odecs

By the numbers

ProRes 4444 + alpha, 1080p

322 fps

through RGBA, 8 threads (88 fps on one)

per 1080p H.265 frame, Vulkan Video decode

1.00 ms

three in flight, down from 2.36 ms one at a time

native H.264 encode, 1080p, QP 26

144 fps

16 slices on 16 workers; x264 medium does 221

WebP corpus files

131 / 131

RGBA-identical to dwebp

Figures from the odecs docs (codec/movie, codec/gpu, codec/h264, codec/webp READMEs), measured on a Ryzen 9 9900X3D and an RX 9070 XT.

What's in it

1. 01One API over everything

   codec/media encodes and decodes through the native codecs or the hardware ones, choosing what the machine supports.

2. 02Hardware when it's there

   Vulkan Video sessions for H.264, H.265 and AV1 on Linux, VideoToolbox H.264 and HEVC decode on macOS, the native codecs as the software path.

3. 03Movie files in one call

   codec/movie turns RGBA frames and f32 PCM into MP4 and back, with frame-accurate seeking.

4. 04Your threads, not ours

   Parallel work runs on the caller's Work_Pool. The codecs never create threads of their own.

5. 05Plain Odin

   The native codecs and containers build for Linux, Windows and macOS with nothing else to install.

6. 06A player included

   viewer is an SDL3 player for every format odecs reads.

Use it

import movie "odecs/codec/movie"

config := movie.default_writer_config(1920, 1080, 30000, 1001) // qp 23, faststart
config.codec = .H264                 // or .H265
config.sample_rate, config.channels = 48000, 2
w: movie.Writer
err := movie.create(&w, "out.mp4", config)   // or create_stream
err = movie.write_audio(&w, pcm)     // any amount, any time
for frame in frames do err = movie.write_frame(&w, frame.rgba, frame.width * 4)
err = movie.finish(&w)
movie.destroy(&w)

r: movie.Reader
err := movie.open_reader(&r, "in.mov", {preference = .Native}) // or open_reader_stream
// r.video: codec, width, height, frame_count, fps_num/den, duration, rotation,
//          color, has_alpha, bit_depth, chroma
// r.audio: codec, present, sample_rate, channels, samples
for {
    f, e := movie.next_frame(&r)     // sequential playback
    if e == .End_Of_Stream do break
    // f.rgba (borrowed until the next call), f.pts, f.time, f.index
}

odin build viewer -o:speed && ./viewer.bin FILE

The family

• ovg2D vector graphics: paths, SVG, Lottie, text, filters
• odecsVideo, audio and image codecs with no FFmpeg
• okslSkSL and Shadertoy shaders to SPIR-V, MSL and CPU
• ottisText to speech with a time for every word
• onimiteVideos from Lua scripts, written by you or your coding agent