1 2013-11-15 v1.3.0 "Forest"
2 This release introduces the VP9 codec in a backward-compatible way.
3 All existing users of VP8 can continue to use the library without
4 modification. However, some VP8 options do not map to VP9 in the same manner.
6 The VP9 encoder in this release is not feature complete. Users interested in
7 the encoder are advised to use the git master branch and discuss issues on
11 This release is ABI and API compatible with Duclair (v1.0.0). Users
12 of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this document
16 Get rid of bashisms in the main build scripts
17 Added usage info on command line options
18 Add lossless compression mode
20 Add additional Mac OS X targets: 10.7, 10.8 and 10.9 (darwin11-13)
21 Add option to disable documentation
22 configure: add --enable-external-build support
23 make: support V=1 as short form of verbose=yes
24 configure: support mingw-w64
25 configure: support hardfloat armv7 CHOSTS
26 configure: add support for android x86
27 Add estimated completion time to vpxenc
28 Don't exit on decode errors in vpxenc
29 vpxenc: support scaling prior to encoding
30 vpxdec: support scaling output
31 vpxenc: improve progress indicators with --skip
32 msvs: Don't link to winmm.lib
33 Add a new script for producing vcxproj files
34 Produce Visual Studio 10 and 11 project files
35 Produce Windows Phone project files
36 msvs-build: use msbuild for vs >= 2005
37 configure: default configure log to config.log
38 Add encoding option --static-thresh
41 Miscellaneous speed optimizations for VP8 and VP9.
44 In general, quality is consistent with the Eider release.
47 This release represents approximately a year of engineering effort,
48 and contains multiple bug fixes. Please refer to git history for details.
52 This release acts as a checkpoint for a large amount of internal refactoring
53 and testing. It also contains a number of small bugfixes, so all users are
54 encouraged to upgrade.
57 This release is ABI and API compatible with Duclair (v1.0.0). Users
58 of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this
59 document for that release.
62 VP8 optimizations for MIPS dspr2
63 vpxenc: add -quiet option
66 Encoder and decoder speed is consistent with the Eider release.
69 In general, quality is consistent with the Eider release.
71 Minor tweaks to ARNR filtering
72 Minor improvements to real time encoding with multiple temporal layers
75 Fixes multithreaded encoder race condition in loopfilter
76 Fixes multi-resolution threaded encoding
77 Fix potential encoder dead-lock after picture resize
80 2012-05-09 v1.1.0 "Eider"
81 This introduces a number of enhancements, mostly focused on real-time
82 encoding. In addition, it fixes a decoder bug (first introduced in
83 Duclair) so all users of that release are encouraged to upgrade.
86 This release is ABI and API compatible with Duclair (v1.0.0). Users
87 of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this
88 document for that release.
90 This release introduces a new temporal denoiser, controlled by the
91 VP8E_SET_NOISE_SENSITIVITY control. The temporal denoiser does not
92 currently take a strength parameter, so the control is effectively
93 a boolean - zero (off) or non-zero (on). For compatibility with
94 existing applications, the values accepted are the same as those
95 for the spatial denoiser (0-6). The temporal denoiser is enabled
96 by default, and the older spatial denoiser may be restored by
97 configuring with --disable-temporal-denoising. The temporal denoiser
98 is more computationally intensive than the spatial one.
100 This release removes support for a legacy, decode only API that was
101 supported, but deprecated, at the initial release of libvpx
102 (v0.9.0). This is not expected to have any impact. If you are
103 impacted, you can apply a reversion to commit 2bf8fb58 locally.
104 Please update to the latest libvpx API if you are affected.
107 Adds a motion compensated temporal denoiser to the encoder, which
108 gives higher quality than the older spatial denoiser. (See above
109 for notes on upgrading).
111 In addition, support for new compilers and platforms were added,
113 improved support for XCode
114 Android x86 NDK build
118 Changing resolution with vpx_codec_enc_config_set() is now
119 supported. Previously, reinitializing the codec was required to
120 change the input resolution.
122 The vpxenc application has initial support for producing multiple
123 encodes from the same input in one call. Resizing is not yet
124 supported, but varying other codec parameters is. Use -- to
125 delineate output streams. Options persist from one stream to the
128 Also, the vpxenc application will now use a keyframe interval of
129 5 seconds by default. Use the --kf-max-dist option to override.
