We rewrote the entire pipeline from scratch — Metal, NEON, unified memory, the Neural Engine. The result is something the JPEG 2000 world hasn't seen before: a software decoder that beats hardware codec cards.
Cross-platform codecs spend most of their cycles pretending every CPU is the same. We don't. MetaWave talks directly to Metal, the Neural Engine, NEON SIMD, and Apple's unified memory — every single time. That's how a MacBook keeps pace with a PCIe card.
SDK v1.49.0 · M4 Max (14-core CPU) · -O3 -flto · best of 5 runs · OpenJPEG 2.5 reference
| Resolution | MetaWave decode | MetaWave encode | OpenJPEG (CPU) | Speedup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FullHD1920 × 1080 | 7,856 FPS16,290 MP/s | 4,439 FPS9,204 MP/s | 45 FPS93 MP/s | 175× |
| 4K3840 × 2160 | 2,432 FPS20,177 MP/s | 1,947 FPS16,148 MP/s | 11 FPS91 MP/s | 221× |
| 8K7680 × 4320 | 877 FPS29,099 MP/s | 615 FPS20,404 MP/s | 3 FPS100 MP/s | 292× |
| 16K15360 × 8640 | 142 FPS18,819 MP/s | 136 FPS18,023 MP/s | 0.7 FPS93 MP/s | 203× |
| 32K30720 × 17280 | 39 FPS20,703 MP/s | 35 FPS18,579 MP/s | — | — |
New in v1.49 — multi-component, film, streaming. RGB / RGBA / YUV planar at 10-, 12-, 16-bit. Bit-exact lossless round-trips.
| Format | 1080p enc | 1080p dec | 4K enc | 4K dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RGB · 8-bit interleaved | 249 FPS | 950 FPS | 115 FPS | 374 FPS |
| RGBA · 4-channel, 8-bit | 518 FPS | 782 FPS | 170 FPS | 194 FPS |
| YUV 4:4:4 · film | 1,078 FPS | 3,048 FPS | 328 FPS | 730 FPS |
| YUV 4:2:2 · broadcast | 1,984 FPS | 4,132 FPS | 448 FPS | 1,052 FPS |
| YUV 4:2:0 · streaming | 2,342 FPS | 4,386 FPS | 521 FPS | 1,089 FPS |
| Planar16 · 10-bit HDR | 208 FPS | 487 FPS | 55 FPS | 123 FPS |
| Planar16 · 12-bit DI | 224 FPS | 668 FPS | 46 FPS | 156 FPS |
| Planar16 · 16-bit medical/VFX | 277 FPS | 861 FPS | 46 FPS | 174 FPS |
All multi-component figures are bit-exact lossless round-trips. RCT, streaming framing (sequence number + 64-bit timestamp), and 10/12/16-bit byte-plane packing are built in. No external wrapper required.
DICOM the way it was supposed to feel — instant. Radiologists scrub 8K pathology slides on a MacBook without waiting on tile streaming.
Stereoscopic 8K per eye, decoded inside the motion-to-photon budget. Built around visionOS and Metal 4 — not retrofitted to it.
When a single capture is half a terabyte, every percent of throughput matters. Lossless, 16-bit, gigapixel — by default.
Real-time tile generation from cloud-optimised GeoTIFFs. We can saturate your storage before you saturate us.
Side-by-side, on the same M4 Max, the same source files, the same eight-frame burst. We measured them so you don't have to.
| What you care about | MetaWave | Kakadu | MainConcept | Accusoft PICTools | AJA hardware | OpenJPEG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4K decode FPS | 1,534 | ~190 | ~250 | ~120 | 60 (HW cap) | 11 |
| Real-time 8K? | 425 FPS · yes | No | No | No | 4K only | 3 FPS |
| Apple Silicon native | Metal · NEON · ANE | Generic ARM | Generic x86 / ARM | x86 only | PCIe card | Generic CPU |
| Zero-copy memory | Unified memory | — | — | — | PCIe DMA | — |
| HTJ2K (Part 15) | Full | Full | Partial | Legacy J2K | Legacy J2K | Limited |
| Lossless | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Model-dependent | Yes |
| Vision Pro ready | Yes — first-party | — | — | — | — | — |
| HIPAA / FDA paperwork | Included | You write it | You write it | You write it | You write it | — |
| Hardware required | Any Mac, M1+ | Any CPU | Any CPU | x86 only | $5–15k card | Any CPU |
| Three-year cost | From $29.7k | ~$50k | ~$45k | ~$30k | $15–45k (HW) | Free · slow |
We'll benchmark MetaWave on your data, on your hardware, free. If we lose, we say so.
Less than what you're paying for Kakadu. More predictable than what you're paying for AJA. Pick a tier or write to us — we read every email.
Migration creditSwitching from another JPEG 2000 codec? Up to 40% off the first year.
Multi-year10% off (2y) · 15% off (3y) · 20% off (5y).
Always includedQuarterly SDK updates, maintenance, and migration help.
Tell us roughly what you're building, what codec you're using today, and what hardware you're on. We'll come back within a working day with either a benchmark plan, a demo invite, or a polite "we're not the right fit" — whichever is true.