MainConcept Releases Officially Approved Dolby Digital Plus Pro Plugins for FFmpeg

MainConcept has released its first officially authorized Dolby Digital Plus Pro Plugins for FFmpeg to deliver high quality digital audio that enhances the viewing experience. The Dolby certified Encoder and Decoder plugins enable both AC-3 and E-AC-3 processing within every OTT and broadcast workflow and services based on FFmpeg. Dolby's AC-3 and E-AC-3 surround technology delivers high-quality digital audio for up to 7.1 discrete channels. For over 30 years, MainConcept has been recognized as a premier provider of professional video and audio codec technology, both as a developer and through IP licensing. FFmpeg is a powerful, open-source software suite designed for handling multimedia files and streams. MainConcept FFmpeg Plugins make improving visual quality and performance quick and simple with advanced features that are not available with open source, such as Hybrid GPU acceleration, AVC/H.264 or MPEG-2 production formats and xHE-AAC as well as MPEG-H 3D Audio formats. The different MainConcept FFmpeg Plugins enable users to create decoding, encoding and transcoding workflows or services that can be deployed on on-premises servers, in the cloud or in hybrid solutions.

These technologies are the de facto standard for HDTV broadcast channels, IPTV solutions and A/V systems as well as for satellite, cable and terrestrial content delivery. Dolby Digital audio is an officially recommended codec for streaming formats like Apple HLS and MPEG-DASH.

Based on the renowned MainConcept Dolby Digital Plus Pro SDK, the libraries of the easy-to-deploy FFmpeg Plugins enable both AC-3 and E-AC-3 audio stream content creation or playback for live and VOD use-cases. They seamlessly integrate with other MainConcept Video Encoder, Multiplexer or Decoder Plugins for FFmpeg, plus FFmpeg’s built-in components.

"Dolby has been a valuable partner of MainConcept for more than 15 years, we are proud to have the opportunity to be the only officially Dolby-approved AC-3 and E-AC-3 encoder and decoder provider for FFmpeg," says Thomas Kramer, VP Strategy and Business Development, MainConcept. "It is a major milestone in our ongoing history in providing industry-leading codecs. Through our products, we’re supporting content producers and broadcasters through the extensive licensing and certification process by easily enabling Dolby Digital audio technologies natively within FFmpeg for their production workflows and services with a simple yet flexible plugin."
Arkin Kol, Head of Commercial Partnerships Europe at Dolby Laboratories adds: "With its Dolby Digital Plus Pro Plugin for FFmpeg, MainConcept closes a leaping gap in the streaming ecosystem. For the first time service providers that use FFmpeg have a legitimate and reliable solution to encode or decode Dolby Digital Plus bitstreams and a direct line for technical support. Built upon years of experience with Dolby codecs, MainConcept has created a high-quality Dolby approved alternative to unlicensed solutions being available around FFmpeg. We are looking forward to continuing to co-operate with MainConcept and making more Dolby technologies available for FFmpeg users."

MainConcept and Dolby will promote a live demo of the Dolby Digital Plus Pro Encoder and Decoder Plugins during IBC 2024 in Amsterdam. MainConcept booth is located in hall 7 C.12. The plugins will be available later in September 2024 for both commercial and non-commercial use.

MainConcept codecs are used by organizations such as Adobe, AVID, Autodesk, Corel, Dalet, Endeavor Streaming, Grass Valley, MAGIX, MOG, Nikon, PlayBox Neo, Sony, Veset, and Wowza. 
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