132 Decoder performance improved 2.5% versus Duclair. Encoder speed is
133 consistent with Duclair for most material. Two pass encoding of
134 slideshow-like material will see significant improvements.
136 Large realtime encoding speed gains at a small quality expense are
137 possible by configuring the on-the-fly bitpacking experiment with
138 --enable-onthefly-bitpacking. Realtime encoder can be up to 13%
139 faster (ARM) depending on the number of threads and bitrate
140 settings. This technique sees constant gain over the 5-16 speed
141 range. For VC style input the loss seen is up to 0.2dB. See commit
142 52cf4dca for further details.
145 On the whole, quality is consistent with the Duclair release. Some
148 Reduced blockiness in easy sections by applying a penalty to
151 Improved quality of static sections (like slideshows) with
154 Improved keyframe sizing with multiple temporal layers
157 Corrected alt-ref contribution to frame rate for visible updates
158 to the alt-ref buffer. This affected applications making manual
159 usage of the frame reference flags, or temporal layers.
161 Additional constraints were added to disable multi-frame quality
162 enhancement (MFQE) in sections of the frame where there is motion.
165 Fixed corruption issues when vpx_codec_enc_config_set() was called
166 with spatial resampling enabled.
168 Fixed a decoder error introduced in Duclair where the segmentation
169 map was not being reinitialized on keyframes (#378)
172 2012-01-27 v1.0.0 "Duclair"
173 Our fourth named release, focused on performance and features related to
174 real-time encoding. It also fixes a decoder crash bug introduced in
175 v0.9.7, so all users of that release are encouraged to upgrade.
178 This release is ABI incompatible with prior releases of libvpx, so the
179 "major" version number has been bumped to 1. You must recompile your
180 applications against the latest version of the libvpx headers. The
181 API remains compatible, and this should not require code changes in most
185 This release introduces several substantial new features to the encoder,
186 of particular interest to real time streaming applications.
188 Temporal scalability allows the encoder to produce a stream that can
189 be decimated to different frame rates, with independent rate targetting
192 Multiframe quality enhancement postprocessing can make visual quality
193 more consistent in the presence of frames that are substantially
194 different quality than the surrounding frames, as in the temporal
195 scalability case and in some forced keyframe scenarios.
197 Multiple-resolution encoding support allows the encoding of the
198 same content at different resolutions faster than encoding them
202 Optimization targets for this release included the decoder and the real-
203 time modes of the encoder. Decoder speed on x86 has improved 10.5% with
204 this release. Encoder improvements followed a curve where speeds 1-3
205 improved 4.0%-1.5%, speeds 4-8 improved <1%, and speeds 9-16 improved
206 1.5% to 10.5%, respectively. "Best" mode speed is consistent with the
210 Encoder quality in the single stream case is consistent with the Cayuga
214 This release fixes an OOB read decoder crash bug present in v0.9.7
215 related to the clamping of motion vectors in SPLITMV blocks. This
216 behavior could be triggered by corrupt input or by starting
217 decoding from a P-frame.
220 2011-08-15 v0.9.7-p1 "Cayuga" patch 1
221 This is an incremental bugfix release against Cayuga. All users of that
222 release are strongly encouraged to upgrade.
224 - Fix potential OOB reads (cdae03a)
226 An unbounded out of bounds read was discovered when the
227 decoder was requested to perform error concealment (new in
228 Cayuga) given a frame with corrupt partition sizes.
230 A bounded out of bounds read was discovered affecting all
231 versions of libvpx. Given an multipartition input frame that
232 is truncated between the mode/mv partition and the first
233 residiual paritition (in the block of partition offsets), up
234 to 3 extra bytes could have been read from the source buffer.
235 The code will not take any action regardless of the contents
236 of these undefined bytes, as the truncated buffer is detected
237 immediately following the read based on the calculated
238 starting position of the coefficient partition.
240 - Fix potential error concealment crash when the very first frame
241 is missing or corrupt (a609be5)
243 - Fix significant artifacts in error concealment (a4c2211, 99d870a)
245 - Revert 1-pass CBR rate control changes (e961317)
246 Further testing showed this change produced undesirable visual
247 artifacts, rolling back for now.
