AOMedia Codec SDK

CHANGELOG

    Next Release
      - Incompatible changes:
        The AV1 encoder's default keyframe interval changed to 128 from 9999.
        Support for armv6 was removed.

    2016-04-07 v0.1.0 "AOMedia Codec 1"
      This release is the first Alliance for Open Media codec.
    2015-11-09 v1.5.0 "Javan Whistling Duck"
      This release improves upon the VP9 encoder and speeds up the encoding and
      decoding processes.

      - Upgrading:
        This release is ABI incompatible with 1.4.0. It drops deprecated VP8
        controls and adds a variety of VP9 controls for testing.

        The vpxenc utility now prefers VP9 by default.

      - Enhancements:
        Faster VP9 encoding and decoding
        Smaller library size by combining functions used by VP8 and VP9

      - Bug Fixes:
        A variety of fuzzing issues

    2015-04-03 v1.4.0 "Indian Runner Duck"
      This release includes significant improvements to the VP9 codec.

      - Upgrading:
        This release is ABI incompatible with 1.3.0. It drops the compatibility
        layer, requiring VPX_IMG_FMT_* instead of IMG_FMT_*, and adds several codec
        controls for VP9.

      - Enhancements:
        Faster VP9 encoding and decoding
        Multithreaded VP9 decoding (tile and frame-based)
        Multithreaded VP9 encoding - on by default
        YUV 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 support in VP9
        10 and 12bit support in VP9
        64bit ARM support by replacing ARM assembly with intrinsics

      - Bug Fixes:
        Fixes a VP9 bitstream issue in Profile 1. This only affected non-YUV 4:2:0
        files.

      - Known Issues:
        Frame Parallel decoding fails for segmented and non-420 files.

    2013-11-15 v1.3.0 "Forest"
      This release introduces the VP9 codec in a backward-compatible way.
      All existing users of VP8 can continue to use the library without
      modification. However, some VP8 options do not map to VP9 in the same manner.

      The VP9 encoder in this release is not feature complete. Users interested in
      the encoder are advised to use the git master branch and discuss issues on
      libvpx mailing lists.

      - Upgrading:
        This release is ABI and API compatible with Duclair (v1.0.0). Users
        of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this document
        for that release.

      - Enhancements:
          Get rid of bashisms in the main build scripts
          Added usage info on command line options
          Add lossless compression mode
          Dll build of libvpx
          Add additional Mac OS X targets: 10.7, 10.8 and 10.9 (darwin11-13)
          Add option to disable documentation
          configure: add --enable-external-build support
          make: support V=1 as short form of verbose=yes
          configure: support mingw-w64
          configure: support hardfloat armv7 CHOSTS
          configure: add support for android x86
          Add estimated completion time to vpxenc
          Don't exit on decode errors in vpxenc
          vpxenc: support scaling prior to encoding
          vpxdec: support scaling output
          vpxenc: improve progress indicators with --skip
          msvs: Don't link to winmm.lib
          Add a new script for producing vcxproj files
          Produce Visual Studio 10 and 11 project files
          Produce Windows Phone project files
          msvs-build: use msbuild for vs >= 2005
          configure: default configure log to config.log
          Add encoding option --static-thresh

      - Speed:
          Miscellaneous speed optimizations for VP8 and VP9.

      - Quality:
          In general, quality is consistent with the Eider release.

      - Bug Fixes:
          This release represents approximately a year of engineering effort,
          and contains multiple bug fixes. Please refer to git history for details.

    2012-12-21 v1.2.0
      This release acts as a checkpoint for a large amount of internal refactoring
      and testing. It also contains a number of small bugfixes, so all users are
      encouraged to upgrade.

      - Upgrading:
        This release is ABI and API compatible with Duclair (v1.0.0). Users
        of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this
        document for that release.

      - Enhancements:
          VP8 optimizations for MIPS dspr2
          vpxenc: add -quiet option

      - Speed:
          Encoder and decoder speed is consistent with the Eider release.

