H.264/AVC, also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, is an exciting format which has effectively replaced several popular formats while offering significant advantages over them. H.264 offers quality which can rival that of MPEG-2 with as little as half the bitrate and file size.

MainConcept Reference H.264/AVC codec plug-in offers legendary MainConcept encoding quality. It supports all standard and advanced features of the H.264 specifications including Baseline, Main and High Profiles as well as CABAC and CAVLC.

Additionally, it includes a powerful capture engine that allows you to capture from camcorders, webcams, etc. in their native or another format if available. If the correct drivers and filters are installed Reference also can capture directly via an SDI capture card (depends on the capture card and its drivers).

Here is a list of supported formats in Reference 2 H.264/AVC Professional codec plug-in:

• Blu-ray Disc H.264/AVC
• AVCHD
• Adobe Flash F4V
• Sony PSP
• Apple iPod
• Apple iPad
• HTML5
• 3GP for Mobile Devices

The new version now also comes with integrated CUDA H.264/AVC transcoding that adds hardware accelerated video encoding by taking advantage of the power of NVIDIA graphics processors (GPUs). CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing architecture that is used on over 200 million graphics boards from NVIDIA, including the Quadro, Tesla, and GeForce product lines. It allows a significant increase in encoding performance by offloading most of the resource-intensive encoding features to the GPUs (Graphics Processing Units). In this case, the system’s CPU utilization is dramatically reduced and can be used for other tasks, while the GPU does the decoding, scaling and encoding work. In contrast to CPUs, the graphics boards' GPUs provide a parallel architecture that consists of a large number of cores running thousands of threads simultaneously.

It also includes AAC encoding and decoding. The software is ideal for a wide variety of applications ranging from video telephony to high-end broadcasting and storage. It offers presets for Apple iPod, Sony PSP, AVCHD and many more professional formats.

Reference H.264/AVC also supports Dolby Digital Professional or Dolby Digital Plus Professional. These transcoding plug-ins must be obtained separately, but they allow you to add high-quality Dolby 5.1 surround sound to your multimedia productions.

The full license codec Plug-In provides unrestricted H.264/AVC (for version details please view the comparison chart) support. When purchasing the full license Plug-In, you will receive a serial number to unlock the appropriate codec in the free MainConcept Reference 2 base application. The base application must be installed on your system.

• No other encoder offers so many H.264/AVC advanced settings for optimizing the streams' picture quality.
• Numerous ready to use presets for the most important devices and formats currently on the market.
• CUDA H.264/AVC  transcoding from MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264/AVC elementary streams, and raw frames into the H.264/AVC Baseline and Main Profile formats included now.
• H.264/AVC is the most suitable video format for streaming media content over a network in highest quality.
• Allows easy content creation for many popular devices, such as Apple iPod, Sony PSP and various cell phones, so you are able to deliver your content to a wide audience.
• Up to 5.1 level Baseline, Main and High profiles.
• Available Bitrates: 20 Mbps.
• I, P, B slices. One picture can comprise slices of one type only. Pyramid structure is enabled.
• Resolution: Up to 5.1 Level restriction (36864 macroblocks).
• Chroma Format: 4:2:0 (4:2:2 for AVC-Intra Class 100).
• Intra modes: 16x16 and 4x4 for luma, 8x8 for chroma.
• Inter modes: 16x16, 16x8, 8x16, 8x8, the Skip mode for P- and B-frames, Spatial Direct mode for B-frames.
• CABAC/CAVLC according to profiles restriction.
• Multi-reference Inter Prediction.
• In-loop (deblocking filter).
• Interlace support: Up to 5.1 level Baseline, Main and High Profiles.
• Import and export AVC-INTRA Class 50 and 100, including 4:2:0/4:2:2 support (Broadcast version).
• Support for Panasonic P2 AVC-Intra - Specialized Operational Pattern "Atom" SMPTE 390M (Broadcast version).
• AVC-Intra MXF support (Broadcast version).
• Multi-pass encoding.
• Capturing from many different devices in their native format and H.264/AVC (Windows only).
• Subtitle support.
• Useful Watch Folder and Batch List Encoding features.
• New preset structure.
• Configurable preset shortcuts for quick access to often used transcoding profiles.
• Improved user Interface for better handling and managing of transcoding jobs and projects.
• New advanced Video/Audio Encoder and Multiplexer Settings dialogs with many useful options for optimizing your footage.
• Direct access import modules when opening streams for transcoding.
• Many powerful video and audio filters for different production environments and occasions.
• The Windows version also includes the MainConcept H.264 Decoder, enabling playback of H.264/AVC files in Windows Media Player and other DirectShow compatible programs.

