Project status

Avelune is experimental. Nothing is frozen.

The software release line is 0.x. ALV1 and ALA1 identify Draft Generation 1 bitstreams; the 1 is a generation label, not a compatibility promise. Incompatible specification, container, codec, and API changes remain allowed when evidence supports them.

Implemented POC

• custom ALV1 lossy/lossless 8-bit 4:2:0 video;
• custom ALA1 lossy/lossless audio;
• bounded immutable video dependencies, half-sample motion, palette blocks, integer WHT residuals, and static rANS entropy coding;
• front-indexed CRC-protected container with independently addressable epochs;
• one canonical safe Rust implementation with per-stream state and explicit input finalization;
• a separate audited SIMD/unsafe kernel crate;
• one independent scalar conformance oracle for differential testing;
• native CLI and FFmpeg bridge;
• canonical scalar/SIMD128 WASM decoder plus a video-only raw encoder ABI;
• browser HTTP Range and local-file playback with cancellable decode generations;
• local 8-bit 4:2:0 Y4M → Avelune browser encoding without upload;
• Canvas2D and WebGPU YUV presentation;
• property, hostile-input, mutation, differential, benchmark, and format-research tooling.

Implementation model

Applications use crates/avelune. crates/avelune-reference exists only to provide an independently implemented oracle for conformance and differential tests; it is not selectable as a runtime backend. Unsafe/intrinsic code is isolated in crates/avelune-kernels.

This distinction is deliberate: sharing parser/reconstruction implementation with the oracle would make agreement less meaningful, while maintaining two complete application stacks created needless duplication and divergent semantics.

Known limitations

• general-video rate/distortion is behind mature x264/x265/VP9/AV1 encoders on tested material;
• lossy ALA1 needs substantially more codec research and perceptual tuning;
• Draft Generation 1 supports only the current baseline video/audio profiles;
• avelune play is a convenience FFmpeg/ffplay path, not the browser-style indexed player;
• WebGPU compute kernels remain experimental; WebGPU presentation is separate from codec semantics;
• mutation/property testing does not replace sustained coverage-guided fuzzing;
• no professional security audit or patent-freedom/legal-clearance claim exists.

See docs/development/REFERENCE_ORACLE.adoc and docs/development/VERSIONING.adoc.