      - Quality:
          In general, quality is consistent with the Eider release.

          Minor tweaks to ARNR filtering
          Minor improvements to real time encoding with multiple temporal layers

      - Bug Fixes:
          Fixes multithreaded encoder race condition in loopfilter
          Fixes multi-resolution threaded encoding
          Fix potential encoder dead-lock after picture resize

    2012-05-09 v1.1.0 "Eider"
      This introduces a number of enhancements, mostly focused on real-time
      encoding. In addition, it fixes a decoder bug (first introduced in
      Duclair) so all users of that release are encouraged to upgrade.

      - Upgrading:
        This release is ABI and API compatible with Duclair (v1.0.0). Users
        of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this
        document for that release.

        This release introduces a new temporal denoiser, controlled by the
        VP8E_SET_NOISE_SENSITIVITY control. The temporal denoiser does not
        currently take a strength parameter, so the control is effectively
        a boolean - zero (off) or non-zero (on). For compatibility with
        existing applications, the values accepted are the same as those
        for the spatial denoiser (0-6). The temporal denoiser is enabled
        by default, and the older spatial denoiser may be restored by
        configuring with --disable-temporal-denoising. The temporal denoiser
        is more computationally intensive than the spatial one.

        This release removes support for a legacy, decode only API that was
        supported, but deprecated, at the initial release of libvpx
        (v0.9.0). This is not expected to have any impact. If you are
        impacted, you can apply a reversion to commit 2bf8fb58 locally.
        Please update to the latest libvpx API if you are affected.

      - Enhancements:
          Adds a motion compensated temporal denoiser to the encoder, which
          gives higher quality than the older spatial denoiser. (See above
          for notes on upgrading).

          In addition, support for new compilers and platforms were added,
          including:
            improved support for XCode
            Android x86 NDK build
            OS/2 support
            SunCC support

          Changing resolution with vpx_codec_enc_config_set() is now
          supported. Previously, reinitializing the codec was required to
          change the input resolution.

          The vpxenc application has initial support for producing multiple
          encodes from the same input in one call. Resizing is not yet
          supported, but varying other codec parameters is. Use -- to
          delineate output streams. Options persist from one stream to the
          next.

          Also, the vpxenc application will now use a keyframe interval of
          5 seconds by default. Use the --kf-max-dist option to override.

      - Speed:
          Decoder performance improved 2.5% versus Duclair. Encoder speed is
          consistent with Duclair for most material. Two pass encoding of
          slideshow-like material will see significant improvements.

          Large realtime encoding speed gains at a small quality expense are
          possible by configuring the on-the-fly bitpacking experiment with
          --enable-onthefly-bitpacking. Realtime encoder can be up to 13%
          faster (ARM) depending on the number of threads and bitrate
          settings. This technique sees constant gain over the 5-16 speed
          range. For VC style input the loss seen is up to 0.2dB. See commit
          52cf4dca for further details.

      - Quality:
          On the whole, quality is consistent with the Duclair release. Some
          tweaks:

            Reduced blockiness in easy sections by applying a penalty to
            intra modes.

            Improved quality of static sections (like slideshows) with
            two pass encoding.

            Improved keyframe sizing with multiple temporal layers

      - Bug Fixes:
          Corrected alt-ref contribution to frame rate for visible updates
          to the alt-ref buffer. This affected applications making manual
          usage of the frame reference flags, or temporal layers.

          Additional constraints were added to disable multi-frame quality
          enhancement (MFQE) in sections of the frame where there is motion.
          (#392)

          Fixed corruption issues when vpx_codec_enc_config_set() was called
          with spatial resampling enabled.

          Fixed a decoder error introduced in Duclair where the segmentation
          map was not being reinitialized on keyframes (#378)

    2012-01-27 v1.0.0 "Duclair"
      Our fourth named release, focused on performance and features related to
      real-time encoding. It also fixes a decoder crash bug introduced in
      v0.9.7, so all users of that release are encouraged to upgrade.

