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open-standards/wai/glossary/codecs.json
Transaction Science fc75518bcd wai: register wai.video.vp8 and wai.audio.opus.packet for live ingest of WebRTC media 
SPEC §5 *Broadcast and streaming codecs* registers two sink-supplied payload
capabilities, 2026-10-18, no edition named:

- wai.video.vp8 (RFC 6386): VP8 frames in the IVF frame container, FourCC
  VP80, the framing wai.video.vp9 uses. Royalty-free, as VP9. Replicate class
  StandardUnclassified: RFC 6386's decoder-conformance text was not read, so
  the registry promises no byte identity.
- wai.audio.opus.packet (RFC 6716): one Opus packet (§3), TOC byte first, no
  container, the per-packet form a live track carries. No pre-skip or output
  gain (those are Ogg Opus's, RFC 7845 §5.1); wai.audio.opus stays the stored
  stream. Royalty-free; StandardTolerance as wai.audio.opus (RFC 6716 §6).

Both are standalone, Lossy, outside the floor and the recommended set, and
neither is an LCEVC base. The class functions, the registry table, the
classical list, the glossary links and the registry tests list both; SPEC §7's
class table, the research registry (footnote 15) and the changelog record
them. The generated exports follow in the next commit.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]>
2026-10-18 13:52:30 -04:00

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{
"schema": "https://git.transaction.science/Transaction-Science/open-standards/src/branch/main/wai/glossary/SCHEMA.md",
"schema_version": 2,
"entries": [
{
"name": "BMP",
"year": 1990,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Device-independent bitmap (DIB): an uncompressed raster format, optionally run-length encoded. Large files and broad tool support; persists in icon resources and as a simple intermediate format."
},
{
"name": "PCX",
"year": 1985,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The PCX raster format of an early paint program. RLE-compressed indexed-color raster, common in the DOS era. Still readable in image libraries."
},
{
"name": "TGA",
"year": 1984,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The TGA raster format of an early graphics board. Optional RLE, 24-bit color, alpha channel. Simple to parse, which made it common in 1990s game-development and VFX texture pipelines, where it is still used."
},
{
"name": "XPM",
"year": 1989,
"body": "X Window System",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "X PixMap. Text-based image format used by the X Window System for icons and cursors, stored as valid C source so images can be compiled into binaries. Persists in X11 desktop themes."
},
{
"name": "XBM",
"year": 1984,
"body": "X Window System",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "X BitMap. Monochrome predecessor to XPM, also valid C source code. Used for X11 monochrome cursors and early web bitmaps."
},
{
"name": "PBM / PGM / PPM / PAM",
"year": 1988,
"body": "Netpbm",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Portable Bitmap, Graymap, Pixmap and Arbitrary Map: the Netpbm family of trivially simple uncompressed formats, used as the intermediate format of Unix image-processing pipelines."
},
{
"name": "ICO",
"year": 1985,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Icon container format. Holds one or more bitmaps (or PNGs in newer files) at several sizes and color depths; the format of the favicon."
},
{
"name": "CUR",
"year": 1985,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Cursor format: the ICO container with hotspot metadata for the cursor's click point."
},
{
"name": "DDS",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The .dds container for GPU texture-compression formats (BC1–BC7), whose data uploads to the GPU without decoding. Common in PC game texture data."
},
{
"name": "BCn / DXT",
"year": 1998,
"body": "Khronos Group",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Block Compression family (BC1 through BC7), formerly DXT/S3TC. Fixed-ratio block-based GPU texture compression, supported in essentially all desktop GPU hardware."
},
{
"name": "ETC1 / ETC2",
"year": 2005,
"body": "Khronos Group",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "GPU texture compression standardized for OpenGL ES, where ETC2 is a mandatory format; ETC2 added alpha support."
},
{
"name": "ASTC",
"year": 2012,
"body": "Khronos Group",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression. Variable block-size GPU texture compression covering 2D and 3D textures, HDR and several channel layouts. Widely supported on mobile GPUs."
},
{
"name": "PVRTC",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "GPU texture compression specific to one family of tile-based mobile GPUs, whose name the acronym carries."
},
{
"name": "GIF",
"year": 1987,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Graphics Interchange Format. LZW-compressed indexed color with a 256-color palette and simple animation. Persists for short looping animations. Patent disputes over LZW in the 1990s led to the creation of PNG."
},
{
"name": "JPEG",
"year": 1992,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ITU-T T.81 | ISO/IEC 10918-1. DCT-based lossy compression for photographs; the most widely deployed image codec. Its baseline patents have expired, and decoders are universal.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.image.jpeg",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "MozJPEG",
"year": 2014,
"body": "MozJPEG",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open-source JPEG encoder that produces standard, bitstream-compatible JPEG files tuned for smaller size; any JPEG decoder reads its output."
},
{
"name": "JPEG 2000",
"year": 2000,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ITU-T T.800 | ISO/IEC 15444-1. Wavelet-based image coding with lossless and lossy modes. Used in medical imaging (DICOM), digital cinema distribution and archives; browser support is limited.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.image.jp2",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "JPEG XR",
"year": 2009,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "ITU-T T.832 | ISO/IEC 29199-2, standardized from an earlier HD Photo format. Supports HDR and wide gamut. Little deployment outside the platform it originated on."
},
{
"name": "JPEG XS",
"year": 2019,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ISO/IEC 21122. Low-complexity, low-latency intra-frame coding for professional video over IP and other uses where latency matters more than compression ratio. Its RTP payload format is RFC 9134."
},
{
"name": "JPEG XT",
"year": 2015,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ISO/IEC 18477. Backward-compatible HDR extension of JPEG: a baseline JPEG decoder ignores the HDR layer, and an XT decoder reconstructs the full dynamic range. Niche adoption."
},
{
"name": "JPEG_R (gain-map JPEG)",
"year": 2023,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An HDR image format: a standard JPEG with an appended gain map for HDR reconstruction on capable displays. Deployed in mobile camera software and on the web."
},
{
"name": "WebP",
"year": 2010,
"body": "IETF",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Image format built on VP8 intra-frame coding, with lossy and lossless modes; specified in RFC 9649. Broad browser support."
},
{
"name": "WebP 2",
"year": 2021,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Experimental successor to WebP, never positioned for production deployment."
},
{
"name": "BPG",
"year": 2014,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Better Portable Graphics. A single-developer format built on HEVC intra-frame coding. HEVC patent licensing blocked its web adoption."
},
{
"name": "HEIC / HEIF",
"year": 2015,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "High Efficiency Image File Format (ISO/IEC 23008-12), commonly with HEVC-coded images (HEIC). The default photo format of some mobile platforms; HEVC patent licensing has limited web and cross-platform adoption."
},
{
"name": "AVIF",
"year": 2019,
"body": "Alliance for Open Media",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "AV1 Image File Format, specified by the Alliance for Open Media: an AV1 image format based on HEIF and conforming to MIAF. Royalty-free, with broad browser support since 2020.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.image.avif",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "JPEG XL",
"year": 2021,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ISO/IEC 18181. Lossless transcoding of existing JPEG files, rate-distortion tuned for high fidelity, designed for archival as well as web delivery. Browser support is partial.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.image.jxl",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "PNG",
"year": 1996,
"body": "W3C",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Portable Network Graphics, a W3C Recommendation (Third Edition, 2025). Lossless, deflate-compressed, with an alpha channel. Created as a patent-free alternative to GIF; the default for screenshots, UI assets and images that need transparency.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.image.png",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-defined"
}
]
},
{
"name": "APNG",
"year": 2008,
"body": "W3C",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Animated PNG. A backward-compatible extension (decoders without it show the first frame), now part of the PNG specification's third edition. Supported by most browsers."
},
{
"name": "MNG",
"year": 2001,
"body": "PNG Development Group",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Multiple-image Network Graphics. An animated-image format from the PNG group. Not adopted."
},
{
"name": "TIFF",
"year": 1986,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Tagged Image File Format. A container more than a codec: it carries several compression schemes (uncompressed, LZW, deflate, JPEG, CCITT fax). Common in scanning, printing, scientific imaging and archives."
},
{
"name": "Lossless JPEG",
"year": 1993,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Predictive-coding mode within the original JPEG standard. Almost unrelated algorithmically to baseline JPEG. Used in medical imaging (DICOM) and parts of digital photography."
},
{
"name": "JPEG-LS",
"year": 1999,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ISO/IEC 14495. Based on the LOCO-I algorithm. Low-complexity lossless and near-lossless image coding. Used in medical imaging and other domains where exact preservation matters and CPU is limited."
