h264 Licensing，ffmpeg iPhone转码

Question

Requirements
1. An application that should run, to begin with, on iPhone, and, in the end on a plurality
of SmartPhone devices.
2. Aim at having the trans-coding code supporting as much OSs as possible.
3. Application is commercial.

Use-case
I. Record video using the portable SmartPhone Camera application
II. Trans-code the video into a plurality of bit-rates using a cutom app

iPhone Implementation
A. To satisfy requirement [2], Implement Trans-coding using C++
B. Use ffmpeg for trans-coding.

Problem
- Using ffmpeg to encode H264 req usage of the x264 lib
- H264 encoding mandate payment for Licensing.

In order to avoid H264 Licensing
- The iPhone device ( and many others ) come with built-in H264 encoding capability
- Usage of the built-in H264 Codec will avoid licensing problems/restrictions

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Does ffmpeg, supports, in any way, usage of iPhone's built-in H264 encoder ?



Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

I would recommend Encoding.com's HLS offering.

http://www.encoding.com/help/article/easily_create_iphone_streaming_files_with_encodingcom

Answer 2

The AVFoundation framework provides a mechanism to write H264 encoded video to a file (mp4 or quicktime container format). You can attempt to parse the video file and extract the H264 NALs as they're being written.

It's a little bit tricky, but it should be doable.