      - Upgrading:
          This release is ABI incompatible with prior releases of libvpx, so the
          "major" version number has been bumped to 1. You must recompile your
          applications against the latest version of the libvpx headers. The
          API remains compatible, and this should not require code changes in most
          applications.

      - Enhancements:
          This release introduces several substantial new features to the encoder,
          of particular interest to real time streaming applications.

          Temporal scalability allows the encoder to produce a stream that can
          be decimated to different frame rates, with independent rate targetting
          for each substream.

          Multiframe quality enhancement postprocessing can make visual quality
          more consistent in the presence of frames that are substantially
          different quality than the surrounding frames, as in the temporal
          scalability case and in some forced keyframe scenarios.

          Multiple-resolution encoding support allows the encoding of the
          same content at different resolutions faster than encoding them
          separately.

      - Speed:
          Optimization targets for this release included the decoder and the real-
          time modes of the encoder. Decoder speed on x86 has improved 10.5% with
          this release. Encoder improvements followed a curve where speeds 1-3
          improved 4.0%-1.5%, speeds 4-8 improved <1%, and speeds 9-16 improved
          1.5% to 10.5%, respectively. "Best" mode speed is consistent with the
          Cayuga release.

      - Quality:
          Encoder quality in the single stream case is consistent with the Cayuga
          release.

      - Bug Fixes:
          This release fixes an OOB read decoder crash bug present in v0.9.7
          related to the clamping of motion vectors in SPLITMV blocks. This
          behavior could be triggered by corrupt input or by starting
          decoding from a P-frame.

    2011-08-15 v0.9.7-p1 "Cayuga" patch 1
      This is an incremental bugfix release against Cayuga. All users of that
      release are strongly encouraged to upgrade.

        - Fix potential OOB reads (cdae03a)

              An unbounded out of bounds read was discovered when the
              decoder was requested to perform error concealment (new in
              Cayuga) given a frame with corrupt partition sizes.

              A bounded out of bounds read was discovered affecting all
              versions of libvpx. Given an multipartition input frame that
              is truncated between the mode/mv partition and the first
              residiual paritition (in the block of partition offsets), up
              to 3 extra bytes could have been read from the source buffer.
              The code will not take any action regardless of the contents
              of these undefined bytes, as the truncated buffer is detected
              immediately following the read based on the calculated
              starting position of the coefficient partition.

        - Fix potential error concealment crash when the very first frame
          is missing or corrupt (a609be5)

        - Fix significant artifacts in error concealment (a4c2211, 99d870a)

        - Revert 1-pass CBR rate control changes (e961317)
          Further testing showed this change produced undesirable visual
          artifacts, rolling back for now.

    2011-08-02 v0.9.7 "Cayuga"
      Our third named release, focused on a faster, higher quality, encoder.

      - Upgrading:
        This release is backwards compatible with Aylesbury (v0.9.5) and
        Bali (v0.9.6). Users of older releases should refer to the Upgrading
        notes in this document for that release.

      - Enhancements:
              Stereo 3D format support for vpxenc
              Runtime detection of available processor cores.
              Allow specifying --end-usage by enum name
              vpxdec: test for frame corruption
              vpxenc: add quantizer histogram display
              vpxenc: add rate histogram display
              Set VPX_FRAME_IS_DROPPABLE
              update configure for ios sdk 4.3
              Avoid text relocations in ARM vp8 decoder
              Generate a vpx.pc file for pkg-config.
              New ways of passing encoded data between encoder and decoder.

      - Speed:
          This release includes across-the-board speed improvements to the
          encoder. On x86, these measure at approximately 11.5% in Best mode,
          21.5% in Good mode (speed 0), and 22.5% in Realtime mode (speed 6).
          On ARM Cortex A9 with Neon extensions, real-time encoding of video
          telephony content is 35% faster than Bali on single core and 48%
          faster on multi-core. On the NVidia Tegra2 platform, real time
          encoding is 40% faster than Bali.

