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      1 2012-05-09 v1.1.0 "Eider"
      2   This introduces a number of enhancements, mostly focused on real-time
      3   encoding. In addition, it fixes a decoder bug (first introduced in
      4   Duclair) so all users of that release are encouraged to upgrade.
      5 
      6   - Upgrading:
      7     This release is ABI and API compatible with Duclair (v1.0.0). Users
      8     of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this
      9     document for that release.
     10 
     11     This release introduces a new temporal denoiser, controlled by the
     12     VP8E_SET_NOISE_SENSITIVITY control. The temporal denoiser does not
     13     currently take a strength parameter, so the control is effectively
     14     a boolean - zero (off) or non-zero (on). For compatibility with
     15     existing applications, the values accepted are the same as those
     16     for the spatial denoiser (0-6). The temporal denoiser is enabled
     17     by default, and the older spatial denoiser may be restored by
     18     configuring with --disable-temporal-denoising. The temporal denoiser
     19     is more computationally intensive than the spatial one.
     20 
     21     This release removes support for a legacy, decode only API that was
     22     supported, but deprecated, at the initial release of libvpx
     23     (v0.9.0). This is not expected to have any impact. If you are
     24     impacted, you can apply a reversion to commit 2bf8fb58 locally.
     25     Please update to the latest libvpx API if you are affected.
     26 
     27   - Enhancements:
     28       Adds a motion compensated temporal denoiser to the encoder, which
     29       gives higher quality than the older spatial denoiser. (See above
     30       for notes on upgrading).
     31 
     32       In addition, support for new compilers and platforms were added,
     33       including:
     34         improved support for XCode
     35         Android x86 NDK build
     36         OS/2 support
     37         SunCC support
     38 
     39       Changing resolution with vpx_codec_enc_config_set() is now
     40       supported. Previously, reinitializing the codec was required to
     41       change the input resolution.
     42 
     43       The vpxenc application has initial support for producing multiple
     44       encodes from the same input in one call. Resizing is not yet
     45       supported, but varying other codec parameters is. Use -- to
     46       delineate output streams. Options persist from one stream to the
     47       next.
     48 
     49       Also, the vpxenc application will now use a keyframe interval of
     50       5 seconds by default. Use the --kf-max-dist option to override.
     51 
     52   - Speed:
     53       Decoder performance improved 2.5% versus Duclair. Encoder speed is
     54       consistent with Duclair for most material. Two pass encoding of
     55       slideshow-like material will see significant improvements.
     56 
     57       Large realtime encoding speed gains at a small quality expense are
     58       possible by configuring the on-the-fly bitpacking experiment with
     59       --enable-onthefly-bitpacking. Realtime encoder can be up to 13%
     60       faster (ARM) depending on the number of threads and bitrate
     61       settings. This technique sees constant gain over the 5-16 speed
     62       range. For VC style input the loss seen is up to 0.2dB. See commit
     63       52cf4dca for further details.
     64 
     65   - Quality:
     66       On the whole, quality is consistent with the Duclair release. Some
     67       tweaks:
     68 
     69         Reduced blockiness in easy sections by applying a penalty to
     70         intra modes.
     71 
     72         Improved quality of static sections (like slideshows) with
     73         two pass encoding.
     74 
     75         Improved keyframe sizing with multiple temporal layers
     76 
     77   - Bug Fixes:
     78       Corrected alt-ref contribution to frame rate for visible updates
     79       to the alt-ref buffer. This affected applications making manual
     80       usage of the frame reference flags, or temporal layers.
     81 
     82       Additional constraints were added to disable multi-frame quality
     83       enhancement (MFQE) in sections of the frame where there is motion.
     84       (#392)
     85 
     86       Fixed corruption issues when vpx_codec_enc_config_set() was called
     87       with spatial resampling enabled.
     88 
     89       Fixed a decoder error introduced in Duclair where the segmentation
     90       map was not being reinitialized on keyframes (#378)
     91 
     92 
     93 2012-01-27 v1.0.0 "Duclair"
     94   Our fourth named release, focused on performance and features related to
     95   real-time encoding. It also fixes a decoder crash bug introduced in
     96   v0.9.7, so all users of that release are encouraged to upgrade.
     97 
     98   - Upgrading:
     99       This release is ABI incompatible with prior releases of libvpx, so the
    100       "major" version number has been bumped to 1. You must recompile your
    101       applications against the latest version of the libvpx headers. The
    102       API remains compatible, and this should not require code changes in most
    103       applications.
