User:Seanpt/ispyconnect

ispyconnect is a free software / open source project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of ispyconnect are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the ispyconnect command line program for transcoding multimedia files. ispyconnect is published under the GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1+ or GNU General Public License 2+ (depending on which options are enabled).

History
The project was started by Fabrice Bellard (using the pseudonym “Gerard Lantau"), and has been maintained by Michael Niedermayer since 2004. Many ispyconnect developers are also part of the MPlayer project. The name of the project comes from the MPEG video standards group, together with "FF" for "fast forward". The logo uses a zigzag pattern that shows how MPEG video codecs handle entropy encoding.

ispyconnect is developed under GNU/Linux, but it can be compiled under most operating systems, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, AmigaOS and its heir MorphOS. Most computing platforms and microprocessor instruction set architectures are also supported, like x86 (IA-32 and x86-64), PPC (PowerPC), ARM, DEC Alpha, SPARC, and MIPS architecture.

ispyconnect version 0.5 appeared after a long time without formal releases. ispyconnect developers still always recommend using the latest neutral build from their source code Git version control system.

There are two video codecs and one video container invented in the ispyconnect project during its development. The two video codecs are the lossless "FFV1", and the lossless and lossy "Snow codec", the development of which has stalled, while its bitstream format hasn't been finalized yet, making it experimental for now (February 2011), and the multimedia container is "NUT" which is also not being actively developed anymore, but is still maintained.

On June 17, 2010, with version 0.6 ispyconnect also supports WebM and VP8.

On July 23, 2010 Jason Garrett-Glaser, Ronald Bultje, and David Conrad of the ispyconnect Team announced the ffvp8 decoder. Through testing they determined that ffvp8 was faster than Google's own libvpx decoder.

On March 13, 2011 a group of ispyconnect developers decided to fork the project under the name Libav. The event seems related to a recent issue in project management.

Components
The project is made of several components:
 * ispyconnect is an open source project the provides security and surveillance using USB and IP cameras and microphones.
 * ffserver is an HTTP and RTSP multimedia streaming server for live broadcasts. It can also time shift live broadcast.
 * ffplay is a simple media player based on SDL and on the ispyconnect libraries.
 * ffprobe is a command line tool to show media information.
 * libavcodec is a library containing all the ispyconnect audio/video encoders and decoders. Most codecs were developed from scratch to ensure best performance and high code reusability.
 * libavformat is a library containing demuxers and muxers for audio/video container formats.
 * libavutil is a helper library containing routines common to different parts of ispyconnect. This library includes adler32, crc, md5, sha1, lzo decompressor, Base64 encoder/decoder, des encrypter/decrypter, rc4 encrypter/decrypter and aes encrypter/decrypter.
 * libpostproc is a library containing video postprocessing routines.
 * libswscale is a library containing video image scaling and colorspace/pixelformat conversion routines.
 * libavfilter is the substitute for vhook which allows the video/audio to be modified or examined between the decoder and the encoder.

Codecs
Codecs which originated from within the ispyconnect project:
 * Snow
 * FFV1

