The Academy Software Foundation (ASF) has adopted OpenAPV as a hosted Sandbox project. OpenAPV is a royalty-free, open-source video codec providing professional-grade video capturing and postproduction capabilities for mobile devices and cloud-based tools. The APV codec was unveiled in 2023 by Samsung Electronics, which joins ASF as a premier member.
Open-source software has been around for decades. The first instance of free, open-source software occurred when Remington Rand’s Univac division offered it’s A-2 (Arithmetic Language v2 system). Since that time, the road to free, open-source software has been one of peaks and valleys. Today, however, the subject of open-source is at an all-time high. Large companies, like Bentley on the engineering side, see it as the path of the future, while in media and entertainment, open-source continues adoption and has been vital component in moving the industry forward.
In August 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences founded the Academy Software Foundation (ASF) with the mission of advancing open-source development contributions used by those working in the motion-picture industry.
The latest open-source project adopted by ASF is OpenAPV, a royalty-free, open-source video codec providing professional-grade video capturing and postproduction capabilities for mobile devices and cloud-based tools. It has been accepted as a Sandbox Stage (entry-level) project at the foundation. The goal is to provide an open reference implementation of the APV codec, which was released last year by Samsung Electronics. (In addition to adopting OpenAPV, ASF welcomed Samsung Electronics as its newest premier member.)
The APV codec provides perceptually lossless video quality and consumes 20% less storage compared to existing formats, ultimately enabling professional-grade video recording and postproduction without quality degradation, according to the foundation. Samsung Electronics unveiled the APV codec to meet the growing demand of content creators wanting access to professional-grade video recording and post editing capabilities on their mobile devices. Currently, traditional codecs are not suitable for this type of professional use, as they have been designed for lossy compression of video for mass distribution.
ASF hosts projects that are in use, or intended for use, by the motion-picture industry for visual and special effects. Each project has its own governance structure, committer policies, IP policies, and release cadence. There are three stages for contributed projects:
- Sandbox Stage—Projects for this entry point are in the early stages of development.
- Incubation Stage—Projects have started forming a community and developing a scope and mission, and many have some production use.
- Adopted Stage—Projects are considered mature and ready for production use.
Since its founding, ASF has adopted six open-source projects: MaterialX, OpenColorIO, OpenEXR, OpenVDB, OpenCue, and DPEL (Digital Production Example Library). It also has six projects at the incubation stage: OSL, OpenFX, OpenImageIO, OpenTimelineIO, rawtoaces, and Rez. Aside from OpenAPV, the foundation’s Sandbox projects include Open Review Initiative and Open AssetIO.
It is worth noting that not every project at the lower and middle stage are adopted. The timeframe for moving through the stages varies, and the processes are thorough and extensive.