},
{
"name": "LOCO-I",
"year": 1996,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Low Complexity Lossless Compression for Images. The research algorithm that became JPEG-LS."
},
{
"name": "CCITT Group 3 / 4",
"year": 1980,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "The fax compression standards. Run-length and modified-Huffman coding optimized for 1-bit scanned documents. Built into TIFF and PDF; still in active use anywhere documents are faxed or scanned."
},
{
"name": "FLIF",
"year": 2015,
"body": "FLIF",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Free Lossless Image Format, using MANIAC entropy coding. Development stopped when its ideas were taken into JPEG XL."
},
{
"name": "QOI",
"year": 2021,
"body": "QOI",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Quite OK Image format. A lossless raster format designed to be trivial to implement (a few hundred lines of C). Used in small game-development and embedded projects."
},
{
"name": "OpenEXR",
"year": 1999,
"body": "OpenEXR",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "16- and 32-bit floating-point HDR raster format, now an Academy Software Foundation project. The standard format of visual-effects pipelines that preserve scene-linear light."
},
{
"name": "Radiance HDR (.hdr)",
"year": 1989,
"body": "Radiance",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "RGBE format: 8-bit RGB plus an 8-bit shared exponent for HDR storage, from the Radiance lighting-simulation system. Common in image-based lighting."
},
{
"name": "DPX",
"year": 1994,
"body": "SMPTE",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Digital Picture Exchange, SMPTE ST 268. The film-industry format for scanned motion-picture frames, typically 10-bit log. Used in digital-intermediate workflows."
},
{
"name": "Cineon",
"year": 1992,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A 10-bit log format for scanned film frames, the predecessor of DPX."
},
{
"name": "DNG",
"year": 2004,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Digital Negative: an openly documented raw image format derived from TIFF/EP. Adopted by some camera makers; most cameras use their own raw formats."
},
{
"name": "FITS",
"year": 1981,
"body": "IAU FITS Working Group",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Flexible Image Transport System. The standard data format of astronomy: multi-dimensional arrays, structured metadata, integer and floating-point pixel types. Maintained by the IAU FITS Working Group."
},
{
"name": "Hap",
"year": 2012,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A GPU-decoded video codec built on DXT texture compression, published as open source. Designed for live visuals, where decode on the GPU at high frame rates leaves the CPU free."
},
{
"name": "Jetraw",
"year": 2018,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Proprietary near-lossless compression for scientific cameras that quantizes pixel noise rather than signal. Used in microscopy and other scientific imaging."
},
{
"name": "LERC",
"year": 2015,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Limited Error Raster Compression: bounded-error compression for geospatial raster data. Open source; used in GIS pipelines."
},
{
"name": "SVG",
"year": 2001,
"body": "W3C",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Scalable Vector Graphics, a W3C Recommendation. XML-based vector image format supported by every current browser; used for icons, charts and illustrations."
},
{
"name": "EPS",
"year": 1987,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Encapsulated PostScript. The vector format of desktop publishing; still found in print pipelines."
},
{
"name": "PDF (as image container)",
"year": 1993,
"body": "ISO",
"modality": "image",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "ISO 32000. A PDF holding a single image or vector illustration works as an image format; universally readable."
},
{
"name": "Factorized-prior image codec (2016)",
"year": 2016,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "End-to-end optimized image compression (ICLR 2017). Established the autoencoder-with-learned-entropy-model template that later learned image codecs follow."
},
{
"name": "Scale hyperprior (2018)",
"year": 2018,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Variational image compression with a scale hyperprior (ICLR 2018). Introduced the side-information channel that lets the entropy model adapt to local image statistics; a common baseline of learned image coding. The same paper's factorized-prior model is the bmshj2018 baseline."
},
{
"name": "Joint autoregressive and hierarchical prior (2018)",
"year": 2018,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Joint autoregressive and hierarchical priors for learned image compression (NeurIPS 2018). Added a PixelCNN-style context model to the hyperprior and introduced the mean-scale hyperprior."
},
{
"name": "Gaussian-mixture and attention image codec (2020)",
"year": 2020,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Learned image compression with discretized Gaussian mixture likelihoods and attention modules (CVPR 2020). Widely used as a baseline in later learned-compression papers."
},
{
"name": "HiFiC",
"year": 2020,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "High-Fidelity Generative Image Compression (NeurIPS 2020). A GAN-based decoder that produces perceptually convincing reconstructions at very low bitrates; showed that perceptual quality and pixel fidelity diverge under aggressive compression."
},
{
"name": "JPEG AI",
"year": 2025,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "image",
"era": "neural",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ISO/IEC 6048-1:2025 | ITU-T T.840.1 (03/2025). The first formally standardized learned image codec: end-to-end learned, with profiles for human viewing and machine analysis. Its bit-exact conformance point is the entropy-decoder output.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.image.jpegai",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "neural-entropy-exact"
}
]
},
{
"name": "PerCo",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Perceptual compression with a diffusion decoder at ultra-low bitrates, with realism as the explicit objective (ICLR 2024)."
},
{
"name": "PixelCNN (as codec)",
"year": 2016,
"body": null,
"modality": "image",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "An autoregressive density model used for lossless image compression by arithmetic coding over its predicted distributions. Slow; the template for many later learned lossless approaches."
},
{
"name": "H.120",
"year": 1984,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "The first digital video coding standard. Motion-compensated DPCM, no DCT. Video quality was too poor for practical deployment, but the development process and lessons learned shaped every subsequent ITU-T video standard."
},
{
"name": "H.261",
"year": 1988,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "The first practical digital video coding standard, designed for ISDN video telephony at 64 kbit/s multiples. Established the DCT + motion compensation + entropy coding template that every subsequent ITU-T and ISO/IEC video standard built on."
},
{
"name": "H.262 / MPEG-2 Video",
"year": 1995,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ITU-T H.262 | ISO/IEC 13818-2. The video codec of DVD and of digital terrestrial broadcasting, including ATSC; still in broadcast use."
},
{
"name": "H.263",
"year": 1995,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Low-bitrate video for telephony over PSTN lines and early mobile networks; carried most 3G video calls and early web video."
},
{
"name": "I263",
"year": 1996,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A non-standard variant of H.263, incompatible with the published specification. Used in early video conferencing software."
},
{
"name": "FLV1 (FourCC)",
"year": 2002,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A modified H.263 codec, the first video codec of the FLV container."
},
{
"name": "H.264 / AVC",
"year": 2003,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10. Hardware decoder support across phones, TVs, browsers and set-top boxes; used on Blu-ray Disc.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.avc",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-defined"
}
]
},
{
"name": "HEVC / H.265",
"year": 2013,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "High Efficiency Video Coding, ITU-T H.265 | ISO/IEC 23008-2. Hardware support universal by 2018. Used for UHD broadcast and on Ultra HD Blu-ray; its patents are licensed through several pools.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.hevc",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-defined"
}
]
},
{
"name": "VVC / H.266",
"year": 2020,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Versatile Video Coding, ITU-T H.266 | ISO/IEC 23090-3. Its patents are licensed through pools and bilateral licensors.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.vvc",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-defined"
}
]
},
{
"name": "ECM",
"year": 2022,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Enhanced Compression Model: the experimental reference software JVET uses to explore video coding beyond VVC."
},
{
"name": "H.264 SVC",
"year": 2007,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Scalable Video Coding extension to H.264. Encode once into a layered bitstream; decoders pick a subset matching their capabilities. Used in some video conferencing and adaptive streaming systems."
},
{
"name": "H.264 MVC",
"year": 2009,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Multiview Video Coding. H.264 extension for stereoscopic 3D video. Used on Blu-ray 3D and during the brief 3D-TV era."
},
{
"name": "AVCHD",
"year": 2006,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Advanced Video Coding High Definition: an application format using H.264 for consumer HD camcorders, from 2006."
},
{
"name": "AVC-Intra",
"year": 2007,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Intra-frame-only H.264 profiles for professional camcorders, used in broadcast acquisition where edit-friendliness matters more than compression ratio."
},
{
"name": "XAVC",
"year": 2012,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An H.264-based recording format for professional camcorders and cinema cameras, up to 4K and beyond."
