C H A N G E S CasparCG 2.0.4 Stable (as compared to 2.0.4 Beta 1) =================================================== General ------- o Can now open media with digit only names. o Misc stability and performance improvements. Video mixer ----------- o Conditional compilation of chroma key support and straight alpha output support in shader (just like with blend-modes) because of performance impact even when not in use on a layer/on a channel. New element added to configuration for turning on mixer features that not everybody would want to pay for (performance-wise). blend-modes also moved into this element. o MIXER LEVELS interpretet arguments in the wrong order, so that gamma was interpreted as max_input and vice versa. Consumers --------- o Replaced usage of SFML for with PortAudio, because of problems with SFML since change to static linkage. Also PortAudio seems to give lower latency. o Added support for NewTek AirPlay. Enables the use of the CasparCG Server output as an input source in a NewTek TriCaster without requiring a video card. element in config enables AirPlay on a channel. o Decklink: Created custom decklink allocator for reducing memory footprint. Producers --------- o ffmpeg: Added support for arbitrary ffmpeg options in ffmpeg_producer. o flash: No longer starts a flash player to service CG commands that means nothing without an already running flash player. o flash: globally serialize initialization and destruction of flash players, to avoid race conditions in flash. o flash: changed so that the flash buffer is filled with flash player generated content at initialization instead of empty frames. OSC --- o Performance improvements. o Never send old values to OSC reveivers, collect the latest value of each path logged since last UDP send, and send the new UDP packet (to each subscribing OSC receiver) with the values collected. o Batch as many OSC messages as possible in an OSC bundle to reduce the number of UDP packets sent. Breakup into separate packages if necessary to avoid fragmentation. o Removed usage of Microsoft Agents library (server ran out of memory after a while) in favour of direct synchronous invocations. CasparCG 2.0.4 Beta 1 (as compared to 2.0.3 Stable) =================================================== General ------- o Front-end GUI for simplified configuration and easy access to common tasks. o Added support for video and images file thumbnail generation. By default the media directory is scanned every 5 seconds for new/modified/removed files and thumbnails are generated/regenerated/removed accordingly. o Support for new video modes: 1556p2398, 1556p2400, 1556p2500, 2160p2398, 2160p2400, 2160p2500, 2160p2997 and 2160p3000. o Experimental ATI graphics card support by using static linking against SFML instead of dynamic. Should improve ATI GPU support, but needs testing. o Added support for playback and pass-through of up to 16 audio channels. See http://casparcg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1453 for more information. o Optimizations in AMCP protocol implementations for large incoming messages, for example base64 encoded PNG images. o Logging output now includes milliseconds and has modified format: YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss.zzz o Improved audio playback with 720p5994 and 720p6000 channels. o An attempt to improve output synchronization of consumers has been made. Use for example: 1 true 2 true ...to instruct the server to keep both DeckLink consumers in sync with each other. Consider this experimental, so don't wrap everything in unless synchronization of consumer outputs is needed. For synchronization to be effective all synchronized cards must have genlock reference signal connected. Layer ----- o Fixed a problem where the first frame was not always shown on LOAD. Audio mixer ----------- o Added support for a master volume mixer setting for each channel. Video mixer ----------- o Added support for chroma keying. o Fixed bug where MIXER CONTRAST set to < 1 can cause transparency issues. o Experimental support for straight alpha output. Consumers --------- o Avoid that the FFmpeg consumer blocks the channel output when it can't keep up with the frame rate (drops frames instead). o Added support for to create a separate key and fill file when recording with the FFmpeg consumer. Add the SEPARATE_KEY parameter to the FFmpeg consumer parameter list. The key file will get the _A file name suffix to be picked up by the separated_producer when doing playback. o The Image consumer now writes to the media folder instead of the data folder. o Fixed bug in DeckLink consumer