There are free and open source transcoders for H264 and H265 available now, most notably FFmpeg. The symbolic dollar is for a commercially released decoder binary, but that's not the only option.
These closed formats are typically patent protected, not kept secret through proprietary encoding/decoding software.
As you probably know: (1) Those patents will eventually expire, (2) The price of a patent is immediate and complete disclosure of the technical method underpinning the claims.
These closed formats are typically patent protected, not kept secret through proprietary encoding/decoding software. As you probably know: (1) Those patents will eventually expire, (2) The price of a patent is immediate and complete disclosure of the technical method underpinning the claims.