},
{
"name": "LCEVC",
"year": 2020,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding, MPEG-5 Part 2 (ISO/IEC 23094-2). An enhancement layer whose residuals are added to the upscaled output of a base encode, so it has no meaning on its own. Niche adoption in streaming workflows where reducing encoder cost matters.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.lcevc",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "EVC",
"year": 2020,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Essential Video Coding, MPEG-5 Part 1 (ISO/IEC 23094-1). Two profiles: Baseline uses only coding tools more than 20 years old or offered royalty-free; Main adds tools whose holders license them on FRAND terms. Minimal adoption.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.evc",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
},
{
"capability": "wai.video.evc.baseline",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "AVS3 video",
"year": 2021,
"body": "T/AI 109.2-2021",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "AVS3 Part 2 video coding, published as T/AI 109.2-2021 and as IEEE 1857.10. DVB's video and audio coding specification (ETSI TS 101 154) added it in 2022.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.avs3",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "MPEG-1 Video",
"year": 1993,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ISO/IEC 11172-2. Designed for Video CD at about 1.5 Mbit/s; its audio part, Layer III, is MP3."
},
{
"name": "MPEG-4 Part 2 (ASP)",
"year": 1999,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Advanced Simple Profile of MPEG-4 Part 2 (ISO/IEC 14496-2). Common in file-shared video of the 2000s and on portable devices and digital cameras into the 2010s."
},
{
"name": "MPEG-4 Visual SP",
"year": 1999,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Simple Profile of MPEG-4 Part 2, the 3GPP profile for mobile video on early 3G phones."
},
{
"name": "MPEG-4 Part 2 in AVI (proprietary, 1999)",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A proprietary MPEG-4 Part 2 implementation and file format of the late 1990s and 2000s."
},
{
"name": "Xvid",
"year": 2001,
"body": "Xvid",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open-source MPEG-4 Part 2 implementation, common in the early-2000s download scene."
},
{
"name": "MPEG-4 Part 2 cross-platform implementation (2001)",
"year": 2001,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An MPEG-4 Part 2 implementation from the early 2000s, used briefly in cross-platform playback."
},
{
"name": "VP3",
"year": 2000,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Released as open source in 2001 and given to the Xiph.Org Foundation as the basis of Theora; the start of the open-codec lineage that led to AV1."
},
{
"name": "VP4",
"year": 2000,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The incremental successor to VP3. Little deployment."
},
{
"name": "VP5",
"year": 2002,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A mid-2000s video codec with modest deployment in early streaming products."
},
{
"name": "VP6",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The video codec of the FLV container (.flv) from 2005 to about 2010, the main web video codec of that period."
},
{
"name": "VP7",
"year": 2005,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A mid-2000s video codec used briefly for internet video calls; the step before VP8."
},
{
"name": "VP8",
"year": 2010,
"body": "WebM Project",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A royalty-free video codec released as open source through the WebM Project (RFC 6386 describes its bitstream). The mandatory-to-implement video codec of WebRTC, with H.264.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.vp8",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "VP9",
"year": 2013,
"body": "WebM Project",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Successor to VP8, specified by the VP9 Bitstream & Decoding Process Specification. Used for streaming delivery and decoded in hardware on many devices.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.vp9",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-defined"
}
]
},
{
"name": "AV1",
"year": 2018,
"body": "Alliance for Open Media",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "AV1 Bitstream & Decoding Process Specification of the Alliance for Open Media (2018), licensed royalty-free under the AOMedia Patent License 1.0. Used by major streaming services, with hardware decode widely shipped by 2023.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.av1",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
},
{
"capability": "wai.video.av1.lossless",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "AV2",
"year": 2026,
"body": "Alliance for Open Media",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "AV2 Bitstream & Decoding Process Specification v1.0.0 (28 May 2026), with the AVM v1.0.0 reference software. Coded as OBUs; the specification's Annex B defines a length-delimited form in which each OBU is preceded by its leb128 byte length.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.av2",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "TrueMotion",
"year": 1994,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The predecessors of the VPx codecs, used in some 1990s multimedia titles."
},
{
"name": "MSVC (Video 1)",
"year": 1992,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A vector-quantization codec of an early-1990s desktop video framework, identified by the FourCC MSVC; the same codec as CRAM."
},
{
"name": "MSRLE",
"year": 1991,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An 8-bit run-length-encoded video codec of an early-1990s desktop video framework, used for simple animations and screen captures."
},
{
"name": "MP41 / MP42 / MP43",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Early, non-conforming MPEG-4 Part 2 variants identified by these FourCCs; MP43 was the basis of an early proprietary MPEG-4 Part 2 implementation in AVI."
},
{
"name": "WMV1 / WMV2 / WMV3 (FourCC)",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A family of proprietary video codecs of the late 1990s and 2000s, identified by these FourCCs; the third was standardized as VC-1."
},
{
"name": "VC-1 (SMPTE 421M)",
"year": 2006,
"body": "SMPTE",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "SMPTE 421M, the standardized form of the WMV3 codec. A mandatory codec of HD DVD and an optional codec of Blu-ray Disc."
},
{
"name": "MSS1 / MSS2 (FourCC)",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Screen-capture variants of the WMV1–WMV3 family, for presentation recording."
},
{
"name": "Animation RLE (FourCC rle)",
"year": 1991,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A run-length-encoded codec of a 1991 desktop video framework, lossless or near-lossless, for flat-color animation; still used for lossless intermediates."
},
{
"name": "RPZA (Road Pizza)",
"year": 1991,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The codec of the first release of a 1991 desktop video framework, based on vector quantization; one of the first widely used software video codecs."
},
{
"name": "SMC (FourCC smc)",
"year": 1991,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A vector-quantization codec for screen captures and pixel art in an early desktop video framework."
},
{
"name": "SVQ1 / SVQ3",
"year": 1998,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The main video codecs of a desktop video framework in the late 1990s and early 2000s, under a proprietary licence; SVQ3 is H.264-derived."
},
{
"name": "Cinepak",
"year": 1991,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A vector-quantization codec designed for 1x CD-ROM transfer rates (150 KB/s). The main video codec of the desktop video frameworks of its time, and of many 1990s console titles."
},
{
"name": "Pixlet",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A wavelet-based intra-frame codec, used briefly for film previews."
},
{
"name": "SMPTE RDD 36",
"year": 2007,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An intra-frame codec family for professional editing, with tiers from proxy to 4444 XQ. Widely used in post-production; designed for editing, not delivery. Its bitstream is documented in SMPTE RDD 36."
},
{
"name": "AIC (Intermediate Codec)",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An editing intermediate for HDV workflows that preceded the SMPTE RDD 36 family."
},
{
"name": "RT21 (FourCC)",
"year": 1992,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A vector-quantization codec of the early 1990s, the first of a family identified by the FourCCs RT21, IV31/IV32, IV41 and IV50."
},
{
"name": "IV31 / IV32 (FourCC)",
"year": 1993,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A mid-1990s consumer multimedia codec, shipped on many CD-ROM titles."
},
{
"name": "IV41 (FourCC)",
"year": 1995,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A wavelet-based variant of the RT21 family, used in some late-1990s educational and game titles."
},
{
"name": "IV50 (FourCC)",
"year": 1997,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The last release of the RT21 family."
},
{
"name": "RV10–RV40 (FourCC)",
"year": 1997,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A streaming video codec family of the late 1990s and early 2000s (RV10 through RV40), tied to its own player and streaming servers."
},
{
"name": "FLV screen video v1 / v2",
"year": 2002,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Screen-recording codecs of the FLV container; v1 carried many mid-2000s screencasts."
},
{
"name": "ASAO (in video packages)",
"year": 2002,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An audio codec of a 2000s browser-plugin multimedia platform, listed here because early conferencing video-plus-audio packages carried it. See the audio entry."
},
{
"name": "Theora",
"year": 2004,
"body": "Xiph.Org Foundation",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open-source video codec from the Xiph.Org Foundation, derived from VP3. Considered for HTML5's baseline video codec; succeeded by VP8 and AV1."
},
{
"name": "Dirac",
"year": 2008,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A wavelet-based, royalty-free, open-source video codec designed for broadcast use; its professional subset was standardized as SMPTE VC-2 (ST 2042). Not deployed widely for distribution."
},
{
"name": "Tarkin",
"year": 2001,
"body": "Xiph.Org Foundation",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A wavelet-based video codec project of the Xiph.Org Foundation, abandoned before it reached a usable state."
},
{
"name": "Snow",
"year": 2004,
"body": "FFmpeg",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An experimental wavelet-based codec in FFmpeg, with lossless and lossy modes. Not used by any production format."
},
{
"name": "Schrödinger",
"year": 2008,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An alternative implementation of Dirac; abandoned with Dirac."
},
{
"name": "Daala",
"year": 2013,
"body": "Xiph.Org Foundation",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A next-generation open video codec project of the Xiph.Org Foundation. Several of its ideas (lapped transforms, perceptual vector quantization) were contributed to AV1."