250 2011-08-02 v0.9.7 "Cayuga"
251 Our third named release, focused on a faster, higher quality, encoder.
254 This release is backwards compatible with Aylesbury (v0.9.5) and
255 Bali (v0.9.6). Users of older releases should refer to the Upgrading
256 notes in this document for that release.
259 Stereo 3D format support for vpxenc
260 Runtime detection of available processor cores.
261 Allow specifying --end-usage by enum name
262 vpxdec: test for frame corruption
263 vpxenc: add quantizer histogram display
264 vpxenc: add rate histogram display
265 Set VPX_FRAME_IS_DROPPABLE
266 update configure for ios sdk 4.3
267 Avoid text relocations in ARM vp8 decoder
268 Generate a vpx.pc file for pkg-config.
269 New ways of passing encoded data between encoder and decoder.
272 This release includes across-the-board speed improvements to the
273 encoder. On x86, these measure at approximately 11.5% in Best mode,
274 21.5% in Good mode (speed 0), and 22.5% in Realtime mode (speed 6).
275 On ARM Cortex A9 with Neon extensions, real-time encoding of video
276 telephony content is 35% faster than Bali on single core and 48%
277 faster on multi-core. On the NVidia Tegra2 platform, real time
278 encoding is 40% faster than Bali.
280 Decoder speed was not a priority for this release, but improved
281 approximately 8.4% on x86.
283 Reduce motion vector search on alt-ref frame.
284 Encoder loopfilter running in its own thread
285 Reworked loopfilter to precalculate more parameters
286 SSE2/SSSE3 optimizations for build_predictors_mbuv{,_s}().
287 Make hor UV predict ~2x faster (73 vs 132 cycles) using SSSE3.
288 Removed redundant checks
289 Reduced structure sizes
290 utilize preload in ARMv6 MC/LPF/Copy routines
291 ARM optimized quantization, dfct, variance, subtract
292 Increase chrow row alignment to 16 bytes.
293 disable trellis optimization for first pass
294 Write SSSE3 sub-pixel filter function
295 Improve SSE2 half-pixel filter funtions
296 Add vp8_sub_pixel_variance16x8_ssse3 function
297 Reduce unnecessary distortion computation
298 Use diamond search to replace full search
299 Preload reference area in sub-pixel motion search (real-time mode)
302 This release focused primarily on one-pass use cases, including
303 video conferencing. Low latency data rate control was significantly
304 improved, improving streamability over bandwidth constrained links.
305 Added support for error concealment, allowing frames to maintain
306 visual quality in the presence of substantial packet loss.
308 Add rc_max_intra_bitrate_pct control
309 Limit size of initial keyframe in one-pass.
310 Improve framerate adaptation
311 Improved 1-pass CBR rate control
312 Improved KF insertion after fades to still.
313 Improved key frame detection.
314 Improved activity masking (lower PSNR impact for same SSIM boost)
315 Improved interaction between GF and ARFs
316 Adding error-concealment to the decoder.
317 Adding support for independent partitions
318 Adjusted rate-distortion constants
322 Removed firstpass motion map
323 Fix parallel make install
324 Fix multithreaded encoding for 1 MB wide frame
325 Fixed iwalsh_neon build problems with RVDS4.1
326 Fix semaphore emulation, spin-wait intrinsics on Windows
327 Fix build with xcode4 and simplify GLOBAL.
328 Mark ARM asm objects as allowing a non-executable stack.
329 Fix vpxenc encoding incorrect webm file header on big endian
332 2011-03-07 v0.9.6 "Bali"
333 Our second named release, focused on a faster, higher quality, encoder.
336 This release is backwards compatible with Aylesbury (v0.9.5). Users
337 of older releases should refer to the Upgrading notes in this
338 document for that release.
341 vpxenc --psnr shows a summary when encode completes
342 --tune=ssim option to enable activity masking
343 improved postproc visualizations for development
344 updated support for Apple iOS to SDK 4.2
345 query decoder to determine which reference frames were updated
346 implemented error tracking in the decoder
347 fix pipe support on windows
350 Primary focus was on good quality mode, speed 0. Average improvement
351 on x86 about 40%, up to 100% on user-generated content at that speed.