    104 
    105   - Enhancements:
    106       This release introduces several substantial new features to the encoder,
    107       of particular interest to real time streaming applications.
    108 
    109       Temporal scalability allows the encoder to produce a stream that can
    110       be decimated to different frame rates, with independent rate targetting
    111       for each substream.
    112 
    113       Multiframe quality enhancement postprocessing can make visual quality
    114       more consistent in the presence of frames that are substantially
    115       different quality than the surrounding frames, as in the temporal
    116       scalability case and in some forced keyframe scenarios.
    117 
    118       Multiple-resolution encoding support allows the encoding of the
    119       same content at different resolutions faster than encoding them
    120       separately.
    121 
    122   - Speed:
    123       Optimization targets for this release included the decoder and the real-
    124       time modes of the encoder. Decoder speed on x86 has improved 10.5% with
    125       this release. Encoder improvements followed a curve where speeds 1-3
    126       improved 4.0%-1.5%, speeds 4-8 improved <1%, and speeds 9-16 improved
    127       1.5% to 10.5%, respectively. "Best" mode speed is consistent with the
    128       Cayuga release.
    129 
    130   - Quality:
    131       Encoder quality in the single stream case is consistent with the Cayuga
    132       release.
    133 
    134   - Bug Fixes:
    135       This release fixes an OOB read decoder crash bug present in v0.9.7
    136       related to the clamping of motion vectors in SPLITMV blocks. This
    137       behavior could be triggered by corrupt input or by starting
    138       decoding from a P-frame.
    139 
    140 
    141 2011-08-15 v0.9.7-p1 "Cayuga" patch 1
    142   This is an incremental bugfix release against Cayuga. All users of that
    143   release are strongly encouraged to upgrade.
    144 
    145     - Fix potential OOB reads (cdae03a)
    146 
    147           An unbounded out of bounds read was discovered when the
    148           decoder was requested to perform error concealment (new in
    149           Cayuga) given a frame with corrupt partition sizes.
    150 
    151           A bounded out of bounds read was discovered affecting all
    152           versions of libvpx. Given an multipartition input frame that
    153           is truncated between the mode/mv partition and the first
    154           residiual paritition (in the block of partition offsets), up
    155           to 3 extra bytes could have been read from the source buffer.
    156           The code will not take any action regardless of the contents
    157           of these undefined bytes, as the truncated buffer is detected
    158           immediately following the read based on the calculated
    159           starting position of the coefficient partition.
    160 
    161     - Fix potential error concealment crash when the very first frame
    162       is missing or corrupt (a609be5)
    163 
    164     - Fix significant artifacts in error concealment (a4c2211, 99d870a)
    165 
    166     - Revert 1-pass CBR rate control changes (e961317)
    167       Further testing showed this change produced undesirable visual
    168       artifacts, rolling back for now.
    169 
    170 
    171 2011-08-02 v0.9.7 "Cayuga"
    172   Our third named release, focused on a faster, higher quality, encoder.
    173 
    174   - Upgrading:
    175     This release is backwards compatible with Aylesbury (v0.9.5) and
    176     Bali (v0.9.6). Users of older releases should refer to the Upgrading
    177     notes in this document for that release.
    178 
    179   - Enhancements:
    180           Stereo 3D format support for vpxenc
    181           Runtime detection of available processor cores.
    182           Allow specifying --end-usage by enum name
    183           vpxdec: test for frame corruption
    184           vpxenc: add quantizer histogram display
    185           vpxenc: add rate histogram display
    186           Set VPX_FRAME_IS_DROPPABLE
    187           update configure for ios sdk 4.3
    188           Avoid text relocations in ARM vp8 decoder
    189           Generate a vpx.pc file for pkg-config.
    190           New ways of passing encoded data between encoder and decoder.
    191 
    192   - Speed:
    193       This release includes across-the-board speed improvements to the
    194       encoder. On x86, these measure at approximately 11.5% in Best mode,
    195       21.5% in Good mode (speed 0), and 22.5% in Realtime mode (speed 6).
    196       On ARM Cortex A9 with Neon extensions, real-time encoding of video
    197       telephony content is 35% faster than Bali on single core and 48%
    198       faster on multi-core. On the NVidia Tegra2 platform, real time
    199       encoding is 40% faster than Bali.
    200 
    201       Decoder speed was not a priority for this release, but improved
    202       approximately 8.4% on x86.
