| # GStreamer 1.8 Release Notes |
| |
| **GStreamer 1.8.0 was released on 24 March 2016.** |
| |
| The GStreamer team is proud to announce a new major feature release in the |
| stable 1.x API series of your favourite cross-platform multimedia framework! |
| |
| As always, this release is again packed with new features, bug fixes and other |
| improvements. |
| |
| See [https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/releases/1.8/][latest] for the latest |
| version of this document. |
| |
| *Last updated: Thursday 24 March 2016, 10:00 UTC [(log)][gitlog]* |
| |
| [latest]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/releases/1.8/ |
| [gitlog]: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/www/log/src/htdocs/releases/1.8/release-notes-1.8.md |
| |
| ## Highlights |
| |
| - **Hardware-accelerated zero-copy video decoding on Android** |
| |
| - **New video capture source for Android using the android.hardware.Camera API** |
| |
| - **Windows Media reverse playback** support (ASF/WMV/WMA) |
| |
| - **New tracing system** provides support for more sophisticated debugging tools |
| |
| - **New high-level GstPlayer playback convenience API** |
| |
| - **Initial support for the new [Vulkan][vulkan] API**, see |
| [Matthew Waters' blog post][vulkan-in-gstreamer] for more details |
| |
| - **Improved Opus audio codec support**: Support for more than two channels; MPEG-TS demuxer/muxer can now handle Opus; |
| [sample-accurate][opus-sample-accurate] encoding/decoding/transmuxing with |
| Ogg, Matroska, ISOBMFF (Quicktime/MP4), and MPEG-TS as container; |
| [new codec utility functions for Opus header and caps handling][opus-codec-utils] |
| in pbutils library. The Opus encoder/decoder elements were also moved to |
| gst-plugins-base (from -bad), and the opus RTP depayloader/payloader to -good. |
| |
| [opus-sample-accurate]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-base-libs/html/gst-plugins-base-libs-gstaudiometa.html#GstAudioClippingMeta |
| [opus-codec-utils]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-base-libs/html/gst-plugins-base-libs-gstpbutilscodecutils.html |
| |
| - **GStreamer VAAPI module now released and maintained as part of the GStreamer project** |
| |
| [vulkan]: https://www.khronos.org/vulkan |
| [vulkan-in-gstreamer]: http://ystreet00.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/vulkan-in-gstreamer.html |
| |
| ## Major new features and changes |
| |
| ### Noteworthy new API, features and other changes |
| |
| - New GstVideoAffineTransformationMeta meta for adding a simple 4x4 affine |
| transformation matrix to video buffers |
| |
| - [g\_autoptr()](https://developer.gnome.org/glib/stable/glib-Miscellaneous-Macros.html#g-autoptr) |
| support for all types is exposed in GStreamer headers now, in combination |
| with a sufficiently-new GLib version (i.e. 2.44 or later). This is primarily |
| for the benefit of application developers who would like to make use of |
| this, the GStreamer codebase itself will not be using g_autoptr() for |
| the time being due to portability issues. |
| |
| - GstContexts are now automatically propagated to elements added to a bin |
| or pipeline, and elements now maintain a list of contexts set on them. |
| The list of contexts set on an element can now be queried using the new functions |
| [gst\_element\_get\_context()](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer/html/GstElement.html#gst-element-get-context) |
| and [gst\_element\_get\_contexts()](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer/html/GstElement.html#gst-element-get-contexts). GstContexts are used to share context-specific configuration objects |
| between elements and can also be used by applications to set context-specific |
| configuration objects on elements, e.g. for OpenGL or Hardware-accelerated |
| video decoding. |
| |
| - New [GST\_BUFFER\_DTS\_OR\_PTS()](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer/html/GstBuffer.html#GST-BUFFER-DTS-OR-PTS:CAPS) |
| convenience macro that returns the decode timestamp if one is set and |
| otherwise returns the presentation timestamp |
| |
| - New GstPadEventFullFunc that returns a GstFlowReturn instead of a gboolean. |