          Decoder speed was not a priority for this release, but improved
          approximately 8.4% on x86.

              Reduce motion vector search on alt-ref frame.
              Encoder loopfilter running in its own thread
              Reworked loopfilter to precalculate more parameters
              SSE2/SSSE3 optimizations for build_predictors_mbuv{,_s}().
              Make hor UV predict ~2x faster (73 vs 132 cycles) using SSSE3.
              Removed redundant checks
              Reduced structure sizes
              utilize preload in ARMv6 MC/LPF/Copy routines
              ARM optimized quantization, dfct, variance, subtract
              Increase chrow row alignment to 16 bytes.
              disable trellis optimization for first pass
              Write SSSE3 sub-pixel filter function
              Improve SSE2 half-pixel filter funtions
              Add vp8_sub_pixel_variance16x8_ssse3 function
              Reduce unnecessary distortion computation
              Use diamond search to replace full search
              Preload reference area in sub-pixel motion search (real-time mode)

      - Quality:
          This release focused primarily on one-pass use cases, including
          video conferencing. Low latency data rate control was significantly
          improved, improving streamability over bandwidth constrained links.
          Added support for error concealment, allowing frames to maintain
          visual quality in the presence of substantial packet loss.

              Add rc_max_intra_bitrate_pct control
              Limit size of initial keyframe in one-pass.
              Improve framerate adaptation
              Improved 1-pass CBR rate control
              Improved KF insertion after fades to still.
              Improved key frame detection.
              Improved activity masking (lower PSNR impact for same SSIM boost)
              Improved interaction between GF and ARFs
              Adding error-concealment to the decoder.
              Adding support for independent partitions
              Adjusted rate-distortion constants

      - Bug Fixes:
              Removed firstpass motion map
              Fix parallel make install
              Fix multithreaded encoding for 1 MB wide frame
              Fixed iwalsh_neon build problems with RVDS4.1
              Fix semaphore emulation, spin-wait intrinsics on Windows
              Fix build with xcode4 and simplify GLOBAL.
              Mark ARM asm objects as allowing a non-executable stack.
              Fix vpxenc encoding incorrect webm file header on big endian

    2011-03-07 v0.9.6 "Bali"
      Our second named release, focused on a faster, higher quality, encoder.

      - Upgrading:
        This release is backwards compatible with Aylesbury (v0.9.5). Users
        of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this
        document for that release.

      - Enhancements:
          vpxenc --psnr shows a summary when encode completes
          --tune=ssim option to enable activity masking
          improved postproc visualizations for development
          updated support for Apple iOS to SDK 4.2
          query decoder to determine which reference frames were updated
          implemented error tracking in the decoder
          fix pipe support on windows

      - Speed:
          Primary focus was on good quality mode, speed 0. Average improvement
          on x86 about 40%, up to 100% on user-generated content at that speed.
          Best quality mode speed improved 35%, and realtime speed 10-20%. This
          release also saw significant improvement in realtime encoding speed
          on ARM platforms.

            Improved encoder threading
            Dont pick encoder filter level when loopfilter is disabled.
            Avoid double copying of key frames into alt and golden buffer
            FDCT optimizations.
            x86 sse2 temporal filter
            SSSE3 version of fast quantizer
            vp8_rd_pick_best_mbsegmentation code restructure
            Adjusted breakout RD for SPLITMV
            Changed segmentation check order
            Improved rd_pick_intra4x4block
            Adds armv6 optimized variance calculation
            ARMv6 optimized sad16x16
            ARMv6 optimized half pixel variance calculations
            Full search SAD function optimization in SSE4.1
            Improve MV prediction accuracy to achieve performance gain
            Improve MV prediction in vp8_pick_inter_mode() for speed>3

      - Quality:
          Best quality mode improved PSNR 6.3%, and SSIM 6.1%. This release
          also includes support for "activity masking," which greatly improves
          SSIM at the expense of PSNR. For now, this feature is available with
          the --tune=ssim option. Further experimentation in this area
          is ongoing. This release also introduces a new rate control mode
          called "CQ," which changes the allocation of bits within a clip to
          the sections where they will have the most visual impact.