},
{
"name": "Thor",
"year": 2015,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A royalty-free video codec project, contributed to AV1 and then discontinued; documented in IETF NETVC drafts."
},
{
"name": "DV / DVCPRO / DVCAM",
"year": 1995,
"body": "IEC",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Digital Video (IEC 61834): an intra-frame DCT codec at a fixed 25 Mbit/s, used in consumer and prosumer camcorders from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s."
},
{
"name": "DVCPRO HD",
"year": 2000,
"body": "SMPTE",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The HD extension of DVCPRO at 100 Mbit/s (SMPTE 370M), used in broadcast acquisition."
},
{
"name": "HDCAM",
"year": 1997,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An HD broadcast tape format with a DCT-based intra-frame codec, common in 2000s HD broadcast."
},
{
"name": "VC-3 (SMPTE ST 2019-1)",
"year": 2004,
"body": "SMPTE",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "SMPTE VC-3 (ST 2019-1), an intra-frame codec for professional editing; two implementation families carry it. Heavily used in broadcast and post-production."
},
{
"name": "JPEG 2000 (DCI cinema)",
"year": 2005,
"body": "ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (JPEG)",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "JPEG 2000 codestreams as the picture essence of the Digital Cinema Package (SMPTE ST 429 / ST 422), the distribution format of theatrical digital cinema.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.video.j2k",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "VC-5 (CineForm)",
"year": 2003,
"body": "SMPTE",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "SMPTE VC-5 (ST 2073), a wavelet-based visually lossless intermediate codec; CineForm is its implementation, released as open source."
},
{
"name": "BRAW",
"year": 2018,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A partially processed raw video codec of cinema cameras, preserving sensor data at sizes below CinemaDNG."
},
{
"name": "CinemaDNG",
"year": 2008,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Frame sequences of DNG for motion-picture cameras, used by some independent cinema cameras for raw recording."
},
{
"name": "R3D camera raw (.r3d)",
"year": 2007,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A wavelet-based raw video codec of a cinema camera line."
},
{
"name": "ARI camera raw (.ari)",
"year": 2009,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The uncompressed raw output of a cinema camera line, used as a reference acquisition format."
},
{
"name": "MPEG-2 I-frame intermediate",
"year": 2001,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "MPEG-2 intra-only coding at high bitrates, used as an editing intermediate in some broadcast workflows."
},
{
"name": "Hap (video)",
"year": 2012,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "DXT-based GPU-decoded video for live visuals at high frame rates: texture compression used as video. See the image-modality entry."
},
{
"name": "DXV",
"year": 2009,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Texture-compressed video for live-visuals software; decode runs on the GPU at minimal CPU cost."
},
{
"name": "Forward Uncompressed (FRWU)",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An uncompressed YUV codec found in legacy archives."
},
{
"name": "Huffyuv",
"year": 2000,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A lossless video codec using predictive coding plus Huffman entropy coding; the original lossless editing intermediate of its platform, with a family of descendants."
},
{
"name": "FFV1",
"year": 2003,
"body": "IETF",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A lossless intra-frame video codec, range-coded, specified in RFC 9043. Used for video archival by national memory institutions."
},
{
"name": "Lagarith",
"year": 2004,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A lossless video codec with arithmetic coding, used in screen capture and editing workflows."
},
{
"name": "MagicYUV",
"year": 2015,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A fast lossless video codec for capture and editing, built for multi-core encoding."
},
{
"name": "Ut Video",
"year": 2008,
"body": "Ut Video",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open-source lossless video codec with broad chroma-format support."
},
{
"name": "MSU Lossless Video Codec",
"year": 2005,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A research lossless video codec from a university video group, favouring compression over speed."
},
{
"name": "MSU Screen Capture Lossless",
"year": 2007,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A screen-capture variant of the same research codec family."
},
{
"name": "ASLC",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A lossless video codec using median prediction plus Huffman coding, briefly used in capture workflows."
},
{
"name": "CamStudio Lossless",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "The codec of an open-source screen recorder: optional delta-frame coding with LZO or deflate."
},
{
"name": "CLLC",
"year": 2001,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An editing-oriented lossless codec (FourCC CLLC) using left prediction plus Huffman coding."
},
{
"name": "YULS / ArithYUV",
"year": 2004,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Arithmetic-coded variants of the Huffyuv approach, used in some capture workflows."
},
{
"name": "ScreenPressor",
"year": 2007,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A screen-capture codec."
},
{
"name": "LCL (MSZH / ZLIB)",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "LossLess Codec Library: frames compressed with LZ77 variants, common in late-1990s capture workflows."
},
{
"name": "CorePNG",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A sequence of PNG frames packaged as a video stream; lossless, for animated content with transparency."
},
{
"name": "Sheer Video",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A mathematically lossless professional video codec used in a few editing workflows; no longer maintained."
},
{
"name": "TSCC",
"year": 2002,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A screen-capture codec built for the slow, region-stable nature of screen recordings."
},
{
"name": "TSC2",
"year": 2010,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The successor to TSCC, also for screen content."
},
{
"name": "EnSharpen",
"year": 2008,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A screen-capture codec for editing intermediates."
},
{
"name": "VMnc",
"year": 2010,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A screen codec used by remote-display protocols and recording tools (FourCC VMnc)."
},
{
"name": "Fraps",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A lossless YV12 codec for real-time capture of game framebuffers, from a game-capture utility of the same name."
},
{
"name": "Dxtory",
"year": 2010,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A lossless RGB game-capture codec from the capture tool of the same name."
},
{
"name": "FIC",
"year": 2010,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Fast Intra Codec, used by a game-capture tool."
},
{
"name": "G2M",
"year": 2006,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A screen codec for desktop sharing in a web-conferencing service, mixing lossless and lossy regions by content."
},
{
"name": "LSCR",
"year": 2010,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A screen-capture codec from a multimedia SDK."
},
{
"name": "MWSC",
"year": 2008,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A screen-capture codec bundled with presentation software."
},
{
"name": "RSCC",
"year": 2009,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A screen-capture codec used in remote-support software."
},
{
"name": "Mimic",
"year": 2006,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A screen-capture codec with niche enterprise deployments."
},
{
"name": "CRAM",
"year": 1992,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A vector-quantization, indexed-color codec of an early-1990s desktop video framework; see MSVC (Video 1)."
},
{
"name": "SMK video (.smk)",
"year": 1994,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An 8-bit palette-based video codec with adaptive Huffman coding, used for cinematics in many 1990s PC games."
},
{
"name": "BIK video (.bik)",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A hybrid block-transform and wavelet codec designed for low decoder requirements across game consoles; used for in-game cinematics for over two decades."
},
{
"name": "BK2 video (.bk2)",
"year": 2011,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The current revision of the BIK format, for HD cinematics in games."
},
{
"name": "RoQ",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A vector-quantization cinematic video codec used in late-1990s and early-2000s games."
},
{
"name": "CIN (1997 game engine)",
"year": 1997,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The cinematic format of a 1997 game engine: simple intra-frame compression for intro and ending videos."
},
{
"name": "SANM / Smush",
"year": 1993,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A game cinematic video codec of the CD-ROM era, packaged in its own container."
},
{
"name": "MVE",
"year": 1994,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A multimedia format with its own video codec, used in many 1990s games."
},
{
"name": "VMD",
"year": 1996,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An in-house video format for full-motion video in 1990s adventure games."
},
{
"name": "VQA",
"year": 1992,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Vector Quantized Animation, the video format of a series of 1990s strategy and adventure games."
},
{
"name": "C93",
"year": 1993,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A one-off game-engine video format of the 1990s."
},
{
"name": "DSI CIN",
"year": 1991,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An in-house game video format of the early 1990s."
},
{
"name": "Escape 124 / 130",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Game-engine video codecs of the early 2000s."
},
{
"name": "KMVC",
"year": 1995,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A game cinematic video codec of the mid-1990s."
},
{
"name": "KGV1",
"year": 2005,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A capture codec built into a console emulator, used for game preservation and speedrun recording."
},
{
"name": "UltiMotion",
"year": 1993,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A CD-ROM-era multimedia codec of the early 1990s."
},
{
"name": "FLIC / FLI / FLC",
"year": 1991,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Run-length-encoded indexed-color animation, the animation format of DOS-era multimedia."
},
{
"name": "HNM (Hello Nico)",
"year": 1995,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A video format used in several 1990s adventure games."
},
{
"name": "ClearVideo",
"year": 1996,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A fractal-based video codec of the 1990s, considered for video conferencing."