where we submit too few audio samples to the driver when the video format has a frame rate > 50. o Added another experimental DeckLink consumer implementation where scheduled playback is not used, but a similar approach as in the bluefish consumer where we wait for a frame to be displayed and then display the next frame. It is configured via a consumer element. The benefits of this consumer is lower latency and more deterministic synchronization between multiple instances (should not need to be wrapped in a element when separated key/fill is used). Producers --------- o Added support for playing .swf files using the Flash producer. o Image producer premultiplies PNG images with their alpha. o Image producer can load a PNG image encoded as base64 via: PLAY 1-0 [PNG_BASE64] o FFmpeg producer can now use a directshow input filters: PLAY 1-10 "dshow://video=Some Camera" AMCP ---- o The master volume feature is controlled via the MASTERVOLUME MIXER parameter. Example: MIXER 1 MASTERVOLUME 0.5 o THUMBNAIL LIST/RETRIEVE/GENERATE/GENERATE_ALL command was added to support the thumbnail feature. o ADD 1 FILE output.mov SEPARATE_KEY activates the separate key feature of the FFmpeg consumer creating an additional output_a.mov containing only the key. o Added KILL command for shutting down the server without console access. o Added RESTART command for shutting down the server in the same way as KILL except that the return code from CasparCG Server is 5 instead of 0, which can be used by parent process to take other actions. The 'casparcg_auto_restart.bat' script restarts the server if the return code is 5. o DATA RETRIEVE now returns linefeeds encoded as an actual linefeed (the single character 0x0a) instead of the previous two characters: \ followed by n. o MIXER CHROMA command added to control the chroma keying. Example: MIXER 1-1 CHROMA GREEN|BLUE 0.10 0.04 o Fixed bug where MIXER FILL overrides any previous MIXER CLIP on the same layer. The bugfix also has the side effect of supporting negative scale on MIXER FILL, causing the image to be flipped. o MIXER STRAIGHT_ALPHA_OUTPUT added to control whether to output straight alpha or not. o Added INFO DELAY and INFO - DELAY commands for showing some delay measurements. OSC --- o Support for sending OSC messages over UDP to either a predefined set of clients (servers in the OSC sense) or dynamically to the ip addresses of the currently connected AMCP clients. o /channel/[1-9]/stage/layer/[0-9] + always /paused [paused or not] + color producer /color [color string] + ffmpeg producer /profiler/time [render time] [frame duration] + ffmpeg producer /file/time [elapsed seconds] [total seconds] + ffmpeg producer /file/frame [frame] [total frames] + ffmpeg producer /file/fps [fps] + ffmpeg producer /file/path [file path] + ffmpeg producer /loop [looping or not] + during transitions /transition/frame [current frame] [total frames] + during transitions /transition/type [transition type] + flash producer /host/path [filename] + flash producer /host/width [width] + flash producer /host/height [height] + flash producer /host/fps [fps] + flash producer /buffer [buffered] [buffer size] + image producer /file/path [file path] CasparCG 2.0.3 Stable (as compared to 2.0.3 Alpha) ================================================== Stage ----- o Fixed dead-lock that can occur with multiple mixer tweens. AMCP ---- o DATA STORE now supports creating folders of path specified if they does not exist. o DATA REMOVE command was added. CasparCG 2.0.3 Alpha (as compared to 2.0 Stable) ================================================ General ------- o Data files are now stored in UTF-8 with BOM. Latin1 files are still supported for backwards compatibility o Commands written in UTF-8 to log file but only ascii characters to console. o Added supported video formats: + 720p2398 (not supported by DeckLink) + 720p2400 (not supported by DeckLink) + 1080p5994 + 1080p6000 + 720p30 (not supported by DeckLink) + 720p29.976 (not supported by DeckLink) CLK --- o CLK protocol implementation can now serve more than one connection at a time safely. o Added timeline support to the CLK protocol. o Refactored parts of the CLK parser implementation. Consumers --------- o Consumers on same channel now invoked asynchronously to allow for proper sync of multiple consumers. o System audio consumer: + no longer provides sync to caspar. o Screen consumer: + Support for multiple screen consumers on the same channel + No longer spin-waits for vsync + Now deinterlaces to two separate frames so for example 50i will no longer be converted to 25p but instead to 50p for smooth