            Tuning for the more exact quantizer.
            Relax rate control for last few frames
            CQ Mode
            Limit key frame quantizer for forced key frames.
            KF/GF Pulsing
            Add simple version of activity masking.
            make rdmult adaptive for intra in quantizer RDO
            cap the best quantizer for 2nd order DC
            change the threshold of DC check for encode breakout

      - Bug Fixes:
          Fix crash on Sparc Solaris.
          Fix counter of fixed keyframe distance
          ARNR filter pointer update bug fix
          Fixed use of motion percentage in KF/GF group calc
          Changed condition for using RD in Intra Mode
          Fix encoder real-time only configuration.
          Fix ARM encoder crash with multiple token partitions
          Fixed bug first cluster timecode of webm file is wrong.
          Fixed various encoder bugs with odd-sized images
          vp8e_get_preview fixed when spatial resampling enabled
          quantizer: fix assertion in fast quantizer path
          Allocate source buffers to be multiples of 16
          Fix for manual Golden frame frequency
          Fix drastic undershoot in long form content

    2010-10-28 v0.9.5 "Aylesbury"
      Our first named release, focused on a faster decoder, and a better encoder.

      - Upgrading:
        This release incorporates backwards-incompatible changes to the
        ivfenc and ivfdec tools. These tools are now called vpxenc and vpxdec.

        vpxdec
          * the -q (quiet) option has been removed, and replaced with
            -v (verbose). the output is quiet by default. Use -v to see
            the version number of the binary.

          * The default behavior is now to write output to a single file
            instead of individual frames. The -y option has been removed.
            Y4M output is the default.

          * For raw I420/YV12 output instead of Y4M, the --i420 or --yv12
            options must be specified.

              $ ivfdec -o OUTPUT INPUT
              $ vpxdec --i420 -o OUTPUT INPUT

          * If an output file is not specified, the default is to write
            Y4M to stdout. This makes piping more natural.

              $ ivfdec -y -o - INPUT | ...
              $ vpxdec INPUT | ...

          * The output file has additional flexibility for formatting the
            filename. It supports escape characters for constructing a
            filename from the width, height, and sequence number. This
            replaces the -p option. To get the equivalent:

              $ ivfdec -p frame INPUT
              $ vpxdec --i420 -o frame-%wx%h-%4.i420 INPUT

        vpxenc
          * The output file must be specified with -o, rather than as the
            last argument.

              $ ivfenc <options> INPUT OUTPUT
              $ vpxenc <options> -o OUTPUT INPUT

          * The output defaults to webm. To get IVF output, use the --ivf
            option.

              $ ivfenc <options> INPUT OUTPUT.ivf
              $ vpxenc <options> -o OUTPUT.ivf --ivf INPUT

      - Enhancements:
          ivfenc and ivfdec have been renamed to vpxenc, vpxdec.
          vpxdec supports .webm input
          vpxdec writes .y4m by default
          vpxenc writes .webm output by default
          vpxenc --psnr now shows the average/overall PSNR at the end
          ARM platforms now support runtime cpu detection
          vpxdec visualizations added for motion vectors, block modes, references
          vpxdec now silent by default
          vpxdec --progress shows frame-by-frame timing information
          vpxenc supports the distinction between --fps and --timebase
          NASM is now a supported assembler
          configure: enable PIC for shared libs by default
          configure: add --enable-small
          configure: support for ppc32-linux-gcc
          configure: support for sparc-solaris-gcc

      - Bugs:
          Improve handling of invalid frames
          Fix valgrind errors in the NEON loop filters.
          Fix loopfilter delta zero transitions
          Fix valgrind errors in vp8_sixtap_predict8x4_armv6().
          Build fixes for darwin-icc