    203 
    204           Reduce motion vector search on alt-ref frame.
    205           Encoder loopfilter running in its own thread
    206           Reworked loopfilter to precalculate more parameters
    207           SSE2/SSSE3 optimizations for build_predictors_mbuv{,_s}().
    208           Make hor UV predict ~2x faster (73 vs 132 cycles) using SSSE3.
    209           Removed redundant checks
    210           Reduced structure sizes
    211           utilize preload in ARMv6 MC/LPF/Copy routines
    212           ARM optimized quantization, dfct, variance, subtract
    213           Increase chrow row alignment to 16 bytes.
    214           disable trellis optimization for first pass
    215           Write SSSE3 sub-pixel filter function
    216           Improve SSE2 half-pixel filter funtions
    217           Add vp8_sub_pixel_variance16x8_ssse3 function
    218           Reduce unnecessary distortion computation
    219           Use diamond search to replace full search
    220           Preload reference area in sub-pixel motion search (real-time mode)
    221 
    222   - Quality:
    223       This release focused primarily on one-pass use cases, including
    224       video conferencing. Low latency data rate control was significantly
    225       improved, improving streamability over bandwidth constrained links.
    226       Added support for error concealment, allowing frames to maintain
    227       visual quality in the presence of substantial packet loss.
    228 
    229           Add rc_max_intra_bitrate_pct control
    230           Limit size of initial keyframe in one-pass.
    231           Improve framerate adaptation
    232           Improved 1-pass CBR rate control
    233           Improved KF insertion after fades to still.
    234           Improved key frame detection.
    235           Improved activity masking (lower PSNR impact for same SSIM boost)
    236           Improved interaction between GF and ARFs
    237           Adding error-concealment to the decoder.
    238           Adding support for independent partitions
    239           Adjusted rate-distortion constants
    240 
    241 
    242   - Bug Fixes:
    243           Removed firstpass motion map
    244           Fix parallel make install
    245           Fix multithreaded encoding for 1 MB wide frame
    246           Fixed iwalsh_neon build problems with RVDS4.1
    247           Fix semaphore emulation, spin-wait intrinsics on Windows
    248           Fix build with xcode4 and simplify GLOBAL.
    249           Mark ARM asm objects as allowing a non-executable stack.
    250           Fix vpxenc encoding incorrect webm file header on big endian
    251 
    252 
    253 2011-03-07 v0.9.6 "Bali"
    254   Our second named release, focused on a faster, higher quality, encoder.
    255 
    256   - Upgrading:
    257     This release is backwards compatible with Aylesbury (v0.9.5). Users
    258     of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this
    259     document for that release.
    260 
    261   - Enhancements:
    262       vpxenc --psnr shows a summary when encode completes
    263       --tune=ssim option to enable activity masking
    264       improved postproc visualizations for development
    265       updated support for Apple iOS to SDK 4.2
    266       query decoder to determine which reference frames were updated
    267       implemented error tracking in the decoder
    268       fix pipe support on windows
    269 
    270   - Speed:
    271       Primary focus was on good quality mode, speed 0. Average improvement
    272       on x86 about 40%, up to 100% on user-generated content at that speed.
    273       Best quality mode speed improved 35%, and realtime speed 10-20%. This
    274       release also saw significant improvement in realtime encoding speed
    275       on ARM platforms.
    276 
    277         Improved encoder threading
    278         Dont pick encoder filter level when loopfilter is disabled.
    279         Avoid double copying of key frames into alt and golden buffer
    280         FDCT optimizations.
    281         x86 sse2 temporal filter
    282         SSSE3 version of fast quantizer
    283         vp8_rd_pick_best_mbsegmentation code restructure
    284         Adjusted breakout RD for SPLITMV
    285         Changed segmentation check order
    286         Improved rd_pick_intra4x4block
    287         Adds armv6 optimized variance calculation
    288         ARMv6 optimized sad16x16
    289         ARMv6 optimized half pixel variance calculations
    290         Full search SAD function optimization in SSE4.1
    291         Improve MV prediction accuracy to achieve performance gain
    292         Improve MV prediction in vp8_pick_inter_mode() for speed>3
    293 
    294   - Quality:
    295       Best quality mode improved PSNR 6.3%, and SSIM 6.1%. This release
    296       also includes support for "activity masking," which greatly improves
    297       SSIM at the expense of PSNR. For now, this feature is available with
    298       the --tune=ssim option. Further experimentation in this area
    299       is ongoing. This release also introduces a new rate control mode
    300       called "CQ," which changes the allocation of bits within a clip to
    301       the sections where they will have the most visual impact.
