C H A N G E S
CasparCG Server 2.0.7 (as compared to CasparCG Server 2.0.7 Beta 2)
===================================================================
General
-------
o Added support for using a different configuration file at startup than the
default casparcg.config by simply adding the name of the file to use as the
first command line argument to casparcg.exe.
o Fixed various bugs.
AMCP
----
o Added RESUME command to complement PAUSE. (Peter Keuter)
HTML producer
-------------
o No longer tries to play all files with a . in their name.
(Georgi Chorbadzhiyski)
o Reimplemented using CEF3 instead of Berkelium, which enables use of WebGL
and more. CEF3 is actively maintained, which Berkelium is not. (Robert Nagy)
o Implements a custom version of window.requestAnimationFrame which will
follow the pace of the channel, for perfectly smooth animations.
o No longer manually interlaces frames, to allow for mixer fill transforms
without artifacts.
o Now uses CEF3 event loop to avoid 100% CPU core usage.
CasparCG Server 2.0.7 Beta 2 (as compared to CasparCG Server 2.0.7 Beta 1)
==========================================================================
General
-------
o Added sendings of OSC messages for channel_grid channel in addition to
regular channels.
Producers
---------
o FFmpeg: Reports correct nb_frames() when using SEEK (Thomas Kaltz III)
o Flash: Fixed bug wherer CG PLAY, CG INVOKE
Consumers
---------
o channel_consumer: Added support for more than one channel_consumer per
channel.
o decklink_consumer: Added support for a single instance of the consumer to
manage a separate key output for use with decklink duo/quad cards:
1
2
external_separate_device
...in the configuration will enable the feature. The value of
defaults to the value of + 1.
o synchronizing_consumer: Removed in favour of a single decklink_consumer
managing both fill and key device.
o streaming_consumer: A new implementation of ffmpeg_consumer with added
support for streaming and other PTS dependent protocols. Examples:
udp://localhost:5004
-vcodec libx264 -tune zerolatency -preset ultrafast -crf 25 -format mpegts -vf scale=240:180
...in configuration or:
ADD 1 STREAM udp://localhost:5004 -vcodec libx264 -tune zerolatency -preset ultrafast -crf 25 -format mpegts -vf scale=240:180
...via AMCP. (Robert Nagy sponsored by Ericsson Broadcasting Services)
o newtek_ivga_consumer: Added support for iVGA consumer to not provide channel
sync even though connected. Useful for iVGA clients that downloads as fast
as possible instead of in frame-rate pace, like Wirecast. To enable:
false
...in config to not provide channel sync when connected. The default is
true.
AMCP
----
o Added support in ADD and REMOVE for a placeholder which
will resolve to the connected AMCP client's IPV4 address.
o Fixed bug where AMCP commands split into multiple TCP packets where not
correctly parsed (http://casparcg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2480)
CasparCG Server 2.0.7 Beta 1 (as compared to 2.0.6 Stable)
==========================================================
General
-------
o FFmpeg: Upgraded to master and adapted CasparCG to FFmpeg API changes
(Robert Nagy sponsored by SVT)
o FFmpeg: Fixed problem with frame count calculation (Thomas Kaltz III)
o Fixed broken CG UPDATE.
Producers
---------
o New HTML producer has been created (Robert Nagy sponsored by Flemish Radio
and Television Broadcasting Organization, VRT)
CasparCG Server 2.0.6 Stable (as compared to 2.0.4 Stable)
==========================================================
General
-------
o iVGA: Allow for the server to work without Processing.AirSend.x86.dll to
prevent a possible GPL violation. It is available as a separate optional
download.
o iVGA: Only provide sync to channel while connected, to prevent channel
ticking too fast.
o FFmpeg: Fixed bug during deinterlace-bob-reinterlace where output fields
were offset by one field in relation to input fields.
o FFmpeg: Fixed bug in ffmpeg_consumer where an access violation occurred
during destruction.
o FFmpeg: Improved seeking. (Robert Nagy and Thomas Kaltz III)
o Frontend: Only writes elements to casparcg.config which overrides a default
value to keep the file as compact as possible.
