Which video decoder should I use for cutscenes in my game?

Question

The game franchise I am working on uses a video encoder/decoder library which produces rather large files. We want to change to something a little more efficient, particularly H.264 or VP8. However, there seem to be extensive legal issues revolving around software licensing to navigate, and threats of a challenge to VP8.

So what I want is a C++ header and library file I can statically link to the game to decode an efficiently compressed video stream. I'll consider commercial ones that offer patent indemnity (we're using Bink at the moment). Licensing needs to be sympathetic to a commercial product. An answer about the legal situation would be helpful too...

Thanks!

Guy

Answer 1

After lengthy legal consideration, we have migrated to libVP8. It is a fine library.

Answer 2

ogg comes to mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg http://www.vorbis.com/

Answer 3

Sorry if this obviously inappropriate for some reason, but isn't the only H.264 "Open" competitor/contender "Dirac"? The wikipedia page on the Ogg container format appears to imply that it supports Dirac, and the Dirac article on wikipedia states that there is a free (MIT-licensed, suitable for commercial use) cross-platform implementation called Shrödinger.

EDIT:

• After looking at this some more I found out that Dirac is very expensive in terms of CPU requirements during decoding; whether this is relevant to your environment would depend on the other requirements of your game(s)
• I also completely missed the whole VP8/WebM thing - you mention VP8 above with "threats of a challenge to VP8", but I can't find any recent mentions of threats (eg here or here) - the latest flurry of comments I see is in mid-2010 soon after they open-sourced it. Is there more information about current/expected threats anywhere?