Audio:

• AAC
• PCM Audio
• Dolby Digital Professional (separate plug-in)
• Dolby Digital Plus Pro (separate plug-in)
• Multi-channel audio support

Stream Type:

• H.264/AVC ES
• MPEG-2 PS/TS
• MP4
• 3GP
• MXF

Currently Not Supported for CUDA H.264/AVC:

• No interlace support
• No MBAFF support
• No Hadamard transformation
• No intra prediction 8x8
• Only ConstQ and ABR available (no CBR, no HRD support yet)
• No adaptive B-frames support
• No half-pel search
• No full-pel search
• No weighted prediction

High-Resolution Manuals:
The documentation of MainConcept Reference is included in the demo version. However, it can also be downloaded separately to give you an overview of the powerful transcoding application. The high-resolution manual is available for free downloading below, in zipped Adobe® Acrobat® format. Currently, only the English version is available.

English manual for MainConcept Reference
(8.83 MB)

To use MainConcept Reference 2, you'll need to make sure that your computer system meets at least these minimum requirements:

Operating systems:

• Microsoft® Windows® 7, XP, Vista and 2000
  (we recommend to install always the current Service Pack for the used operating system), Microsoft®  DirectX 9.0®.
• Mac OS X 10.5 or higher (Mac/Intel)
• NVIDIA video card with CUDA support (any GeForce 8, 9, 100, 200-series GPUs, Tesla and Quadro with a minimum of 256 MB of local graphics memory card or 512 MB for 1920x1080p encoding).
• CUDA architecture 1.1 and higher is strongly recommended (any card except of 8800 GTS, 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX and some Tesla’s and Quadro’s). Architecture 1.0 works in general for encoding, but has known issues.

We have used the following drivers for our tests, although other drivers might work with the MainConcept CUDA H.264/AVC Encoder as well.

- Minimum NVIDIA Driver version v196.21 (no Fermi support)
- Minimum NVIDIA Driver version v196.47 (with Fermi support)

There is a useful tool called CUDA-Z that will quickly analyze whether your graphics board supports CUDA Encoding or not. It can be downloaded here: cuda-z.sourceforge.net.

Before registering our CUDA H.264/AVC Encoder you should run this small tool to get the necessary information about CUDA support on your system.

When you want to use MainConcept Reference within a network, please contact your local sales representative at sales@mainconcept.de.

The new version Reference 2.2 comes with the following fixes and improvements:

• Resolved crash when using a JPEG2000 DCI preset for transcoding.
• CUDA H.264/AVC Encoding now included in the Windows and Mac OS X applications from the start.
• Capturing to MPEG-2 Custom preset with Dolby Digital Professional results in audio stream only clips.
• Transcoding JPEG2000 Elementary Stream containing more than 1024 frames causes error.
• Crash of Capture module when capturing to custom VC-1 preset with MPEG TS muxing from a DV camcorder.
• Capture crash on 64-bit systems resolved.
• Sony PSP H.264/AVC file errors fixed.
• MPEG-4 Part 2 import problems (video stream) solved.
• DVCPRO 50 encoding issues resolved.
• Batch encoding issues with Custom MPEG-1 profile resolved.
• LPCM audio stream in MPEG PS import problems fixed.

Upgrade to Reference 2 – 50% Special Discount on the First Order:

For a limited time only, MainConcept is offering Reference 1.x customers a 50% discount on the first order for Reference 2 Codec Plug-Ins.
Whether you want to order just one Reference Codec Plug-in only, or you want to order the entire set of Codec Plug-Ins, you get a 50% discount on your first order.

Why upgrade? With Reference 2 you get powerful new features including:

• Capture functionality
• New preset structure for quick access to the most important presets.
• Subtitle rendering support for *.srt and *.sub files.

For details on how to get your 50% discount, e-mail your name, a copy of your invoice and the Reference 1.x serial number to sales(at)mainconcept.de. Take advantage of this limited time offer today!