The NoMachine 6.6..8 release has many enhancements, the most significant
of which is the inclusion of the AVC/H.264 software codec to the
free-to-use packages for Windows, Linux, Mac and Raspberry: NoMachine
and NoMachine Enterprise Client. From today, with the release of
version 6.6.8, H.264 software encoding and decoding is available to
everyone using NoMachine software.
NoMachine always prefers to use hardware encoding to render the contents
of the screen, using the GPU and the tools and methods it provides.
However, there are cases in which the GPU does not provide these tools
or hardware encoding is not available. In these cases, NoMachine “falls
back” to software encoding, which is slower and does not allow it to
offer the same level of interactivity. Similarly on the client, where a
hardware decoder is not available, software decoding is used.
In previous free versions, the software encoder and decoder used were based on the VP8 standard, unless the user had purchased the additional AVC Pack which includes the libraries, protected by an international patent by the MPEG LA consortium, and which therefore required a license fee.
From version 6.6.8, NoMachine has decided to include these libraries covering the costs of the user license fees at its own expense, thus offering the best performance offered by the video encoding standard known as AVC/H.264.
This update also introduces other enhancements such as improvements to how NoMachine server handles the heaviest peaks of user log-in demand, and the option to define the rate control mode (‘bitrate’ or ‘quality’) in sessions where multi-media is being streamed. Additionally, the OpenSSL libraries provided by NoMachine have been updated to OpenSSL v. 1.0.2r. The full list of enhancements is available here.
For more information on NoMachine please see our web site and contact CustomTech (email info@customtech.com.au or call) to arrange a FREE evaluation and discuss your needs.