    302 
    303         Tuning for the more exact quantizer.
    304         Relax rate control for last few frames
    305         CQ Mode
    306         Limit key frame quantizer for forced key frames.
    307         KF/GF Pulsing
    308         Add simple version of activity masking.
    309         make rdmult adaptive for intra in quantizer RDO
    310         cap the best quantizer for 2nd order DC
    311         change the threshold of DC check for encode breakout
    312 
    313   - Bug Fixes:
    314       Fix crash on Sparc Solaris.
    315       Fix counter of fixed keyframe distance
    316       ARNR filter pointer update bug fix
    317       Fixed use of motion percentage in KF/GF group calc
    318       Changed condition for using RD in Intra Mode
    319       Fix encoder real-time only configuration.
    320       Fix ARM encoder crash with multiple token partitions
    321       Fixed bug first cluster timecode of webm file is wrong.
    322       Fixed various encoder bugs with odd-sized images
    323       vp8e_get_preview fixed when spatial resampling enabled
    324       quantizer: fix assertion in fast quantizer path
    325       Allocate source buffers to be multiples of 16
    326       Fix for manual Golden frame frequency
    327       Fix drastic undershoot in long form content
    328 
    329 
    330 2010-10-28 v0.9.5 "Aylesbury"
    331   Our first named release, focused on a faster decoder, and a better encoder.
    332 
    333   - Upgrading:
    334     This release incorporates backwards-incompatible changes to the
    335     ivfenc and ivfdec tools. These tools are now called vpxenc and vpxdec.
    336 
    337     vpxdec
    338       * the -q (quiet) option has been removed, and replaced with
    339         -v (verbose). the output is quiet by default. Use -v to see
    340         the version number of the binary.
    341 
    342       * The default behavior is now to write output to a single file
    343         instead of individual frames. The -y option has been removed.
    344         Y4M output is the default.
    345 
    346       * For raw I420/YV12 output instead of Y4M, the --i420 or --yv12
    347         options must be specified.
    348 
    349           $ ivfdec -o OUTPUT INPUT
    350           $ vpxdec --i420 -o OUTPUT INPUT
    351 
    352       * If an output file is not specified, the default is to write
    353         Y4M to stdout. This makes piping more natural.
    354 
    355           $ ivfdec -y -o - INPUT | ...
    356           $ vpxdec INPUT | ...
    357 
    358       * The output file has additional flexibility for formatting the
    359         filename. It supports escape characters for constructing a
    360         filename from the width, height, and sequence number. This
    361         replaces the -p option. To get the equivalent:
    362 
    363           $ ivfdec -p frame INPUT
    364           $ vpxdec --i420 -o frame-%wx%h-%4.i420 INPUT
    365 
    366     vpxenc
    367       * The output file must be specified with -o, rather than as the
    368         last argument.
    369 
    370           $ ivfenc <options> INPUT OUTPUT
    371           $ vpxenc <options> -o OUTPUT INPUT
    372 
    373       * The output defaults to webm. To get IVF output, use the --ivf
    374         option.
    375 
    376           $ ivfenc <options> INPUT OUTPUT.ivf
    377           $ vpxenc <options> -o OUTPUT.ivf --ivf INPUT
    378 
    379 
    380   - Enhancements:
    381       ivfenc and ivfdec have been renamed to vpxenc, vpxdec.
    382       vpxdec supports .webm input
    383       vpxdec writes .y4m by default
    384       vpxenc writes .webm output by default
    385       vpxenc --psnr now shows the average/overall PSNR at the end
    386       ARM platforms now support runtime cpu detection
    387       vpxdec visualizations added for motion vectors, block modes, references
    388       vpxdec now silent by default
    389       vpxdec --progress shows frame-by-frame timing information
    390       vpxenc supports the distinction between --fps and --timebase
    391       NASM is now a supported assembler
    392       configure: enable PIC for shared libs by default
    393       configure: add --enable-small
    394       configure: support for ppc32-linux-gcc
    395       configure: support for sparc-solaris-gcc
    396 
    397   - Bugs:
