IBC 2007 (Stand 6.111)
On2 Technologies, known for its widely used proprietary streaming video codecs On2 VP6 (used by Adobe Flash) and VP7 (see last week’s story on Vividas), today announced it will start to support MPEG 4 AVC/H.264 compression in its product line, in addition to its own codecs.
The announcement comes on the heels of On2’s pending acquisition of Hantro Products Oy, which develops a broad portfolio of standards based video compression solutions, including H.264, H.263, and VC-1. On2 is looking to position itself as a single source for all the leading advanced video compression schemes.
“While On2’s TrueMotion codecs continue to be the torch-bearer in the industry for advances in video compression, our codec expertise applied to H.264 and other standards-based technologies bodes well for customers who want the best implementation of these standards”, said On2’s CEO and President Bill Joll.
“One factor that generally goes unrecognized in the market is that the H.264 standard specifies playback or decoding specifications only” added Paul Wilkins, co-CTO and SVP of research and development at On2. “By applying our years of encoding expertise to standards based encoding we aim to stand out in our implementations of these technologies”, Wilkins continues.
“We are listening to our customers, and at the same time preserving the investment they have made in our products. In addition, by supporting standards based formats we are expanding the opportunities for On2 and addressing a broader market with our video solutions”, Joll explained his company’s buying into the MPEG standard.
The Flix Engine line currently supports transcoding to H.263, and the H.263 3GPP format used in the mobile video industry and On2’s TrueMotion VP6 compression.
The version of Flix Engine, On2’s primary compression and transcoding software, supporting H.264 will be launched at IBC and released in September. H.264 support for other Flix products will be available in Q4, 2007. The H.264 capable versions will carry an additional IP licensing fee as specified by MPEG-LA, the licensing arm of the MPEG consortium.