Video compression solutions specialist V-Nova has announced licensing terms for V-Nova LCEVC, a software development kit and a wide range of reference integrations that add MPEG-5 Part 2 LCEVC (Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding) ISO/IEC 23094-2 encoding and decoding to any existing video delivery workflow, device or application.
According to the company, the licensing terms have been designed with customers and key industry players and “reflect the enhancement nature of LCEVC as well as a modern approach to licensing, akin to that of software services where operators pay as they benefit from a given technology.” The result, it says, is licence fees that are either free or low-cost.
“The rapid release of the LCEVC product, followed in quick succession by our low-complexity licensing terms comes in response to the strong interest we have seen for LCEVC. We are actively supporting multiple major customer projects and we are working hard to ensure that LCEVC market adoption is as rapid and seamless as possible” said Guido Meardi, V-Nova’s CEO and co-founder, and member of TVBEurope’s 2021 Watch List.
“We all know that for coding standards simple and fair licensing terms are at least as important as compelling technical benefits. Following extensive consultation with customers and key industry players, we chose not to charge any fees to hardware manufacturers, operating systems, browsers and other ecosystem enablers, so as to facilitate rapid adoption at scale, also via software upgrades of existing devices. We charge a fair and low-cost capped fee only to those service operators who benefit directly from the standard, producing measurable quality and profitability benefits.”
The free Integration Licence enables device or chipset manufacturers, operating systems, browsers, in-house development and encoder/player vendors to integrate V-Nova LCEVC encoding and decoding libraries. The licence includes optimised encoder and decoder libraries for multiple platforms; onboarding support for SDK integration; conformance and integration testing; and maintenance and support.
The Usage Licence is priced based on service size, measured by the total number of users. Above a lower free threshold, the cost per user is calculated according to volume and capped at $3.7m per year. The licence includes use of V-Nova LCEVC, including trademarks; onboarding support; conformance and integration testing; and basic support.
More information can be found on the company website.
