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TheWebCodecs API allows web applicationsto encode and decode audio and video.

Many Web APIs use media codecs internally to support APIs for particular uses:

• HTMLMediaElement and Media Source Extensions
• WebAudio (decodeAudioData)
• MediaRecorder
• WebRTC

But there’s no general way to flexibly configure and use these media codecs.Because of this, many web applications have resorted to implementingmedia codecs in JavaScript or WebAssembly, despite the disadvantages:

• Increased bandwidth to download codecs already in the browser.
• Reduced performance
• Reduced power efficiency

It's great for:

• Live streaming
• Cloud gaming
• Media file editing and transcoding

See theexplainer for more info.

Please seehttps://w3c.github.io/webcodecs/samples/

This repository also contains two registries:

• TheWebCodecs Codec Registryprovides the means to identify and avoid collisions among codec stringsused in WebCodecs and provides a mechanism to define codec-specific members ofWebCodecs codec configuration dictionaries. Codec-specific registrations enteredin the registry are also maintained in the repository, please refer to theregistry for a comprehensive list.

• TheWebCodecs VideoFrame Metadata Registryenumerates the metadata fields that can be attached toVideoFrame objects via theVideoFrameMetadata dictionary.Metadata registrations entered in the registry may be maintained in this repositoryor elsewhere. Please refer to the registry for a comprehensive list.