playback of interlaced content. o Decklink consumer now logs whether a reference signal is detected or not. Producers --------- o Image scroll producer: + Field-rate motion instead of frame-rate motion with interlaced video formats. This can be overridden by giving the PROGRESSIVE parameter. + SPEED parameter now defines pixels per frame/field instead of half pixels per frame. The scrolling direction is also reversed so SPEED 0.5 is the previous equivalent of SPEED -1. Movements are done with subpixel accuracy + Fixed incorrect starting position of image. + Rounding error fixes to allow for more exact scrolling. + Added support for motion blur via a new BLUR parameter + Added PREMULTIPLY parameter to support images stored with straight alpha. CasparCG 2.0 Stable (as compared to Beta 3) =========================================== General ------- o Misc stability and performance fixes. Consumers --------- o File Consumer + Changed semantics to more closely follow FFmpeg (see forums). + Added options, -r, -acodec, -s, -pix_fmt, -f and more. o Screen Consumer + Added vsync support. CasparCG 2.0 Beta 3 (as compared to Beta 1) =========================================== Formats ------- o ProRes Support + Both encoding and decoding. o NTSC Support + Updated audio-pipeline for native NTSC support. Previous implementation did not fully support NTSC audio and could cause incorrect behaviour or even crashes. Consumers --------- o File Consumer added + See updated wiki or ask in forum for more information. + Should support anything FFmpeg supports. However, we will work mainly with DNXHD, PRORES and H264. - Key-only is not supported. o Bluefish Consumer + 24 bit audio support. - Embedded-audio does not work with Epoch cards. o Decklink Consumer + Low latency enabled by default. + Added graphs for driver buffers. o Screen Consumer + Changed screen consumer square PAL to the more common wide-square PAL. + Can now be closed. + Fixed interpolation artifacts when running non-square video-modes. + Automatically deinterlace interlaced input. Producers --------- o Decklink Producer + Improved color quality be avoiding uneccessary conversion to BGRA. o FFMPEG Producer + Fixed missing alpha for (RGB)A formats when deinterlacing. + Updated buffering to work better with files with long audio/video interleaving. + Seekable while running and after reaching EOF. CALL 1-1 SEEK 200. + Enable/disable/query looping while running. CALL 1-1 LOOP 1. + Fixed bug with duration calculation. + Fixed bug with fps calculation. + Improved auto-transcode accuracy. + Improved seeking accuracy. + Fixed bug with looping and LENGTH. + Updated to newer FFmpeg version. + Fixed incorrect scaling of NTSC DV files. + Optimized color conversion when using YADIF filters. o Flash Producer + Release Flash Player when empty. + Use native resolution TemplateHost. + TemplateHosts are now choosen automatically if not configured. The TemplateHost with the corresponding video-mode name is now chosen. + Use square pixel dimensions. AMCP ---- o When possible, commands will no longer wait for rendering pipeline. This reduces command execution latencies, especially when sending a lot of commands in a short timespan. o Fixed CINF command. o ADD/REMOVE no longer require subindex, e.g. "ADD 1 SCREEN" / "REMOVE 1 SCREEN" instead of "ADD 1-1 SCREEN" / ... o PARAM is renamed to CALL. o STATUS command is replaced by INFO. o INFO command has been extended: + INFO (lists channels). + INFO 1 (channel info). + INFO 1-1 (layer info). + INFO 1-1 F (foreground producer info). + INFO 1-1 B (background producer info). + INFO TEMPLATE mytemplate (template meta-data info, e.g. field names). o CG INFO command has been extended. + CG INFO 1 (template-host information, e.g. what layers are occupied). Mixer ----- o Fixed alpha with blend modes. o Automatically deinterlace for MIXER FILL commands. Channel ------- o SET MODE now reverts back to old video-mode on failure. Diagnostics ----------- o Improved graphs and added more status information. o Print configuration into log at startup. o Use the same log file for the entire day, instead of one per startup as previously. o Diagnostics window is now closable. CasparCG 2.0 Beta 1 (as compared to Alpha) ========================================== o Blending Modes (needs to be explicitly enabled) + overlay + screen + multiply + and many more. o Added additive keyer in addition to linear keyer. o Image adjustements + saturation + brightness + contrast + min input-level + max input-level + min output-level + max output-level + gamma o Support for FFmpeg-filters such as (ee