},
{
"name": "Fractal video codec (2001)",
"year": 2001,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A fractal video codec; never deployed at scale."
},
{
"name": "MidiVid",
"year": 2004,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A vector-quantization codec for game animation archives."
},
{
"name": "DXA",
"year": 2003,
"body": "ScummVM",
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A format the ScummVM project uses to package video for some re-engineered games."
},
{
"name": "Pixel-VQ (XCF)",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Vector-quantization variants used in a few game titles, documented mostly by reverse-engineering projects."
},
{
"name": "DVC",
"year": 2019,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Deep Video Compression. The first end-to-end deep video compression framework. Established the residual-coding paradigm: predicted frames generated, residuals encoded by a learned image codec."
},
{
"name": "M-LVC",
"year": 2020,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Multiple-frames Learned Video Compression (CVPR 2020): multiple reference frames and a learned in-loop filter."
},
{
"name": "FVC",
"year": 2021,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Feature-domain Video Compression. Moved all the major operations (motion estimation, compensation, residual coding) into a learned feature space rather than pixel space."
},
{
"name": "DCVC",
"year": 2021,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Deep Contextual Video Compression (NeurIPS 2021). Moved from residual coding to conditional coding with learned context features from previously decoded frames; the template of the DCVC series."
},
{
"name": "DCVC-TCM",
"year": 2022,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Temporal Context Mining variant of DCVC, with multi-scale temporal contexts."
},
{
"name": "DCVC-HEM",
"year": 2022,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Hybrid Entropy Model variant of DCVC."
},
{
"name": "DCVC-DC",
"year": 2023,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Diverse Contexts variant of DCVC."
},
{
"name": "DCVC-FM",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Feature Modulation variant of DCVC (CVPR 2024): single-model variable-rate coding across a wide bitrate range, in RGB and YUV.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.neural.dcvc_fm",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "neural-float"
}
]
},
{
"name": "C2F",
"year": 2022,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Coarse-to-fine motion estimation with hyperprior-guided adaptive coding, a learned video framework."
},
{
"name": "MMVC",
"year": 2023,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Mixed-Motion Video Coding: adapts the coding strategy per block to its motion."
},
{
"name": "DHVC 1.0 / 2.0",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Deep Hierarchical Video Compression: a hierarchical VAE in place of the conditional-coding template, with real-time encoding and decoding on consumer GPUs reported."
},
{
"name": "VCT",
"year": 2022,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Video Compression Transformer. Pure-transformer architecture for neural video compression."
},
{
"name": "I2VC",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Unified Intra and Inter-frame Video Compression. Single framework that handles I-frames, P-frames, and B-frames in one architecture."
},
{
"name": "GFVC",
"year": 2022,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Generative Face Video Coding. Family of codecs that transmit a reference frame plus a stream of facial keypoints or 3DMM parameters, with the receiver animating the face from those primitives. Ships talking-head video at single-digit kilobits per second."
},
{
"name": "AVCC",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Audio-Visual Cross-modal Codec: audio and video in one low-bitrate codec that uses lip motion to help reconstruct audio, reported at about 1.4 kbit/s for talking-head video plus audio."
},
{
"name": "CMVC",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Coherent Motion Video Compression. Decomposes video into semantically coherent clips, each represented as a keyframe plus a motion description. Receiver synthesizes the motion."
},
{
"name": "First Frame + Description",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "An ultra-low-bitrate video scheme: a still image plus a text description, from which the receiver generates the motion."
},
{
"name": "Face reenactment conferencing codec",
"year": 2020,
"body": null,
"modality": "video",
"era": "neural",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A production video-conferencing toolkit that includes a generative face codec for ultra-low-bitrate talking-head video. See GFVC for the codec family."
},
{
"name": "PCM (uncompressed)",
"year": 1937,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Pulse Code Modulation: not compression, but the representation every digital audio codec decodes to, and the payload of WAV, AIFF and most uncompressed audio."
},
{
"name": "ADPCM",
"year": 1973,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Adaptive Differential PCM: predictive coding for digital telephony at half the bandwidth of PCM, used in early CD-ROM games, DECT cordless phones and as ITU-T G.726."
},
{
"name": "IMA ADPCM",
"year": 1992,
"body": "Interactive Multimedia Association",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "An ADPCM variant with a 4:1 compression ratio, widely used in 1990s multimedia and game audio."
},
{
"name": "ADPCM (WAVE format 2)",
"year": 1991,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The ADPCM variant registered as WAVE format tag 2, a common compressed audio format in WAV files of the 1990s."
},
{
"name": "A-law / Mu-law",
"year": 1972,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Companding logarithmic PCM as defined in G.711. The fundamental encoding of analog telephony. Mu-law in North America and Japan, A-law in Europe. Still ubiquitous in circuit-switched telephony."
},
{
"name": "ADX",
"year": 1992,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An ADPCM-derived format used in many games of the late 1990s and early 2000s."
},
{
"name": "MP1",
"year": 1991,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "MPEG-1 Audio Layer I (ISO/IEC 11172-3), the simplest of the three MPEG-1 audio layers; used on Digital Compact Cassette."
},
{
"name": "MP2",
"year": 1991,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (ISO/IEC 11172-3). Designed for digital broadcasting; still the audio of DAB radio in much of Europe and of many MPEG-2 transport streams."
},
{
"name": "MP3",
"year": 1993,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (ISO/IEC 11172-3). The defining consumer digital audio format for two decades; its patents expired in 2017, and decoders are universal."
},
{
"name": "MP3 PRO",
"year": 2001,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "MP3 with Spectral Band Replication, backward-compatible (decoders without it hear only the base layer). Not adopted."
},
{
"name": "AAC",
"year": 1997,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Advanced Audio Coding (ISO/IEC 13818-7, ISO/IEC 14496-3). The successor to MP3 in the MPEG audio family; carried in broadcast, streaming and device playback.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.aac",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "HE-AAC",
"year": 2003,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "High-Efficiency AAC: baseline AAC with Spectral Band Replication. Used in DAB+, satellite radio and low-bitrate streaming.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.aac",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "HE-AAC v2",
"year": 2004,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "HE-AAC plus Parametric Stereo, for very-low-bitrate stereo audio (under 32 kbit/s). Used in some streaming radio applications.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.aac",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "AAC-LD",
"year": 2000,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Low-Delay AAC, for real-time bidirectional audio such as video calling."
},
{
"name": "AAC-ELD",
"year": 2008,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Enhanced Low-Delay AAC, with lower latency than AAC-LD; used in some audio-over-IP applications."
},
{
"name": "xHE-AAC",
"year": 2012,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Extended HE-AAC: the AAC profile that adds USAC's unified speech-and-audio coding to HE-AAC v2. Used by streaming services for low-bitrate delivery. ADTS cannot carry it."
},
{
"name": "MPEG-D USAC",
"year": 2012,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Unified Speech and Audio Coding. Combines AAC with speech-coding techniques in a single codec. The basis of xHE-AAC."
},
{
"name": "MPEG-H 3D Audio",
"year": 2015,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ISO/IEC 23008-3. Channel-, object- and scene-based (higher-order ambisonics) audio. Its self-synchronising packet stream, the MPEG-H 3D Audio Stream (MHAS), is the form broadcast carriage uses.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.mpegh",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "AVS3 audio (Audio Vivid)",
"year": 2023,
"body": "T/AI 109.3-2023",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "AVS3 Part 3 immersive audio with lossy and lossless modes: T/AI 109.3-2023, GY/T 363-2023 (\"Audio Vivid\") and the national 3D-audio standard GB/T 46271-2025, treated as one bitstream family (their bitstream identity was not checked against the standard texts). DVB's video and audio coding specification added it in November 2024.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.avs3",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "IAMF",
"year": 2023,
"body": "Alliance for Open Media",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Immersive Audio Model and Formats of the Alliance for Open Media: a codec-agnostic description of channel-based, scene-based (ambisonics) and binaural immersive audio that carries Opus, AAC, FLAC or LPCM substreams. Reference implementation libiamf (Apache-2.0).",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.iamf",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "Musepack (MPC)",
"year": 1997,
"body": "Musepack",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open lossy audio codec based on MPEG-1 Layer II techniques, used in the late-1990s audiophile scene; development stalled in 2009."
},
{
"name": "MPEG-4 ALS",
"year": 2006,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "MPEG-4 Audio Lossless Coding (ISO/IEC 14496-3). Used in some broadcast archival workflows."
},
{
"name": "MPEG-4 SLS",
"year": 2006,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "MPEG-4 Scalable to Lossless: a lossy AAC base layer that can be augmented to lossless. Niche adoption."