| This new API is mostly for internal use and was added to fix a race condition |
| where occasionally internal flow error messages were posted on the bus when |
| sticky events were propagated at just the wrong moment whilst the pipeline |
| was shutting down. This happened primarily when the pipeline was shut down |
| immediately after starting it up. GStreamer would not know that the reason |
| the events could not be propagated was because the pipeline was shutting down |
| and not some other problem, and now the flow error allows GStreamer to know |
| the reason for the failure (and that there's no reason to post an error |
| message). This is particularly useful for queue-like elements which may need |
| to asynchronously propagate a previous flow return from downstream. |
| |
| - Pipeline dumps in form of "dot files" now also show pad properties that |
| differ from their default value, the same as it does for elements. This is |
| useful for elements with pad subclasses that provide additional properties, |
| e.g. videomixer or compositor. |
| |
| - Pad probes are now guaranteed to be called in the order they were added |
| (before they were called in reverse order, but no particular order was |
| documented or guaranteed) |
| |
| - Plugins can now have dependencies on device nodes (not just regular files) |
| and also have a prefix filter. This is useful for plugins that expose |
| features (elements) based on available devices, such as the video4linux |
| plugin does with video decoders on certain embedded systems. |
| |
| - gst\_segment\_to\_position() has been deprecated and been replaced by the |
| better-named gst\_segment\_position\_from\_running\_time(). At the same time |
| gst\_segment\_position\_from\_stream\_time() was added, as well as \_full() |
| variants of both to deal with negative stream time. |
| |
| - GstController: the interpolation control source gained a new monotonic cubic |
| interpolation mode that, unlike the existing cubic mode, will never overshoot |
| the min/max y values set. |
| |
| - GstNetAddressMeta: can now be read from buffers in language bindings as well, |
| via the new gst\_buffer\_get\_net\_address\_meta() function |
| |
| - ID3 tag PRIV frames are now extraced into a new GST\_TAG\_PRIVATE\_DATA tag |
| |
| - gst-launch-1.0 and gst\_parse\_launch() now warn in the most common case if |
| a dynamic pad link could not be resolved, instead of just silently |
| waiting to see if a suitable pad appears later, which is often perceived |
| by users as hanging -- they are now notified when this happens and can check |
| their pipeline. |
| |
| - GstRTSPConnection now also parses custom RTSP message headers and retains |
| them for the application instead of just ignoring them |
| |
| - rtspsrc handling of authentication over tunneled connections (e.g. RTSP over HTTP) |
| was fixed |
| |
| - gst\_video\_convert\_sample() now crops if there is a crop meta on the input buffer |
| |
| - The debugging system printf functions are now exposed for general use, which |
| supports special printf format specifiers such as GST\_PTR\_FORMAT and |
| GST\_SEGMENT\_FORMAT to print GStreamer-related objects. This is handy for |
| systems that want to prepare some debug log information to be output at a |
| later point in time. The GStreamer-OpenGL subsystem is making use of these |
| new functions, which are [gst\_info\_vasprintf()][gst_info_vasprintf], |
| [gst\_info\_strdup\_vprintf()][gst_info_strdup_vprintf] and |
| [gst\_info\_strdup\_printf()][gst_info_strdup_printf]. |
| |
| - videoparse: "strides", "offsets" and "framesize" properties have been added to |
| allow parsing raw data with strides and padding that do not match GStreamer |
| defaults. |
| |
| - GstPreset reads presets from the directories given in GST\_PRESET\_PATH now. |
| Presets are read from there after presets in the system path, but before |
| application and user paths. |
| |
| [gst_info_vasprintf]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer/html/gstreamer-GstInfo.html#gst-info-vasprintf |
| [gst_info_strdup_vprintf]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer/html/gstreamer-GstInfo.html#gst-info-strdup-vprintf |
| [gst_info_strdup_printf]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer/html/gstreamer-GstInfo.html#gst-info-strdup-printf |
