- Sorenson Video, Sorenson Spark FFmpeg
- VP9 by Google; VP10 was not released and instead was integrated into AV1 libvpx FFmpeg NVDEC (for NVIDIA GPU)
- Windows Media Video (WMV) WAX (Part of the Windows Media Series) FFmpeg
- Guobiao standards (GB/T) Audio Video Standard (AVS) AVS1-P2 (GB/T 20090.2-2006) - used in China Blue High-definition Disc. FFmpeg (decoding only) AVS1-P7 (AVS-M; under-development) AVS2-P2 (GB/T 33475.2-2016, IEEE 1857.4 (draft)) uAVS2 Encoder xavs2 (encoder only) davs2 (libdavs2; decoder only) AVS3-P2 (draft, IEEE1857.10) uavs3e (encoder only) uavs3d (decoder only)
AI-based / AI-enhanced video codecs
- AIVC
- Deep Render codec
- MPAI AI-Enhanced Video Coding (MPAI-EVC; under development) AI-based End-to-End Video Coding (MPAI-EEV; under development)
Scalable / Layered
VP8, VP9, AV1, and H.266/VVC support scalable modes by default.
- ITU-T/ISO/IEC standards: Scalable Video Coding (H.264/SVC; H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Annex G; an extension of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) Scalable High Efficiency Video Coding (SHVC; an extension of H.265/HEVC) Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding (LCEVC; MPEG-5 Part 2) LCEVC Decoder SDK (open source; decoder only) V-Nova LCEVC SDK
- SMPTE standards VC-4 Layered Video Extension (SMPTE ST 2058-1:2011)
Intra-frame-only
- Motion JPEG FFmpeg Morgan Multimedia M-JPEG Pegasus PICVideo M-JPEG MainConcept M-JPEG
- ISO/IEC standard Motion JPEG 2000 (ISO/IEC 15444-3, ITU-T T.802) libopenjpeg FFmpeg Morgan Multimedia M-JPEG2000 Morgan Multimedia dcpPlayer (decoder only) JPEG XS (ISO/IEC 21122) Lightweight Low latency video codec intoPIX fastTICO-XS DV (IEC 61834) FFmpeg MPEG-4 SStP (ISO/IEC 14496-2) FFmpeg Motion JPEG XR (ISO/IEC 29199-3, ITU-T T.833) Animated JPEG XL (ISO/IEC 18181) libjxl
- IETF Internet Draft Advanced Professional Video (AVP) OpenAPV (open source) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Apple ProRes 422/4444 FFmpeg
- Apple Intermediate Codec FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Apple Pixlet FFmpeg (decoder only)
- AVC-Intra x264 (encoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- AVC-Ultra – a subset of MPEG-4 AVC Hi444PP profile
- XAVC-I
- CineForm HD CineForm-SDK – developed by GoPro (open source) FFmpeg
- SMPTE standard VC-2 SMPTE standard (a.k.a. Dirac Pro. SMPTE ST 2042) Schrödinger dirac-research VC-2 Reference Encoder and Decoder – developed by BBC (open source) FFmpeg (the encoder only supports VC-2 HQ profile) VC-3 SMPTE standard (SMPTE ST 2019) Avid DNxHD FFmpeg VC-5 SMPTE standard (SMPTE ST 2073; a superset of CineForm HD) VC-6 SMPTE standard (SMPTE ST 2117-1) V-Nova VC-6 SDK
- Grass Valley HQ/HQA/HQX Grass Valley Codec Option FFmpeg (decoder only)
- NewTek NT25
- NewTek SpeedHQ - used in Network Device Interface (NDI) protocol NewTek Codec FFmpeg
Stereoscopic 3D / Multiview
- Multiview Video Coding
- Multiview High Efficiency Video Coding (MV-HEVC; an extension of H.265/HEVC) MainConcept MV-HEVC Encoder add-on FFmpeg (decoder only) x265 v4.0 or later (encoder only) NVENC (for NVIDIA GPU)
Security and surveillance cameras
- Guobiao standards (GB/T) AVS-S-P2 (suspended) SVAC (GB/T 25724-2010)
- Infinity CCTV Codec (IMM4/IMM5/IMM6) FFmpeg (IMM4 and IMM5 decoder only)
CD-ROM or CD-related video codecs
- CDXL codec FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Cinepak (a.k.a. Apple Compact Video) FFmpeg
- Photo CD codec FFmpeg (decoder only)
- MotionPixels - used in MovieCD FFmpeg (decoder only)
- CD+G (CD+Graphics) codec FFmpeg (decoder only) VLC (decoder only)
- CD+EG (CD+Extended Graphics) codec