},
{
"name": "HVXC",
"year": 1999,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Harmonic Vector Excitation Coding. Very-low-bitrate parametric speech codec inside MPEG-4 Audio. Almost no deployment."
},
{
"name": "HILN",
"year": 2000,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Harmonic and Individual Lines and Noise. Parametric audio codec inside MPEG-4 Audio. Effectively a research artifact."
},
{
"name": "Vorbis",
"year": 2002,
"body": "Xiph.Org Foundation",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A royalty-free general-purpose audio codec from the Xiph.Org Foundation; the audio codec of the original WebM. Largely superseded by Opus."
},
{
"name": "Speex",
"year": 2003,
"body": "Xiph.Org Foundation",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open-source CELP-based speech codec from the Xiph.Org Foundation, royalty-free, widely used in open-source VoIP; obsoleted by Opus in 2012."
},
{
"name": "CELT",
"year": 2007,
"body": "Xiph.Org Foundation",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Constrained Energy Lapped Transform: a low-latency music codec from the Xiph.Org Foundation, folded into Opus as its music mode."
},
{
"name": "FLAC",
"year": 2001,
"body": "IETF",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Free Lossless Audio Codec, specified in RFC 9639. The common lossless format for music archival and distribution; royalty-free and open source.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.flac",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-defined"
}
]
},
{
"name": "OggPCM",
"year": 2004,
"body": "Xiph.Org Foundation",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Uncompressed PCM in an Ogg container, with Ogg metadata."
},
{
"name": "Opus",
"year": 2012,
"body": "IETF",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "RFC 6716. A hybrid of SILK and CELT covering 6 kbit/s narrowband speech to 510 kbit/s music. Mandatory to implement in WebRTC; widely used in VoIP and low-latency audio.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.opus",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
},
{
"capability": "wai.audio.opus.packet",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "WAVE format 0x0160 / 0x0161 audio",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A proprietary lossy audio codec family of the late 1990s and 2000s."
},
{
"name": "WAVE format 0x0162 audio",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A higher-quality, multichannel variant of the 0x0161 audio family."
},
{
"name": "WAVE format 0x0163 audio (lossless)",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The lossless variant of the 0x0161 audio family."
},
{
"name": "WAVE format 0x000A audio (speech)",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A low-bitrate speech variant of the 0x0161 audio family."
},
{
"name": "cook / sipr streaming audio (FourCC)",
"year": 1995,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A proprietary streaming audio codec family of the late 1990s and 2000s (FourCCs cook, sipr and others), tied to its own player and servers."
},
{
"name": "ralf (FourCC, lossless)",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The lossless variant of the cook / sipr streaming audio family."
},
{
"name": "ATRAC",
"year": 1992,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding, the codec of a 1990s magneto-optical recordable disc format, with several revisions."
},
{
"name": "ATRAC3 / ATRAC3plus",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Successor variants of ATRAC, used in portable players and handheld consoles."
},
{
"name": "ATRAC Advanced Lossless",
"year": 2006,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A lossless hybrid extension of ATRAC, used in the late high-capacity revision of the same disc format."
},
{
"name": "QDM2 (FourCC)",
"year": 1997,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An audio codec of a desktop video framework in the late 1990s and early 2000s."
},
{
"name": "QCELP (TIA IS-733)",
"year": 1994,
"body": "TIA",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Code Excited Linear Prediction speech coding for early CDMA phones, standardized as TIA IS-96 and IS-733; the .qcp file format."
},
{
"name": "ASAO",
"year": 2002,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A speech and music codec of a 2000s browser-plugin multimedia platform, used for live audio streaming and voice chat."
},
{
"name": "AC-3 (ATSC A/52)",
"year": 1991,
"body": "ATSC",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "ATSC A/52 (also ETSI TS 102 366). The audio codec of DVD, ATSC broadcast and much cinema sound: 5.1 surround at 384–448 kbit/s."
},
{
"name": "E-AC-3 (ATSC A/52 Annex E)",
"year": 2004,
"body": "ATSC",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Enhanced AC-3, ATSC A/52 Annex E and ETSI TS 102 366: higher bitrates and more channels; used for surround audio in streaming."
},
{
"name": "AC-4 (ETSI TS 103 190)",
"year": 2014,
"body": "ETSI",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "ETSI TS 103 190: a next-generation audio codec with object-based audio, used in some ATSC 3.0 and DVB broadcasts. Proprietary licensing.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.ac4",
"licence": "proprietary",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "DCA (ETSI TS 102 114)",
"year": 1993,
"body": "ETSI",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Coherent Acoustics, ETSI TS 102 114: a multichannel audio codec on DVD and Blu-ray Disc."
},
{
"name": "DCA lossless extension (XLL)",
"year": 2004,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The lossless hybrid extension of Coherent Acoustics, used on Blu-ray Disc and Ultra HD Blu-ray."
},
{
"name": "ETSI TS 103 491",
"year": 2015,
"body": "ETSI",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "ETSI TS 103 491: an object-based immersive audio format for cinema, home and broadcast."
},
{
"name": "TrueHD",
"year": 2005,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A lossless audio codec on Blu-ray Disc and Ultra HD Blu-ray, based on MLP."
},
{
"name": "MLP",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "The lossless packing algorithm of DVD-Audio and the basis of TrueHD."
},
{
"name": "Object-based immersive audio layer",
"year": 2012,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Object-based surround audio that is not a codec of its own but a layer carried in E-AC-3 (joint object coding), AC-4 or TrueHD. Widely used in cinema and home audio."
},
{
"name": "Layered height-channel cinema audio (2010)",
"year": 2010,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A layered immersive audio format used in some cinemas and home receivers."
},
{
"name": "DRA",
"year": 2007,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "A Chinese national audio coding standard, used in domestic broadcast and HD radio in China."
},
{
"name": "SDDS",
"year": 1993,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Dynamic Digital Sound: a cinema audio format on 8-track 35mm prints, discontinued in 2006."
},
{
"name": "Shorten (SHN)",
"year": 1994,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An early widely used lossless audio codec (predictive coding plus Rice coding), common in live-recording trading communities before FLAC."
},
{
"name": "Monkey's Audio (APE)",
"year": 2000,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A lossless audio codec with high compression ratios; its licence has limited its inclusion in players."
},
{
"name": "WavPack",
"year": 1998,
"body": "WavPack",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open-source lossless audio codec with a hybrid lossless/lossy mode, used in archival workflows."
},
{
"name": "OptimFROG",
"year": 1996,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A proprietary lossless audio codec designed for maximum compression at the cost of speed; its DualStream variant is hybrid lossy-plus-correction."
},
{
"name": "TTA (True Audio)",
"year": 2002,
"body": "TTA",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "True Audio: a fast open-source lossless audio codec, actively maintained."
},
{
"name": "TAK",
"year": 2006,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A closed-source lossless codec designed for high compression at high speed."
},
{
"name": "ALAC",
"year": 2004,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A lossless audio codec released as open source (Apache-2.0) in 2011; common in one platform's music library."
},
{
"name": "lossyWAV",
"year": 2007,
"body": "lossyWAV",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A preprocessor that makes audio more compressible under lossless codecs by zeroing inaudible low bits; used to make smaller FLAC, TAK or WavPack files."
},
{
"name": "RKAU",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "RK Audio, a niche lossless codec of the late 1990s."
},
{
"name": "MOD / S3M / XM / IT (module music)",
"year": 1987,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Module music formats: not codecs in the usual sense, but compact audio made of short samples plus pattern-sequencing data; the music formats of the demoscene."
},
{
"name": "Direct Stream Transfer (DST)",
"year": 2003,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Direct Stream Transfer: lossless compression of DSD, standardized in MPEG-4 Audio (ISO/IEC 14496-3) and mandatory for multichannel SACD."
},
{
"name": "DSD",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Direct Stream Digital: 1-bit pulse-density modulation at 2.8224 MHz, the recording format of SACD. A representation rather than a codec."
},
{
"name": "Adaptive Rate-Distortion Optimized (ARDOR)",
"year": 2002,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Adaptive Rate-Distortion Optimized sound codeR. Research codec from the early 2000s."
},
{
"name": "Impala",
"year": 2006,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "An audio codec of a web-based video-editing platform."
},
{
"name": "Original Sound Quality (OSQ)",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A lossless audio format used in a few streaming-era products."
},
{
"name": "Siren",
"year": 1999,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Wideband audio codecs for video conferencing whose 7 kHz and 14 kHz versions became ITU-T G.722.1 and G.722.1 Annex C."