| |
| ### New Elements |
| |
| - [netsim](): a new (resurrected) element to simulate network jitter and |
| packet dropping / duplication. |
| |
| - New VP9 RTP payloader/depayloader elements: rtpvp9pay/rtpvp9depay |
| |
| - New [videoframe_audiolevel]() element, a video frame synchronized audio level element |
| |
| - New spandsp-based tone generator source |
| |
| - New NVIDIA NVENC-based H.264 encoder for GPU-accelerated video encoding on |
| suitable NVIDIA hardware |
| |
| - [rtspclientsink](), a new RTSP RECORD sink element, was added to gst-rtsp-server |
| |
| - [alsamidisrc](), a new ALSA MIDI sequencer source element |
| |
| ### Noteworthy element features and additions |
| |
| - *identity*: new ["drop-buffer-flags"](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer-plugins/html/gstreamer-plugins-identity.html#GstIdentity--drop-buffer-flags) |
| property to drop buffers based on buffer flags. This can be used to drop all |
| non-keyframe buffers, for example. |
| |
| - *multiqueue*: various fixes and improvements, in particular special handling |
| for sparse streams such as substitle streams, to make sure we don't overread |
| them any more. For sparse streams it can be normal that there's no buffer for |
| a long period of time, so having no buffer queued is perfectly normal. Before |
| we would often unnecessarily try to fill the subtitle stream queue, which |
| could lead to much more data being queued in multiqueue than necessary. |
| |
| - *multiqueue*/*queue*: When dealing with time limits, these elements now use the |
| new ["GST_BUFFER_DTS_OR_PTS"](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer/html/GstBuffer.html#GST-BUFFER-DTS-OR-PTS:CAPS) |
| and ["gst_segment_to_running_time_full()"](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer/html/GstSegment.html#gst-segment-to-running-time-full) |
| API, resulting in more accurate levels, especially when dealing with non-raw |
| streams (where reordering happens, and we want to use the increasing DTS as |
| opposed to the non-continuously increasing PTS) and out-of-segment input/output. |
| Previously all encoded buffers before the segment start, which can happen when |
| doing ACCURATE seeks, were not taken into account in the queue level calculation. |
| |
| - *multiqueue*: New ["use-interleave"](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer-plugins/html/gstreamer-plugins-multiqueue.html#GstMultiQueue--use-interleave) |
| property which allows the size of the queues to be optimized based on the input |
| streams interleave. This should only be used with input streams which are properly |
| timestamped. It will be used in the future decodebin3 element. |
| |
| - *queue2*: new ["avg-in-rate"](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gstreamer-plugins/html/gstreamer-plugins-queue2.html#GstQueue2--avg-in-rate) |
| property that returns the average input rate in bytes per second |
| |
| - audiotestsrc now supports all audio formats and is no longer artificially |
| limited with regard to the number of channels or sample rate |
| |
| - gst-libav (ffmpeg codec wrapper): map and enable JPEG2000 decoder |
| |
| - multisocketsink can, on request, send a custom GstNetworkMessage event |
| upstream whenever data is received from a client on a socket. Similarly, |
| socketsrc will, on request, pick up GstNetworkMessage events from downstream |
| and send any data contained within them via the socket. This allows for |
| simple bidirectional communication. |
| |
| - matroska muxer and demuxer now support the ProRes video format |
| |
| - Improved VP8/VP9 decoding performance on multi-core systems by enabling |
| multi-threaded decoding in the libvpx-based decoders on such systems |
| |
| - appsink has a new ["wait-on-eos"](https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-base-plugins/html/gst-plugins-base-plugins-appsink.html#GstAppSink--wait-on-eos) |
| property, so in cases where it is uncertain if an appsink will have a consumer for |
| its buffers when it receives an EOS this can be set to FALSE to ensure that the |
| appsink will not hang. |
| |
| - rtph264pay and rtph265pay have a new "config-interval" mode -1 that will |