    398       Improve handling of invalid frames
    399       Fix valgrind errors in the NEON loop filters.
    400       Fix loopfilter delta zero transitions
    401       Fix valgrind errors in vp8_sixtap_predict8x4_armv6().
    402       Build fixes for darwin-icc
    403 
    404   - Speed:
    405       20-40% (average 28%) improvement in libvpx decoder speed,
    406       including:
    407         Rewrite vp8_short_walsh4x4_sse2()
    408         Optimizations on the loopfilters.
    409         Miscellaneous improvements for Atom
    410         Add 4-tap version of 2nd-pass ARMv6 MC filter.
    411         Improved multithread utilization
    412         Better instruction choices on x86
    413         reorder data to use wider instructions
    414         Update NEON wide idcts
    415         Make block access to frame buffer sequential
    416         Improved subset block search
    417         Bilinear subpixel optimizations for ssse3.
    418         Decrease memory footprint
    419 
    420       Encoder speed improvements (percentage gain not measured):
    421         Skip unnecessary search of identical frames
    422         Add SSE2 subtract functions
    423         Improve bounds checking in vp8_diamond_search_sadx4()
    424         Added vp8_fast_quantize_b_sse2
    425 
    426   - Quality:
    427       Over 7% overall PSNR improvement (6.3% SSIM) in "best" quality
    428       encoding mode, and up to 60% improvement on very noisy, still
    429       or slow moving source video
    430 
    431         Motion compensated temporal filter for Alt-Ref Noise Reduction
    432         Improved use of trellis quantization on 2nd order Y blocks
    433         Tune effect of motion on KF/GF boost in two pass
    434         Allow coefficient optimization for good quality speed 0.
    435         Improved control of active min quantizer for two pass.
    436         Enable ARFs for non-lagged compress
    437 
    438 2010-09-02 v0.9.2
    439   - Enhancements:
    440       Disable frame dropping by default
    441       Improved multithreaded performance
    442       Improved Force Key Frame Behaviour
    443       Increased rate control buffer level precision
    444       Fix bug in 1st pass motion compensation
    445       ivfenc: correct fixed kf interval, --disable-kf
    446   - Speed:
    447       Changed above and left context data layout
    448       Rework idct calling structure.
    449       Removed unnecessary MB_MODE_INFO copies
    450       x86: SSSE3 sixtap prediction
    451       Reworked IDCT to include reconstruction (add) step
    452       Swap alt/gold/new/last frame buffer ptrs instead of copying.
    453       Improve SSE2 loopfilter functions
    454       Change bitreader to use a larger window.
    455       Avoid loopfilter reinitialization when possible
    456   - Quality:
    457       Normalize quantizer's zero bin and rounding factors
    458       Add trellis quantization.
    459       Make the quantizer exact.
    460       Updates to ARNR filtering algorithm
    461       Fix breakout thresh computation for golden & AltRef frames
    462       Redo the forward 4x4 dct
    463       Improve the accuracy of forward walsh-hadamard transform
    464       Further adjustment of RD behaviour with Q and Zbin.
    465   - Build System:
    466       Allow linking of libs built with MinGW to MSVC
    467       Fix target auto-detection on mingw32
    468       Allow --cpu= to work for x86.
    469       configure: pass original arguments through to make dist
    470       Fix builds without runtime CPU detection
    471       msvs: fix install of codec sources
    472       msvs: Change devenv.com command line for better msys support
    473       msvs: Add vs9 targets.
    474       Add x86_64-linux-icc target
    475   - Bugs:
    476       Potential crashes on older MinGW builds
    477       Fix two-pass framrate for Y4M input.
    478       Fixed simple loop filter, other crashes on ARM v6
    479       arm: fix missing dependency with --enable-shared
    480       configure: support directories containing .o
    481       Replace pinsrw (SSE) with MMX instructions
    482       apple: include proper mach primatives
    483       Fixed rate control bug with long key frame interval.
    484       Fix DSO link errors on x86-64 when not using a version script
    485       Fixed buffer selection for UV in AltRef filtering
    486 
    487 
    488 2010-06-17 v0.9.1
    489   - Enhancements:
    490       * ivfenc/ivfdec now support YUV4MPEG2 input and pipe I/O
    491       * Speed optimizations
    492   - Bugfixes:
    493       * Rate control
    494       * Prevent out-of-bounds accesses on invalid data
    495   - Build system updates:
    496       * Detect toolchain to be used automatically for native builds
    497       * Support building shared libraries
    498       * Better autotools emulation (--prefix, --libdir, DESTDIR)
    499   - Updated LICENSE
    500       * http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/06/changes-to-webm-open-source-license.html
    501 
    502 
    503 2010-05-18 v0.9.0
    504   - Initial open source release. Welcome to WebM and VP8!
    505 
    506