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About MainConcept
Easy Video API (EVA)
Control hardware & software codecs through a single API
Multi-Codec Support for a Multi-Accelerator World
The MainConcept Easy Video API (EVA) eliminates the need to choose between hardware and software. It is a set of libraries for the most common video codecs: AVC/H.264, HEVC/H.265, JPEG XS, AV1 as well as color conversion and scaling.
MainConcept EVA combines MainConcept’s industry-leading software encoding, decoding and processing technologies with the high performance of today’s GPU hardware processing powered by AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and Qualcomm, as well as NETINT VPUs.
Since one API is used instead of six, MainConcept EVA can reduce implementation time and costs by over 80%.
Seamless On-GPU and VPU Pipelines & Workflows
Our EVA (Easy Video API) unifies workflows, simplifies API calls and reduces the number of frames copied and held in memory. When using GPU, EVA eliminates the need to shift frames between CPU and GPU memory since a fully GPU-enabled color conversion and scaling module is built into all encoders and decoders. With support for NETINT VPUs, EVA’s utility now reaches even further. EVA also unifies across codecs and platforms. All API calls and structures are aligned, making video codecs easily interchangeable, especially valuable when building multi-codec media processing workflows.
Software or Hardware Processing? Not a dilemma anymore!
Almost every notebook, desktop and server come with GPUs and hardware codecs from AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and Qualcomm, even in the cloud. And VPU usage is growing throughout the industry. When quality is key, MainConcept software codecs provide better quality and an extended feature set. The choice between CPU, GPU, or VPU encoding and decoding is complex. MainConcept EVA lets you use both!
Our all-in-one libraries make the decision simple by providing a single API for all vendors.
Available with these MainConcept SDKs
Multi-GPU vendor support
AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and NETINT, the leading GPU and VPU providers, develop codecs like AVC, HEVC, JPEG XS and AV1 for their harware accelerators. Integrating different hardware SDKs for encoding and decoding, such as Intel Quick Sync Video, NVIDIA NVENC/NVDEC, Qualcomm Adreno and AMD AMF, can be time-consuming.
MainConcept EVA offers the flexibility of a single API along with the choice of software or hardware coding.
Expanded features and options
Developers must often choose between software and hardware video coding options. The choice for some simply comes down to whether running on the GPU/VPU or CPU, but that can be too simplistic for many use cases. CPU-based software encoders typically achieve better quality and offer a wider feature set, especially with production formats like 10-bit 4:2:2. However, for use cases targeting high processing performance, GPU or VPU codecs are the preferred choice if the required format is supported.
Save integration time
With MainConcept EVA, developers only need a single integration cycle. Working with one SDK instead of six means over 80% less integration efforts. Plus, there are fewer contact points should any support issues arise. With a single API, developers gain more hardware choice and flexibility, being able to select the GPU or VPU that is right for the specific need, increasing the possible number of use-cases for their software application or service.
Processing Tools powered by CUDA
Besides pure software processing, the Universal Color Converter (UCC) is now also running on NVIDIA hardware, using a CUDA implementation for high performance image scaling as well as color conversion on GPU, significantly freeing the CPU for other resource intensive tasks.
MainConcept EVA benefits
- Individual SDKs with a single API instead of six, saving time (over 80%) and budget.
- Flexibility to choose the GPU/VPU that is right for the use case, from AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and NETINT.
- Consume less energy with more power efficient GPUs and VPUs.
- Extended codec features for improved quality and professional formats (including 10-bit 4:2:2) using the MainConcept software libraries.
- Enable GPU-based media processing for AVC/H.264, HEVC/H.265 and AV1 codecs on Arm-based systems using NVIDIA GPUs
- GPU-accelerated AVC/H.264 and HEVC/H.265 video codecs on Qualcomm Snapdragon X Arm processors with an Adreno GPU running Windows
- API to retrieve decoded images directly from GPU memory when using NVIDIA hardware
- Function to detect hardware availability and codec capabilities.
- Single point of contact for development support.
- Same API for multi-platform Windows and Linux, for on-premise and cloud.
MainConcept EVA availability
| Codec |
MainConcept |
NVIDIA | Intel | AMD | Qualcomm | NETINT |
| AVC/H.264 Encoder & Decoder | ||||||
| HEVC/H.265 Encoder & Decoder | ||||||
| AV1 Encoder | ||||||
| JPEG XS Encoder & Decoder | ||||||
| Universal Color Space Converter (UCC) |