},
{
"name": "Bluetooth SBC",
"year": 1999,
"body": "Bluetooth SIG",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Sub-Band Codec: the mandatory codec of Bluetooth A2DP audio, used whenever no other codec is negotiated."
},
{
"name": "aptX",
"year": 1989,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Adaptive transform coding for Bluetooth audio, with several variants (HD, Adaptive, Lossless) for higher fidelity and lower latency."
},
{
"name": "LDAC",
"year": 2014,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A high-bitrate Bluetooth audio codec, up to 990 kbit/s, supported in a major mobile operating system since 2017."
},
{
"name": "LC3",
"year": 2020,
"body": "Bluetooth SIG",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Low Complexity Communications Codec: the mandatory codec of Bluetooth LE Audio (also ETSI TS 103 634)."
},
{
"name": "SSC (scalable Bluetooth codec)",
"year": 2019,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A Bluetooth audio codec that adapts its bitrate to channel conditions, used in one family of wireless earbuds."
},
{
"name": "G.711",
"year": 1972,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "PCM telephony at 64 kbit/s. The toll-quality reference of circuit-switched telephony and of many SIP/VoIP deployments."
},
{
"name": "G.711.0",
"year": 2009,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Lossless compression of G.711 streams. Used in some VoIP applications to save bandwidth on G.711 calls."
},
{
"name": "G.711.1",
"year": 2008,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Wideband extension of G.711. Backward-compatible enhancement layer for wideband audio."
},
{
"name": "G.721",
"year": 1984,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Early ADPCM at 32 kbit/s. Superseded by G.726."
},
{
"name": "G.722",
"year": 1988,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "7 kHz wideband ADPCM at 64 kbit/s: the first wideband ('HD voice') codec, in most desk VoIP phones. Patents long expired."
},
{
"name": "G.722.1",
"year": 1999,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Wideband audio at 24 or 32 kbit/s, used in business video conferencing."
},
{
"name": "G.722.1 Annex C (Siren 14)",
"year": 2005,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Super-wideband variant of G.722.1. 14 kHz audio bandwidth. Used in high-end conferencing systems."
},
{
"name": "G.722.2 / AMR-WB",
"year": 2002,
"body": "3GPP",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (3GPP; ITU-T G.722.2): the wideband 'HD Voice' codec of most VoLTE deployments."
},
{
"name": "G.723.1",
"year": 1995,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Low-bitrate speech codec at 5.3 or 6.3 kbit/s. Used in some video conferencing and VoIP gateways."
},
{
"name": "G.726",
"year": 1990,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ADPCM at 16, 24, 32, or 40 kbit/s. The successor to G.721 and G.723. Used in DECT cordless phones and some satellite telephony."
},
{
"name": "G.728",
"year": 1992,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "16 kbit/s low-delay CELP. Designed for ISDN and high-quality videoconferencing audio. Niche in specialized telephony equipment."
},
{
"name": "G.729",
"year": 1995,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "8 kbit/s CS-ACELP, long the common codec of business VoIP. Patents expired in 2017."
},
{
"name": "G.729A",
"year": 1996,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Annex A. Reduced-complexity variant of G.729, bit-stream compatible with full G.729."
},
{
"name": "G.729.1",
"year": 2006,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Wideband and scalable extension of G.729. Backward compatible with G.729 base layer."
},
{
"name": "G.718",
"year": 2008,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Embedded scalable codec covering narrowband and wideband at 8 to 32 kbit/s. Niche adoption in next-generation network voice."
},
{
"name": "G.719",
"year": 2008,
"body": "ITU-T",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Low-complexity full-band audio codec. 20 kHz bandwidth at 32 to 128 kbit/s. Used in some conferencing systems."
},
{
"name": "LPC-10",
"year": 1984,
"body": "FS-1015",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Federal Standard 1015: a 2.4 kbit/s speech codec based on linear predictive coding, intelligible but unnatural-sounding."
},
{
"name": "MELP / MELPe",
"year": 1996,
"body": "MIL-STD-3005",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Mixed Excitation Linear Prediction (MIL-STD-3005; NATO STANAG 4591 for MELPe): a 2.4 kbit/s speech codec used in defence communications."
},
{
"name": "GSM-FR",
"year": 1991,
"body": "ETSI",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "The first speech codec of GSM: 13 kbit/s RPE-LTP."
},
{
"name": "GSM-HR",
"year": 1994,
"body": "ETSI",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "The half-rate GSM codec: 5.6 kbit/s VSELP, designed to double network capacity."
},
{
"name": "GSM-EFR",
"year": 1996,
"body": "ETSI",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "The Enhanced Full Rate GSM codec: 12.2 kbit/s ACELP, deployed in most 2G GSM networks."
},
{
"name": "AMR-NB",
"year": 1999,
"body": "3GPP",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Adaptive Multi-Rate Narrowband: the 3GPP speech codec of 3G voice, still a fallback codec on most mobile networks."
},
{
"name": "EVRC",
"year": 1996,
"body": "3GPP2",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Enhanced Variable Rate Codec: the speech codec of CDMA cellular networks in the 2000s."
},
{
"name": "EVRC-B / EVRC-WB / EVRC-NW",
"year": 2006,
"body": "3GPP2",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Successor variants of EVRC: wideband and narrowband-wideband versions for CDMA voice."
},
{
"name": "SMV",
"year": 2001,
"body": "3GPP2",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Selectable Mode Vocoder: a CDMA speech codec with limited deployment."
},
{
"name": "VMR-WB",
"year": 2004,
"body": "3GPP2",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Variable-Rate Multimode Wideband: a wideband speech codec for CDMA, interoperable with AMR-WB."
},
{
"name": "EVS",
"year": 2014,
"body": "3GPP",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Enhanced Voice Services (3GPP): the VoLTE speech and audio codec after AMR-WB, up to 20 kHz audio bandwidth; adoption varies by carrier."
},
{
"name": "IVAS",
"year": 2024,
"body": "3GPP",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Immersive Voice and Audio Services (3GPP TS 26.250 series): the EVS-based conversational codec for immersive audio, from mono speech to scene-based audio.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.audio.ivas",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-tolerance"
}
]
},
{
"name": "CELP",
"year": 1985,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Code-Excited Linear Prediction: the algorithmic family underlying most speech codecs deployed from 1990 to 2010."
},
{
"name": "iLBC",
"year": 2004,
"body": "IETF",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Internet Low Bitrate Codec (RFC 3951): a speech codec designed for packet-loss-resilient internet telephony."
},
{
"name": "iSAC",
"year": 2003,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Internet Speech Audio Codec: a variable-bitrate, low-latency wideband speech codec for VoIP, used in early WebRTC; superseded by Opus."
},
{
"name": "SILK",
"year": 2009,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A wideband CELP-derived speech codec, released as open source in 2009 and folded into Opus."
},
{
"name": "Codec2",
"year": 2010,
"body": "Codec 2",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open-source ultra-low-bitrate speech codec for amateur radio and HF digital voice, down to 700 bit/s; used in FreeDV."
},
{
"name": "AMBE",
"year": 1993,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Advanced Multi-Band Excitation: a patented low-bitrate vocoder used in satellite telephony, P25 and DMR land-mobile radio, and D-STAR amateur radio."
},
{
"name": "IMBE",
"year": 1991,
"body": "TIA",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Improved Multi-Band Excitation: the predecessor of AMBE, the vocoder of APCO Project 25 (TIA-102) Phase 1 radio."
},
{
"name": "RPE-LTP",
"year": 1988,
"body": "ETSI",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Regular Pulse Excitation - Long Term Prediction. The algorithm inside GSM-FR."
},
{
"name": "VSELP",
"year": 1989,
"body": "TIA",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "superseded",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Vector Sum Excited Linear Prediction: the speech codec of IS-54 TDMA cellular and of GSM half rate."
},
{
"name": "MELP",
"year": 1996,
"body": "MIL-STD-3005",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "classical",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Mixed Excitation Linear Prediction. See MELPe entry above. Foundational for low-bitrate military speech."
},
{
"name": "TwinVQ",
"year": 1995,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "classical",
"status": "failed",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "Transform-domain Weighted Interleave Vector Quantization: an audio coding tool of MPEG-4 Audio, used briefly in synthesizers and broadcast trials."
},
{
"name": "WaveNet (codec)",
"year": 2018,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "WaveNet-based low-rate speech coding (2018): early evidence that a deep generative model could decode high-quality speech from very low bitrate parameters."
},
{
"name": "VQ-VAE speech codec",
"year": 2019,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Low bit-rate speech coding with a VQ-VAE and a WaveNet decoder (2019)."