352 Best quality mode speed improved 35%, and realtime speed 10-20%. This
353 release also saw significant improvement in realtime encoding speed
356 Improved encoder threading
357 Dont pick encoder filter level when loopfilter is disabled.
358 Avoid double copying of key frames into alt and golden buffer
360 x86 sse2 temporal filter
361 SSSE3 version of fast quantizer
362 vp8_rd_pick_best_mbsegmentation code restructure
363 Adjusted breakout RD for SPLITMV
364 Changed segmentation check order
365 Improved rd_pick_intra4x4block
366 Adds armv6 optimized variance calculation
367 ARMv6 optimized sad16x16
368 ARMv6 optimized half pixel variance calculations
369 Full search SAD function optimization in SSE4.1
370 Improve MV prediction accuracy to achieve performance gain
371 Improve MV prediction in vp8_pick_inter_mode() for speed>3
374 Best quality mode improved PSNR 6.3%, and SSIM 6.1%. This release
375 also includes support for "activity masking," which greatly improves
376 SSIM at the expense of PSNR. For now, this feature is available with
377 the --tune=ssim option. Further experimentation in this area
378 is ongoing. This release also introduces a new rate control mode
379 called "CQ," which changes the allocation of bits within a clip to
380 the sections where they will have the most visual impact.
382 Tuning for the more exact quantizer.
383 Relax rate control for last few frames
385 Limit key frame quantizer for forced key frames.
387 Add simple version of activity masking.
388 make rdmult adaptive for intra in quantizer RDO
389 cap the best quantizer for 2nd order DC
390 change the threshold of DC check for encode breakout
393 Fix crash on Sparc Solaris.
394 Fix counter of fixed keyframe distance
395 ARNR filter pointer update bug fix
396 Fixed use of motion percentage in KF/GF group calc
397 Changed condition for using RD in Intra Mode
398 Fix encoder real-time only configuration.
399 Fix ARM encoder crash with multiple token partitions
400 Fixed bug first cluster timecode of webm file is wrong.
401 Fixed various encoder bugs with odd-sized images
402 vp8e_get_preview fixed when spatial resampling enabled
403 quantizer: fix assertion in fast quantizer path
404 Allocate source buffers to be multiples of 16
405 Fix for manual Golden frame frequency
406 Fix drastic undershoot in long form content
409 2010-10-28 v0.9.5 "Aylesbury"
410 Our first named release, focused on a faster decoder, and a better encoder.
413 This release incorporates backwards-incompatible changes to the
414 ivfenc and ivfdec tools. These tools are now called vpxenc and vpxdec.
417 * the -q (quiet) option has been removed, and replaced with
418 -v (verbose). the output is quiet by default. Use -v to see
419 the version number of the binary.
421 * The default behavior is now to write output to a single file
422 instead of individual frames. The -y option has been removed.
423 Y4M output is the default.
425 * For raw I420/YV12 output instead of Y4M, the --i420 or --yv12
426 options must be specified.
428 $ ivfdec -o OUTPUT INPUT
429 $ vpxdec --i420 -o OUTPUT INPUT
431 * If an output file is not specified, the default is to write
432 Y4M to stdout. This makes piping more natural.
434 $ ivfdec -y -o - INPUT | ...
437 * The output file has additional flexibility for formatting the
438 filename. It supports escape characters for constructing a
439 filename from the width, height, and sequence number. This
440 replaces the -p option. To get the equivalent:
442 $ ivfdec -p frame INPUT
443 $ vpxdec --i420 -o frame-%wx%h-%4.i420 INPUT
446 * The output file must be specified with -o, rather than as the
449 $ ivfenc <options> INPUT OUTPUT
450 $ vpxenc <options> -o OUTPUT INPUT
452 * The output defaults to webm. To get IVF output, use the --ivf
455 $ ivfenc <options> INPUT OUTPUT.ivf
456 $ vpxenc <options> -o OUTPUT.ivf --ivf INPUT
460 ivfenc and ivfdec have been renamed to vpxenc, vpxdec.
