[x264-devel] x264 Development Newsletter: Vol 7

[Jason Garrett-Glaser]

This is the seventh x264 development newsletter.  If you missed the
first six, this is a regular email containing updates on fixes and
improvements in the most recent x264 push, along with updates on
what's coming next.  Previous versions can be found in the mailing
list archives.

Fixes:

Fix SPARC and Solaris building (really this time!)

Three timecode input fixes: for nonzero starting pts, for a corner
case in auto timebase generation, and fixing a spurious error in case
of a frame read error.

Actually fix fittobox resizing code.

Fix incorrect handling of some pixfmts with non-mod2 resolutions in
the resize filter.

Fix a file handle leak in libx264 with certain file reading errors in
statsfile handling.

Fix intra refresh's quality masking: the ipratio wasn't correctly
applied in threaded mode.

Fix an overflow in fdct asm in 10-bit builds.

Improvements:

Automatically restrict QPs to avoid quantization (under|over)flow, so
you don't have to.  Will error out if this, combined with insane user
constraints, makes encoding impossible.  This makes fprofiling work
out of the box again.

Use the Avisynth 2.6 API to detect Avisynth initialization failure and
print the associated error (only available in Avisynth 2.6 alphas;
doesn't affect older versions).

Install an x264_config.h containing information about how x264 was
configured.  This will allow ffmpeg to link with commercially licensed
copies of libx264 without --enable-gpl.

Massive amounts of high bit depth assembly code from Google Code-In
(about two dozen functions).

Upcoming:

--device and automatic --level restriction support is in the works, as
part of Google Code-In.

A per-option help system is in the works, as part of Google Code-In.

VBV Emergency Mode is finally completed, with just fine-tuning and
bugfixing left.  This makes x264 able to deal gracefully with extreme
input combined with VBV restrictions (e.g. noise, Doremi Labs test
boxes).  This is important for some broadcast applications.

Adaptive MBAFF development is coming along, with B-frames being
finished up currently.

x262 is under development: a best-in-class MPEG-2 encoder built using
the x264 framework.  Basic structure is done, with intra coding
finished and inter coding begun.

Work is planned to integrate x264 with the Sandy Bridge's encoding
ASIC for improved encoding performance.  Current status is: waiting on
Intel (these guys move at the speed of a three-toed sloth swimming
down a river of bricks).

Jason Garrett-Glaser

The x264 Team