},
{
"name": "LPCNet",
"year": 2019,
"body": "LPCNet",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Neural speech synthesis combined with linear prediction (2019): real-time neural speech decoding on a CPU, released as open source."
},
{
"name": "WaveRNN",
"year": 2018,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A recurrent neural vocoder (2018), the architecture LPCNet and many later works build on."
},
{
"name": "Neural packet-loss concealment (WaveNetEQ)",
"year": 2020,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "neural",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "WaveRNN-based packet-loss concealment deployed in a video-calling service: it generates plausible audio when packets are lost. An early production deployment of neural audio generation."
},
{
"name": "MelGAN",
"year": 2019,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A GAN-based mel-spectrogram vocoder (2019), often used as the decoder back end of neural audio pipelines."
},
{
"name": "HiFi-GAN",
"year": 2020,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A GAN-based vocoder for high-fidelity audio from mel-spectrograms (2020), widely used in TTS and neural audio research."
},
{
"name": "SSMGAN",
"year": 2021,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A GAN-based vocoder variant (2021)."
},
{
"name": "Lyra",
"year": 2021,
"body": "Lyra",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "neural",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A neural speech codec at 3 kbit/s, released as open source and deployed in video calling for low-bandwidth voice."
},
{
"name": "Lyra v2",
"year": 2022,
"body": "Lyra",
"modality": "speech",
"era": "neural",
"status": "niche",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A SoundStream-based redesign of Lyra at 3.2, 6 and 9.2 kbit/s, released as open source."
},
{
"name": "SoundStream",
"year": 2021,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "An end-to-end neural audio codec with residual vector quantization (2021), covering speech, music and general audio."
},
{
"name": "EnCodec",
"year": 2022,
"body": "EnCodec",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "High-fidelity neural audio compression at 1.5 to 24 kbit/s (arXiv 2210.13438), released as open source; a common discrete audio tokenizer for generative audio models.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.neural.encodec32",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "neural-float"
}
]
},
{
"name": "HiFi-Codec",
"year": 2023,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A neural audio codec at 2 kbit/s with group-residual vector quantization, a refinement of the RVQ formulation introduced by SoundStream."
},
{
"name": "DAC",
"year": 2023,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "High-fidelity audio compression with improved RVQGAN (arXiv 2306.06546): a 44.1 kHz model at about 8 kbit/s, released as open source.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.neural.dac",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "neural-float"
}
]
},
{
"name": "SNAC",
"year": 2024,
"body": "SNAC",
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "Multi-Scale Neural Audio Codec (arXiv 2410.14411): hierarchical token rates, with coarse tokens at a lower rate than fine ones; released as open source and used in several open TTS models.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.neural.snac",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "neural-float"
}
]
},
{
"name": "SpeechTokenizer",
"year": 2023,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A speech codec whose first RVQ codebook is regularized toward phonetic units, separating content from acoustic detail."
},
{
"name": "AudioDec",
"year": 2023,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A modular neural codec with separately trained encoder, quantizer and vocoder stages."
},
{
"name": "FunCodec",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "industry",
"desc": "A frequency-domain neural speech codec toolkit released as open source."
},
{
"name": "TiCodec",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Hierarchical codec with separate timbre and content token streams. Useful for voice conversion and TTS."
},
{
"name": "LMCodec",
"year": 2023,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A codec designed for downstream language modelling over its tokens."
},
{
"name": "HILCodec",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "An adaptive streaming neural codec designed for real-time use under variable channel conditions."
},
{
"name": "Mimi",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A low-frame-rate neural codec designed for audio language models: 24 kHz, 12.5 Hz frame rate, 8 codebooks of 2048 (1.1 kbit/s), with its first level distilled toward self-supervised speech features (arXiv 2410.00037). Released as open source.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.neural.mimi",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "neural-float"
}
]
},
{
"name": "SemantiCodec",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "An ultra-low-bitrate semantic audio codec for general sound, reported down to about 0.3 kbit/s."
},
{
"name": "DualCodec",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A two-stream codec separating semantic and acoustic information into different token streams, for audio language models."
},
{
"name": "SD-Codec",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Source-Disentangled Codec: distinct codebooks per audio domain (speech, music, sound effects)."
},
{
"name": "FlexiCodec",
"year": 2025,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A variable-frame-rate neural codec reported at 0.6 to 1.2 kbit/s for speech."
},
{
"name": "OmniCodec",
"year": 2025,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "Unified low-frame-rate codec covering speech, music, and general audio in a single model."
},
{
"name": "SpectroStream",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "STFT/MDCT-based delayed-fusion neural codec. Ultra-low-latency multi-channel codec for real-time use."
},
{
"name": "WavTokenizer",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A single-codebook acoustic tokenizer for audio language models (arXiv 2408.16532): 24 kHz audio at 40 or 75 tokens per second.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.neural.wavtokenizer",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "neural-float"
}
]
},
{
"name": "XYTokenizer",
"year": 2024,
"body": null,
"modality": "audio",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A low-frame-rate audio tokenizer codec."
},
{
"name": "Spectrogram Patch Codec",
"year": 2025,
"body": null,
"modality": "speech",
"era": "neural",
"status": "academic",
"lineage": "academic",
"desc": "A mel-spectrogram patch-based VQ-VAE with a HiFi-GAN decoder, at about 7.5 kbit/s for 16 kHz speech."
},
{
"name": "Zstandard",
"year": 2016,
"body": "IETF",
"modality": "text",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "A general-purpose lossless compressor with a range of speed and ratio settings, specified in RFC 8878. Used for file systems, packages, databases and network transfer.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.text.zstd",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-defined"
}
]
},
{
"name": "XZ (LZMA2)",
"year": 2009,
"body": "XZ Utils",
"modality": "text",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "The .xz container around LZMA2 compression, from the XZ Utils project. High ratio at slow encode; common for software archives.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.text.xz",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-defined"
}
]
},
{
"name": "glTF 2.0 Binary (GLB)",
"year": 2017,
"body": "Khronos Group",
"modality": "volumetric",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "The binary form of glTF 2.0 (ISO/IEC 12113): meshes, materials, textures and skeletal armatures in one self-contained file. Royalty-free.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.mesh.glb",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "Draco",
"year": 2017,
"body": "Draco",
"modality": "volumetric",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open-source (Apache-2.0) library for compressing mesh and point-cloud geometry; glTF carries it through the KHR_draco_mesh_compression extension.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.mesh.draco",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "G-PCC",
"year": 2023,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "volumetric",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Geometry-based Point Cloud Compression, ISO/IEC 23090-9 (MPEG-I Part 9): octree and predictive coding of geometry with attribute coding, for sparse and LiDAR-style point clouds. Reference software TMC13.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.pc.gpcc",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "V-PCC",
"year": 2021,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "volumetric",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Video-based Point Cloud Compression, ISO/IEC 23090-5 (V3C): projects a dynamic point cloud onto 2D patches coded with a video codec. Reference software TMC2.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.pc.vpcc",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "SPZ",
"year": 2024,
"body": "SPZ",
"modality": "volumetric",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "opensource",
"desc": "An open-source format for 3D Gaussian splats that stores quantised positions, scales, rotations, colours and opacities in a gzip-compressed stream.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.splat.spz",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "MPEG-I Haptics",
"year": 2025,
"body": "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (MPEG)",
"modality": "haptic",
"era": "classical",
"status": "emerging",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "ISO/IEC 23090-31: coded representation of vibrotactile and kinesthetic haptics, as human-readable HJIF (JSON) or a binary MIHS stream; ISO/IEC 23090-33 defines its conformance and reference software.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.haptic.mihs",
"licence": "patent-pool",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "HDR10+ (SMPTE ST 2094-40)",
"year": 2017,
"body": "SMPTE",
"modality": "metadata",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Dynamic HDR metadata for display adaptation, SMPTE ST 2094-40, carried in the video bitstream with each scene or frame. Royalty-free for content and devices; only a logo is licensed.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.meta.hdr10plus",
"licence": "royalty-free",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
},
{
"name": "SMPTE ST 2094-10 dynamic metadata",
"year": 2016,
"body": "SMPTE",
"modality": "metadata",
"era": "classical",
"status": "success",
"lineage": "standards",
"desc": "Dynamic HDR metadata for display adaptation, SMPTE ST 2094-10, carried as reference-processing-unit (RPU) data with the video. Proprietary licensing.",
"wai": [
{
"capability": "wai.meta.dovi",
"licence": "proprietary",
"replicate": "standard-unclassified"
}
]
}
]
}
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