Network video codecs
- SMPTE RDD LLVC (Low Latency Video Codec; SMPTE RDD 34) - used in Networked Media Interface (NMI; SMPTE RDD 40)
- HEVC-SCC (Screen Content Coding Extensions) x265 v4.0 or later (encoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- ZRLE (RFC 6143 7.7.6) - used by VNC
- Sun Microsystems's CellB video (RTP playload type 25) - used in Solaris's SunVideo Plus and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's vic (Video Conferencing Tool)
- Xerox PARC's Network Video (nv; RTP playload type 28) - used in Xerox's nv and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's vic (Video Conferencing Tool)
- CU-SeeMe video codec
- GoToMeeting codec FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Microsoft RemoteFX codec (used in MS-RDPRFX, an extension of Remote Desktop Protocol) NSCodec Bitmap Codec (used in MS-RDPNSC, an extension of Remote Desktop Protocol)
Screen capture video codecs
- Microsoft Camcorder Video (based on the GDI interface) - used in Microsoft Office 97's Microsoft Camcorder
- VMnc VMware screen codec (based on the RFB protocol of VNC) - used by VMware Workstation vmnc.dll FFmpeg (decoder only)
Bayer/Compressed RAW video codecs
- CinemaDNG (created by Adobe; used in Blackmagic cameras)
- Redcode RAW (used in RED cameras) – a modified version of JPEG 2000 libredcode
- ArriRaw (used in Arri cameras)
- Cineform RAW (used in Silicon Imaging cameras) CineForm-SDK
- Blackmagic RAW (used in Blackmagic cameras) Blackmagic RAW SDK
- Cintel RAW (used in Cintel Scanner) FFmpeg (decoder only)
- Apple ProRes RAW FFmpeg (decoder only)
- intoPIX TICO RAW intoPIX fastTICO-RAW SDK & TICO-RAW FPGA/ASIC libraries
- Canon CRX - used in Canon Cinema Raw Light movie Canon RAW Plugin for Avid Media Access LibRaw (decoder only; open source)
- Sony X-OCN
Video games
- Bink Video, Smacker video FFmpeg libavcodec
- Nintendo Mobiclip video codec FFmpeg (decoder only)
- CRI Sofdec codec - a MPEG variant with 11-bit DC and color space correction; used in Sofdec middleware
- CRI P256 - used in Sofdec middleware for Nintendo DS
- Indeo Video Interactive (aka Indeo 4/5) - used in PC games for Microsoft Windows FFmpeg (decoder only) Intel Indeo Video
Real-time
- RivaTuner video codec (RTV1/RTV2) FFmpeg (RTV1 decoder only)
- Hap/Hap Alpha/Hap Q VIDVOX hap codec FFmpeg
- DXV Codec Resolume DXV Codec FFmpeg
- NotchLC FFmpeg (decoder only)
- VESA Display Stream Compression (DSC)
- VESA Display Compression-M (VDC-M)
Point cloud compression formats
- MPEG-I Video-based Point Cloud Compression (V-PCC; MPEG-I Part 5) Geometry-based Point Cloud Compression (G-PCC; MPEG-I Part 9; ISO/IEC CD 23090-9) Enhanced G-PCC (MPEG-I Part 38; ISO/IEC CD 23090-38)
Polygonal mesh compression formats
- MPEG-4 3D Mesh Compression (3DMC) in MPEG-4 Visual, Version 2 (ISO/IEC 14496-2) 3D Mesh Compression Extension (3DMCe; MPEG-4 Part 16 Animation Framework eXtension (AFX) Amendment 1) Frame-based Animated Mesh Compression (FAMC; MPEG-4 Part 16 Animation Framework eXtension (AFX) Amendment 2) Scalable Complexity 3D Mesh Compression (SC3DMC; MPEG-4 Part 16 Animation Framework eXtension (AFX) Amendment 3) Open3DGC (open source) Pattern-based 3D mesh coding (PB3DMC; MPEG-4 Part 16 Animation Framework eXtension (AFX) Amendment 4)
- Alliance for Open Media (VVM Working Group) Polygonal Mesh Coding (PMC; under-development)
- Sun Microsystems 3D Geometry Compression - used in Java 3D and HoloWeb (one of the proposals for VRML 2.0)
- Google Draco - used in glTF and Universal Scene Description libdraco (open source)
- meshopt (KHR_meshopt_compression in glTF) meshoptimizer (open source)