o System audio: Patched sfml-audio to work better with oal-consumer and
therefore removed portaudio as the system audio implementation and went back
to oal.
o Flash: Changed so that the initial buffer fill of frames is rendered at a
frame-duration pace instead of as fast as possible. Otherwise time based
animations render incorrectly. During buffer recovery, a higher paced
rendering takes place, but still not as fast as possible, which can cause
animations to be somewhat incorrectly rendered. This is the only way though
if we want the buffer to be able to recover after depletion.
o Fixed race condition during server shutdown.
o OSC: outgoing audio levels from the audio mixer for each audio channel is
now transmitted (pFS and dBFS). (Thomas Kaltz III)
o Stage: Fixed bug where tweened transforms were only ticked when a
corresponding layer existed.
o Screen consumer: Added borderless option and correct handling of name
option. (Thomas Kaltz III)
o AMCP: CLS now reports duration and framerate for MOVIE files were
information is possible to extract. (Robert Nagy)
o Version bump to keep up with CasparCG Client version.
CasparCG Server 2.0.4 Stable (as compared to 2.0.4 Beta 1)
==========================================================
General
-------
o Can now open media with file names that only consist of digits.
(Cambell Prince)
o Miscellaneous 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 or 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 Fixed bug where MIXER LEVELS interpreted arguments in the wrong order, so
that gamma was interpreted as max_input and vice versa.
Consumers
---------
o Added support for NewTek iVGA, which enables the use of CasparCG Server
fill+key output(s) as input source(s) to a NewTek TriCaster without
requiring video card(s) in the CasparCG Server machine, or taking up inputs
in the TriCaster. element in config enables iVGA on a
channel. (Robert Nagy sponsored by NewTek)
o Decklink: Created custom decklink allocator to reduce the memory footprint.
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.
Producers
---------
o FFmpeg: Added support for arbitrary FFmpeg options/parameters
in ffmpeg_producer. (Cambell Prince)
o Flash: Flash Player 11.8 now tested and fully supported.
o Flash: No longer starts a Flash Player to service CG commands that mean
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. (Robert Nagy sponsored by Boffins Technologies)
o Never sends old values to OSC reveivers. Collects the latest value of each
path logged since last UDP send, and sends the new UDP packet (to each
subscribing OSC receiver) with the values collected. (Robert Nagy sponsored
by Boffins Technologies)
o Batches 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. (Robert Nagy sponsored by Boffins Technologies)
o Removed usage of Microsoft Agents library (Server ran out of memory after a
while) in favour of direct synchronous invocations.
CasparCG Server 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.
(Thomas Kaltz III and Jeff Lafforgue)
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.
o Transfer of source code and issue tracker to github. (Thomas Kaltz III)
Layer
-----
o Fixed a problem where the first frame was not always shown on LOAD.
(Robert Nagy)
Stage
-----
o Support for layer consumers for listening to frames coming out of producers.
(Cambell Prince)
Audio mixer
-----------
o Added support for a master volume mixer setting for each channel.
Video mixer
-----------
o Added support for chroma keying. (Cambell Prince)
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. (Robert Nagy)
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"
(Cambell Prince, Julian Waller and Robert Nagy)
o New layer producer which directs the output of a layer to another layer via
a layer consumer. (Cambell Prince)
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
(Cambell Prince)
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.
o PLAY 1-1 2-10 creates a layer producer on 1-1 redirecting the output of
2-10. (Cambell Prince)
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.
(Robert Nagy sponsored by Boffins Technologies)
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 Server 2.0.3 Stable (as compared to 2.0.3 Alpha)
=========================================================
Stage
-----
o Fixed dead-lock that can occur with multiple mixer tweens. (Robert Nagy)
AMCP
----
o DATA STORE now supports creating folders of path specified if they does not
exist. (Jeff Lafforgue)
o DATA REMOVE command was added. (Jeff Lafforgue)
CasparCG Server 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 Server 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 Server 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 Server 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 24 bit embedded-audio support.
o Decklink-Producer has 24 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 zero 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 Server 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