      - Speed:
          20-40% (average 28%) improvement in libvpx decoder speed,
          including:
            Rewrite vp8_short_walsh4x4_sse2()
            Optimizations on the loopfilters.
            Miscellaneous improvements for Atom
            Add 4-tap version of 2nd-pass ARMv6 MC filter.
            Improved multithread utilization
            Better instruction choices on x86
            reorder data to use wider instructions
            Update NEON wide idcts
            Make block access to frame buffer sequential
            Improved subset block search
            Bilinear subpixel optimizations for ssse3.
            Decrease memory footprint

          Encoder speed improvements (percentage gain not measured):
            Skip unnecessary search of identical frames
            Add SSE2 subtract functions
            Improve bounds checking in vp8_diamond_search_sadx4()
            Added vp8_fast_quantize_b_sse2

      - Quality:
          Over 7% overall PSNR improvement (6.3% SSIM) in "best" quality
          encoding mode, and up to 60% improvement on very noisy, still
          or slow moving source video

            Motion compensated temporal filter for Alt-Ref Noise Reduction
            Improved use of trellis quantization on 2nd order Y blocks
            Tune effect of motion on KF/GF boost in two pass
            Allow coefficient optimization for good quality speed 0.
            Improved control of active min quantizer for two pass.
            Enable ARFs for non-lagged compress

    2010-09-02 v0.9.2
      - Enhancements:
          Disable frame dropping by default
          Improved multithreaded performance
          Improved Force Key Frame Behaviour
          Increased rate control buffer level precision
          Fix bug in 1st pass motion compensation
          ivfenc: correct fixed kf interval, --disable-kf
      - Speed:
          Changed above and left context data layout
          Rework idct calling structure.
          Removed unnecessary MB_MODE_INFO copies
          x86: SSSE3 sixtap prediction
          Reworked IDCT to include reconstruction (add) step
          Swap alt/gold/new/last frame buffer ptrs instead of copying.
          Improve SSE2 loopfilter functions
          Change bitreader to use a larger window.
          Avoid loopfilter reinitialization when possible
      - Quality:
          Normalize quantizer's zero bin and rounding factors
          Add trellis quantization.
          Make the quantizer exact.
          Updates to ARNR filtering algorithm
          Fix breakout thresh computation for golden & AltRef frames
          Redo the forward 4x4 dct
          Improve the accuracy of forward walsh-hadamard transform
          Further adjustment of RD behaviour with Q and Zbin.
      - Build System:
          Allow linking of libs built with MinGW to MSVC
          Fix target auto-detection on mingw32
          Allow --cpu= to work for x86.
          configure: pass original arguments through to make dist
          Fix builds without runtime CPU detection
          msvs: fix install of codec sources
          msvs: Change devenv.com command line for better msys support
          msvs: Add vs9 targets.
          Add x86_64-linux-icc target
      - Bugs:
          Potential crashes on older MinGW builds
          Fix two-pass framrate for Y4M input.
          Fixed simple loop filter, other crashes on ARM v6
          arm: fix missing dependency with --enable-shared
          configure: support directories containing .o
          Replace pinsrw (SSE) with MMX instructions
          apple: include proper mach primatives
          Fixed rate control bug with long key frame interval.
          Fix DSO link errors on x86-64 when not using a version script
          Fixed buffer selection for UV in AltRef filtering

    2010-06-17 v0.9.1
      - Enhancements:
          * ivfenc/ivfdec now support YUV4MPEG2 input and pipe I/O
          * Speed optimizations
      - Bugfixes:
          * Rate control
          * Prevent out-of-bounds accesses on invalid data
      - Build system updates:
          * Detect toolchain to be used automatically for native builds
          * Support building shared libraries
          * Better autotools emulation (--prefix, --libdir, DESTDIR)
      - Updated LICENSE
          * http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/06/changes-to-webm-open-source-license.html

    2010-05-18 v0.9.0
      - Initial open source release. Welcome to WebM and VP8!