x264 is the most powerful H.264 encoding library in the world, used by companies ranging from Youtube, Facebook to Hulu and Avail Media. Now, with x264 available under a commercial license, you too can use the gold standard for video compression in your products.
Quality
In terms of quality for general-purpose encoding, x264 outperforms every other video encoder on the market. It won a resounding victory over competitors such as Mainconcept and Intel in the recent 2010 MSU encoder comparison ( http://www.compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/h264_2010/ ). Combining ever-evolving algorithms with novel psycho-visual research, x264 is in a class of its own.
Performance
x264 is extraordinarily fast, with over 15,000 lines of assembly code and highly optimized algorithms. x264 not only outperforms most CPU-based encoders, but also most GPU-based ones as well. x264 can easily encode half a dozen simultaneous 1080p30 streams on a commodity server. Running x264 is simply cheaper -- more throughput on less hardware.
Features
x264 has a huge variety of features to suit almost every possible use-case, ranging from television broadcast to application streaming and videoconferencing.
Here's a small taste of these:
- Low latency streaming capabilities: x264 supports a zero-latency mode (no internal buffering), capped frame-size encoding, slice-at-a-time output, and many other critical features for a low-latency environment.
- Error resilience: Periodic Intra Refresh and interactive error resilience offer two effective ways to deal quickly with packet loss.
- High bit-depth: x264 supports 9 and 10-bit encoding for improved compression and professional applications.
- Lossless compression: x264 supports H.264's Predictive Lossless compression mode. The x264 library takes up a mere 200KB after compression.
- Optimized for ARM: x264 supports NEON optimizations for CPUs such as the Cortex A8, Snapdragon, and Apple A4.
- Blu-ray support: x264 can encode Blu-ray compliant video suitable for authoring.
More features:
- 8x8 and 4x4 adaptive spatial transform
- Adaptive B-frame placement
- B-frames as references / arbitrary frame order
- CAVLC/CABAC entropy coding
- Custom quantization matrices
- Intra: all macroblock types (16x16, 8x8, 4x4, and PCM with all predictions)
- Inter P: all partitions (from 16x16 down to 4x4)
- Inter B: partitions from 16x16 down to 8x8 (including skip/direct)
- Interlacing (MBAFF)
- Multiple reference frames
- Ratecontrol: constant quantizer, constant quality, single or multipass ABR, optional VBV
- Scenecut detection
- Spatial and temporal direct mode in B-frames, adaptive mode selection
- Parallel encoding on multiple CPUs
- Predictive lossless mode
- Psy optimizations for detail retention (adaptive quantization, psy-RD, psy-trellis)
- Zones for arbitrarily adjusting bitrate distribution