MulticoreWare Forms Open Media Advisory Board (Open-MAB) with Industry Experts to Guide Open-source Media Codec Development

April 9, 2019

Saratoga, CA / April 9, 2018 – MulticoreWare Inc., the creators of the popular open-source HEVC encoder x265 announced the formation of the Open-Media Advisory Board (Open-MAB). The focus of Open-MAB will be to guide the development roadmap of current and future open-source video encoders, like x265, and ensure their relevance and wide-spread adoption in the media industry. Initially, Open-MAB will focus on continuing the leadership of x265 for HEVC encoding but may expand to include other open-source codecs in the future.

The initial members of the Open-MAB (in alphabetical order) are

• Mahmoud J. Al-Daccak, EVP Product Development, and CTO at HaiVision
• Steve Borho, Principal Engineer, MulticoreWare Inc.
• Shawn Carnahan, CTO at Telestream
• Prasanna Ganesan, CEO at Machinify (formerly co-founder and CTO of VUDU Inc.)
• Jean-Baptiste Kempf, President of VideoLAN
• Brian Thomas, Director of Engineering, Application at Telestream

MulticoreWare is reaching out to other video experts in the industry to grow Open-MAB. The first meeting will be at NAB, 2018 in Las Vegas.

“Open-source is a strong development model for software solutions that avoids the problem of vendor lock-in. The media world is a strong example of how open-source projects can be used in production work-flows and compete with other proprietary solutions. Open-MAB will enable technology leaders in the industry to guide the road-map of open-source codecs and ensure their relevance in this fast-changing world”, says Pradeep Ramachandran, Principal Engineer and Head of Video Engineering at MulticoreWare Inc.

The newly formed advisory board is excited about increasing the influence of open-source in the media world.

“Telestream has been a strong supporter of x265 from its inception and is one of its charter licensees. Contribution to and use of open-source codecs enhances our core product offerings.  We are excited to participate in the Open Media Advisory Board to help the community grow these technologies into the future.”, says Brian Thomas, Director of Engineering, Applications, at Telestream.

“Open-source encoders have been critical to enabling cutting-edge media distribution technologies, and I look forward to seeing how Open-MAB can help unleash the next wave of innovation in the ecosystem.”, says Prasanna Ganesan.

“Open source encoders need industry support to enable their adoption across the media world. We hope that this effort by MulticoreWare to form the Open-MAB enables increased proliferation across the media industry”, says Jean-Baptiste Kempf, President of VideoLAN

A demonstration of x265 and its various enhancements including the use of Machine Learning to accelerate video encoding, will be available at MulticoreWare’s booth (SU-14708) and at the Intel booth (SU621) in the South Upper Hall of NAB 2018 in Las Vegas.