[x264-devel] x264 Development Newsletter: Vol 5

[Jason Garrett-Glaser]

This is the fifth x264 development newsletter.  If you missed the
first four, 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.

Note that we pushed a bugfix release this time around, so this
newsletter includes fixes from those commits as well, i.e. it covers
everything since the last newsletter.

Fixes:

HRD now works correctly when used with intra refresh.  Thanks to a
certain x264 commercial licensee for the bug report.

QPfile parsing now works as it was supposed to have worked last time:
users should be able to omit QP values.

Allocate the correct amount of memory for weightp buffers with weightp
+ high bit depth (it allocated too much, not too little).

Fix flash detection to work correctly near the end of the keyframe interval.

Fix a crash in dump yuv with some resolutions.

Various fixes have been made to ratecontrol in high-bit-depth mode.

Constrained intra pred is working properly again in all cases.

Improvements:

x264's SEI header now indicates whether the build used was GPL or proprietary.

x264 is now compatible with FFMS2's most recent API break.

configure now logs test programs that failed, not just the error output.

Merge Oskar's (irock's) 10-bit asm branch: ~4.4x overall speed boost
in high bit depth mode.

Chroma weighted prediction: dramatically improved chroma compression
and quality in fades.

Custom cropping rectangle support: users can now specify --crop-rect
to add values to the H.264 cropping header.  This is supposedly useful
for 3D television applications (to allow legacy decoders to access
only one view of the image).

Upcoming:

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.

The pad filter and yadif are nearly ready for the x264CLI filter
framework.  Both now support high bit depth.

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).

Other news:

Since we started a couple of months ago, over 40 companies have
contacted us regarding x264 licensing!

At least one major Blu-ray authoring house is switching to x264 for
their commercial Blu-rays.

At least one commercial encoding application based on x264 is
currently in the works.  An announcement will come Soon™.

Jason Garrett-Glaser

The x264 Team