http://ffmpeg.org/libavfilter.html) + yadif deinterlacer (optimized in CasparCG for full multi-core support) + de-noising + dithering + box blur + and many more o 32-bit SSE optimized audio pipeline. o Decklink-Consumer uses external-key by default. o Decklink-Consumer has 32 bit embedded-audio support. o Decklink-Producer has 32 bit embedded-audio support. o LOADBG with AUTO feature which automatically playes queued clip when foreground clip has ended. o STATUS command for layers. o LOG LEVEL command for log filtering. o MIX transitation work with transparent clips. o Freeze on last frame. o Producer buffering is now configurable. o Consumer buffering is now configurable. o Now possible to configure template-hosts for different video-modes. o Added auto transcoder for FFmpeg producer which automatically transcodes input video into compatible video format for the channel. + interlacing (50p -> 50i) + deinterlacing (50i -> 25p) + bob-deinterlacing (50i -> 50p) + bob-deinterlacing and reinterlacing (w1xh150i -> w2xh250i) + doubling (25p -> 50p) + halfing (50p -> 25p) + field-order swap (upper <-> lower) o Screen consumer now automatically deinterlaces when receiveing interlaced content. o Optimized renderer. o Renderer can now be run asynchronously with producer by using a producer-buffer size greater than 0. o Improved error and crash recovery. o Improved logging. o Added Image-Scroll-Producer o Key-only has now near zery performance overhead. o Reduced memory requirements o Removed "warm up lag" which occured when playing the first media clip after the server has started. o Added read-back fence for OpenGL device for improved multi-channel performance. o Memory support increased from standard 2 GB to 4 GB on 64 bit Win 7 OS. o Added support for 2* Decklink cards in FullHD. o Misc bugs fixes and performance improvements. o Color producer now support some color codes in addition to color codes, e.g. EMPTY, BLACK, RED etc... o Alpha value in color codes is now optional. o More than 2 Decklink cards might be possible but have not yet been tested. CasparCG 2.0 Alpha (as compared to 1.8) ======================================= General ------- o Mayor refactoring for improved readability and mainainability. o Some work towards platorm-independence. Currently the greatest challenge for full platform-independence is flash-producer. o Misc improved scalability. o XML-configuration. o Decklink + Support for multiple DeckLink cards. Core ---- o Multiple producers per video_channel. o Multiple consumers per video_channel. o Swap producers between layers and channels during run-time. o Support for upper-field and lower-field interlacing. o Add and remove consumers during run-time. o Preliminary support for NTSC. AMCP ---- o Query flash and template-host version. o Recursive media-folder listing. o Misc changes. Mixer ----- o Animated tween transforms. o Image-Mixer + Fully GPU accelerated (all features listed below are done on the gpu), + Layer composition. + Colorspaces (rgba, bgra, argb, yuv, yuva, yuv-hd, yuva-hd). + Interlacing. + Per-layer image-transforms: + Opacity + Gain + Scaling + Clipping + Translation o Audio-Mixer + Per-layer and per-sample audio-transforms: + Gain + Fully internal audio-mixing. Single output-video_channel. Consumers --------- o Decklink-Consumer + Embedded audio. + HD support. + Hardware clock. o Bluefish-Consumer + Drivers are loaded on-demand (server now runs on computers without installed bluefish-drivers). + Embedded-audio. + Allocated frames are no longer leaked. Producers --------- o Decklink-Producer + Embedded audio. + HD support. o Color-Producer + GPU accelerated. o FFMPEG-Producer + Asynchronous file IO. + Parallel decoding of audio and video. + Colorspace transform are moved to gpu. o Transition-Producer + Fully interlaced transition (previsously only progressive, even when running in interlaced mode). + Per-sample mixing between source and destination clips. + Tween transitions. o Flash-Producer + DirectDraw access (sligthly improved performance). + Improved time-sync. Smoother animations and proper interlacing. o Image-Producer + Support for various imageformats through FreeImage library. Diagnostics ----------- o Graphs for monitoring performance and events. o Misc logging improvements. o Seperate log-file for every run of the server. o Error logging provides full exception details, instead of only printing that an error has occured. o Console with real-time logging output. o Console with AMCP input. Removed ------- o Registry-configuration (replaced by XML-Configuration). o TGA-Producer (replaced by Image-Producer). o TGA-Scroll-Producer