Fraunhofer MPEG-4 freebie trial

Lasse Penttinen
9 Sep 2004 8:00

The Fraunhofer Institut Integrierte Schaltungen, a.k.a. FhG, became famous for developing the MPEG-1 Layer III audio compression format widely known as the MP3. Now they are offering a free trial version of their MPEG-4 compression solution. The package includes an encoder, streaming server and a player.

To introduce recent developments within the open multimedia standard MPEG-4 to the public, Fraunhofer IIS offers a public download of an MPEG-4 AV evaluation software suite today. The download will prove the efficiency of the Fraunhofer implementation comprising encoder, streaming server and player. The software uses Advanced Video Coding AVC and High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding HE-AAC, the two most efficient multimedia codecs within MPEG-4. This combination enables digital video in high quality at data rates far below those used for example on video DVDs. It complies with the upcoming specification ISMA 2.0 of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance.
Available until January 1st, 2005, the use of the evaluation MPEG-4 encoder and streaming server is limited to 30 days after installation. The MPEG-4 player will keep all its functions. The Fraunhofer IIS MPEG-4 software suite is only intended for personal, non-commercial purposes. Both Fraunhofer MPEG-4 player as well as MPEG-4 encoder and streaming server are software-only solutions that do not need special hardware. Thus a standard PC with at least an 1.3 GHz processor is able to create, stream and play back “.mp4” files using the Fraunhofer MPEG-4 software.