461 vpxdec supports .webm input
462 vpxdec writes .y4m by default
463 vpxenc writes .webm output by default
464 vpxenc --psnr now shows the average/overall PSNR at the end
465 ARM platforms now support runtime cpu detection
466 vpxdec visualizations added for motion vectors, block modes, references
467 vpxdec now silent by default
468 vpxdec --progress shows frame-by-frame timing information
469 vpxenc supports the distinction between --fps and --timebase
470 NASM is now a supported assembler
471 configure: enable PIC for shared libs by default
472 configure: add --enable-small
473 configure: support for ppc32-linux-gcc
474 configure: support for sparc-solaris-gcc
477 Improve handling of invalid frames
478 Fix valgrind errors in the NEON loop filters.
479 Fix loopfilter delta zero transitions
480 Fix valgrind errors in vp8_sixtap_predict8x4_armv6().
481 Build fixes for darwin-icc
484 20-40% (average 28%) improvement in libvpx decoder speed,
486 Rewrite vp8_short_walsh4x4_sse2()
487 Optimizations on the loopfilters.
488 Miscellaneous improvements for Atom
489 Add 4-tap version of 2nd-pass ARMv6 MC filter.
490 Improved multithread utilization
491 Better instruction choices on x86
492 reorder data to use wider instructions
493 Update NEON wide idcts
494 Make block access to frame buffer sequential
495 Improved subset block search
496 Bilinear subpixel optimizations for ssse3.
497 Decrease memory footprint
499 Encoder speed improvements (percentage gain not measured):
500 Skip unnecessary search of identical frames
501 Add SSE2 subtract functions
502 Improve bounds checking in vp8_diamond_search_sadx4()
503 Added vp8_fast_quantize_b_sse2
506 Over 7% overall PSNR improvement (6.3% SSIM) in "best" quality
507 encoding mode, and up to 60% improvement on very noisy, still
508 or slow moving source video
510 Motion compensated temporal filter for Alt-Ref Noise Reduction
511 Improved use of trellis quantization on 2nd order Y blocks
512 Tune effect of motion on KF/GF boost in two pass
513 Allow coefficient optimization for good quality speed 0.
514 Improved control of active min quantizer for two pass.
515 Enable ARFs for non-lagged compress
519 Disable frame dropping by default
520 Improved multithreaded performance
521 Improved Force Key Frame Behaviour
522 Increased rate control buffer level precision
523 Fix bug in 1st pass motion compensation
524 ivfenc: correct fixed kf interval, --disable-kf
526 Changed above and left context data layout
527 Rework idct calling structure.
528 Removed unnecessary MB_MODE_INFO copies
529 x86: SSSE3 sixtap prediction
530 Reworked IDCT to include reconstruction (add) step
531 Swap alt/gold/new/last frame buffer ptrs instead of copying.
532 Improve SSE2 loopfilter functions
533 Change bitreader to use a larger window.
534 Avoid loopfilter reinitialization when possible
536 Normalize quantizer's zero bin and rounding factors
537 Add trellis quantization.
538 Make the quantizer exact.
539 Updates to ARNR filtering algorithm
540 Fix breakout thresh computation for golden & AltRef frames
541 Redo the forward 4x4 dct
542 Improve the accuracy of forward walsh-hadamard transform
543 Further adjustment of RD behaviour with Q and Zbin.
545 Allow linking of libs built with MinGW to MSVC
546 Fix target auto-detection on mingw32
547 Allow --cpu= to work for x86.
548 configure: pass original arguments through to make dist
549 Fix builds without runtime CPU detection
550 msvs: fix install of codec sources
551 msvs: Change devenv.com command line for better msys support
552 msvs: Add vs9 targets.
553 Add x86_64-linux-icc target
555 Potential crashes on older MinGW builds
556 Fix two-pass framrate for Y4M input.
557 Fixed simple loop filter, other crashes on ARM v6
558 arm: fix missing dependency with --enable-shared
559 configure: support directories containing .o
560 Replace pinsrw (SSE) with MMX instructions
561 apple: include proper mach primatives
562 Fixed rate control bug with long key frame interval.
563 Fix DSO link errors on x86-64 when not using a version script
564 Fixed buffer selection for UV in AltRef filtering
569 * ivfenc/ivfdec now support YUV4MPEG2 input and pipe I/O
570 * Speed optimizations
573 * Prevent out-of-bounds accesses on invalid data
574 - Build system updates:
575 * Detect toolchain to be used automatically for native builds
576 * Support building shared libraries
577 * Better autotools emulation (--prefix, --libdir, DESTDIR)
579 * http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/06/changes-to-webm-open-source-license.html
583 - Initial open source release. Welcome to WebM and VP8!