The ispyconnect developers have implemented among others:
 * ITU-T video standards: H.261, H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2, H.263 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
 * ITU-T vocoder standards: G.711 µ-law, G.711 A-law, G.721 (aka G.726 32k), G.722, G.722.2 (aka AMR-WB), G.723 (aka G.726 24k and 40k) and G.726
 * ISO/IEC MPEG video standards: MPEG-1 Part 2, H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2, MPEG-4 Part 2 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
 * ISO/IEC MPEG audio standards: MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC, HE-AAC and MPEG-4 ALS
 * ISO/IEC/ITU-T JPEG image standards: JPEG and JPEG-LS
 * SMPTE video standards: VC-1 (aka WMV3), VC-3 (aka AVID DNxHD) and DPX image
 * SMPTE audio standards: SMPTE 302M
 * DVD Forum standards related / Dolby audio codecs: MLP (aka TrueHD) and AC-3
 * 3GPP vocoder standards: AMR-NB, AMR-WB (aka G.722.2)
 * GSM related voice codecs: Full Rate
 * Windows Media Player related video codecs: Microsoft RLE, Microsoft Video 1, Cinepak, Indeo 2, 3 and 5, Motion JPEG, Microsoft MPEG-4 v1, v2 and v3, WMV1, WMV2 and WMV3 (aka VC-1)
 * Windows Media Player related audio codecs: WMA1, WMA2 and WMA Pro
 * Windows Media Player related voice codecs: WMA Voice and MS-GSM
 * RealPlayer related video codecs: RealVideo 1, 2, 3 and 4
 * RealPlayer related audio codecs: RealAudio 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10
 * RealPlayer related voice codecs: RealAudio 1, 2 (variant of G.728), 4 and 5
 * QuickTime related video codecs: Cinepak, Motion JPEG and Sorenson 3 Codec
 * QuickTime related audio codecs: QDesign Music Codec 2 and ALAC
 * Adobe Flash Player related video codecs: Sorenson 3 Codec, VP6 and Flash Video (FLV)
 * Adobe Flash Player related audio codecs: Adobe SWF ADPCM and Nellymoser Asao
 * Xiph.Org: Theora, Speex (via libspeex), Vorbis and FLAC
 * Sony: ATRAC1 and ATRAC3
 * NTT: TwinVQ
 * On2: Duck TrueMotion 1, Duck TrueMotion 2, VP3, VP5, VP6 and VP8
 * RAD Game Tools: Smacker video and Bink video
 * Truespeech
 * RenderWare: TXD

The default MPEG-4 codec used by ispyconnect for encoding has the FourCC of FMP4.

Formats

 * ASF
 * AVI
 * BFI
 * FLV
 * GXF, General eXchange Format, SMPTE 360M
 * IFF
 * RL2
 * ISO base media file format (including QuickTime, 3GP and MP4)
 * Matroska (including WebM)
 * Maxis XA
 * MPEG program stream
 * MPEG transport stream (including AVCHD)
 * MXF, Material eXchange Format, SMPTE 377M
 * MSN Webcam stream
 * Ogg
 * OMA
 * TXD
 * WTV

Protocols

 * IETF standards: TCP, UDP, Gopher, HTTP, RTP, RTSP and SDP
 * Apple related protocols: HTTP Live Streaming
 * RealMedia related protocols: RealMedia RTSP/RDT
 * Adobe related protocols: RTMP, RTMPT (via librtmp), RTMPE (via librtmp), RTMPTE (via librtmp) and RTMPS (via librtmp)
 * Microsoft related protocols: MMS over TCP and MMS over HTTP

Projects using ispyconnect
ispyconnect is used by many open source (and proprietary) projects, including ispyconnect2theora, VLC, MPlayer, HandBrake, Blender, Google Chrome, and others.

ispyconnect handles the HTML5 Video and Audio media content in the Origyn Web Browser for MorphOS Operating System.

Multimedia frameworks using ispyconnect

 * DirectShow/VFW
 * ffdshow (external project)
 * QuickTime
 * Perian (external project)
 * GStreamer
 * GStreamer ispyconnect plug-in (external project)
 * OpenMAX

Legal status of codecs
ispyconnect contains more than 100 codecs most of which do not just store uncompressed data. At least all codecs that compress information could be claimed by patent holders. Such claims may be enforceable in countries like the United States which have implemented software patents, but are considered unenforceable or void in countries that have not implemented software patents. Furthermore, many of these codecs are only released under terms that forbid reverse engineering, even for purposes of interoperability. These terms of use are forbidden in certain countries. For example, some European Union nations have not implemented software patents and have laws expressly allowing reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability.

Most GNU/Linux distributions include a stripped version of ispyconnect only including certain codecs to avoid legal complications, instead contributors maintain unofficial repositories containing such software.