| GPAC | |
|---|---|
 GPAC Multimedia Open Source Project | |
| Developers | Jean Le Feuvre, Romain Bouqueau, Aurélien David, People@GPAC[1][2] |
| Initial release | 2003; 23 years ago (2003)[3] |
| Stable release | |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Multimedia framework |
| License | LGPL v2.1 |
| Website | gpac |
| Repository | |
GPAC Project on Advanced Content (GPAC, arecursive acronym) is an open-source multimedia framework focused on modularity and standards compliance. GPAC was created as an implementation of theMPEG-4 Systems standard written inANSI C and later extended inStreaming Media.
GPAC provides tools to process, inspect, package, stream,media playback and interact with media content. Such content can be any combination of audio, video, subtitles, metadata, encrypted media,rendering andECMAScript.[5]
GPAC provides three sets of tools based on a core library calledlibgpac:
GPAC iscross-platform. It is written in (almost 100% ANSI)C for portability reasons, attempting to keep the memory footprint as low as possible. It is currently running underWindows,Linux, MacOS X, iOS, Android, and many other systems.
GPAC is best known for its wide MP4/ISOBMFF capabilities and is popular among video enthusiasts, academic researchers, standardization bodies, and professional broadcasters.
GPAC was founded inNew York City in 1999[7] as a company called AviPix. In 2003, it becameopen-source, with the initial goal of becoming the defacto MPEG-4 Systems standard implementation, as a small and flexible alternative to the MPEG-4 reference software.[3]
In parallel, asMPEG-4 was intended to compete withMacromedia Flash, GPAC evolved to support other standards such asX3D,W3CSVG Tiny 1.2, andOMA/3GPP/ISMA and eventuallyMPEG-DASH. The MPEG-DASH feature can be used to reconstruct.mp4 files from videosstreamed andcached in this format (e.g.,YouTube).[8] Various research projects used or use GPAC.[9]
In 2019 the GPAC team explained the code has undergone a massive re-architecture[10] calledFilters with release 0.9 while release 0.8 is the last release of the legacy architecture with an extended 18-months support. The front-end applications remain unchanged, making the transition seamless. The underlying filters build a dynamic modulardataflow pipeline.
In 2020 GPAC 1.0 was released. The Website was split into a wiki documentation, a doxygen API documentation, a buildbot and GitHub actions, a testbot with a high coverage.[11] The newgpac application has been used as aFFmpeg on steroids[12] offering additional speed, features, ease of use.
Since 2013, GPAC Licensing has offered business support and closed-source licenses.[13] In 2022 Netflix announced using GPAC for their worldwide content operations[14] including the Netflix service, studio content, and merchandising material.[15]
GPAC features encoders and multiplexers, publishing and content distribution tools for MP4 files and many tools for scene descriptions (BIFS/VRML/X3D converters, SWF/BIFS, SVG/BIFS, etc.). MP4Box provides all these tools in a single command-line application. Current supported features are:[16]
GPAC supports many protocols and standards, among which:[16]
As of version 0.4.5, GPAC has some server-side and streaming tools:[16]
The project is hosted atTélécom Paris, a leading French engineering school. Current main contributors of GPAC are:[2]
Other (current or past) contributors are:[2]
Additionally, GPAC is used atTélécom Paris and other universities forpedagogical purposes. Students regularly participate in the development of the project.[2]
uses MP4Box installed as a part of GPAC package to convert the MPEG-DASH streams into a valid mp4
The GPAC and MP4Box trademarks are internationally registered byTelecom ParisTech
GPAC deployed by Netflix as their primary packager
Netflix uses GPAC in all their packaging scenarios