| re-send the setup data (SPS/PPS/VPS) before every keyframe to ensure |
| optimal coverage and the shortest possibly start-up time for a new client |
| |
| - mpegtsmux can now mux H.265/HEVC video as well |
| |
| - The MXF muxer was ported to 1.x and produces more standard conformant files now |
| that can be handled by more other software; The MXF demuxer got improved |
| support for seek tables (IndexTableSegments). |
| |
| ### Plugin moves |
| |
| - The rtph265pay/depay RTP payloader/depayloader elements for H.265/HEVC video |
| from the rtph265 plugin in -bad have been moved into the existing rtp plugin |
| in gst-plugins-good. |
| |
| - The mpg123 plugin containing a libmpg123 based audio decoder element has |
| been moved from -bad to -ugly. |
| |
| - The Opus encoder/decoder elements have been moved to gst-plugins-base and |
| the RTP payloader to gst-plugins-good, both coming from gst-plugins-bad. |
| |
| ### New tracing tools for developers |
| |
| A new tracing subsystem API has been added to GStreamer, which provides |
| external tracers with the possibility to strategically hook into GStreamer |
| internals and collect data that can be evaluated later. These tracers are a |
| new type of plugin features, and GStreamer core ships with a few example |
| tracers (latency, stats, rusage, log) to start with. Tracers can be loaded |
| and configured at start-up via an environment variable (GST\_TRACER\_PLUGINS). |
| |
| Background: While GStreamer provides plenty of data on what's going on in a |
| pipeline via its debug log, that data is not necessarily structured enough to |
| be generally useful, and the overhead to enable logging output for all data |
| required might be too high in many cases. The new tracing system allows tracers |
| to just obtain the data needed at the right spot with as little overhead as |
| possible, which will be particularly useful on embedded systems. |
| |
| Of course it has always been possible to do performance benchmarks and debug |
| memory leaks, memory consumption and invalid memory access using standard |
| operating system tools, but there are some things that are difficult to track |
| with the standard tools, and the new tracing system helps with that. Examples |
| are things such as latency handling, buffer flow, ownership transfer of |
| events and buffers from element to element, caps negotiation, etc. |
| |
| For some background on the new tracing system, watch Stefan Sauer's |
| GStreamer Conference talk ["A new tracing subsystem for GStreamer"][tracer-0] |
| and for a more specific example how it can be useful have a look at |
| Thiago Santos's lightning talk ["Analyzing caps negotiation using GstTracer"][tracer-1] |
| and his ["GstTracer experiments"][tracer-2] blog post. There was also a Google |
| Summer of Code project in 2015 that used tracing system for a graphical |
| GStreamer debugging tool ["gst-debugger"][tracer-3]. |
| |
| This is all still very much work in progress, but we hope this will provide the |
| foundation for a whole suite of new debugging tools for GStreamer pipelines. |
| |
| [tracer-0]: https://gstconf.ubicast.tv/videos/a-new-tracing-subsystem-for-gstreamer/ |
| [tracer-1]: https://gstconf.ubicast.tv/videos/analyzing-caps-negotiation-using-gsttracer/ |
| [tracer-2]: http://blog.thiagoss.com/2015/07/23/gsttracer-experiments/ |
| [tracer-3]: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gst-debugger |
| |
| ### GstPlayer: a new high-level API for cross-platform multimedia playback |
| |
| GStreamer has had reasonably high-level API for multimedia playback |
| in the form of the playbin element for a long time. This allowed application |
| developers to just configure a URI to play, and playbin would take care of |
| everything else. This works well, but there is still way too much to do on |
| the application-side to implement a fully-featured playback application, and |
| too much general GStreamer pipeline API exposed, making it less accessible |
| to application developers. |
| |
| Enter GstPlayer. GstPlayer's aim is to provide an even higher-level abstraction |
| of a fully-featured playback API but specialised for its specific use case. It |
| also provides easy integration with and examples for Gtk+, Qt, Android, OS/X, |
| iOS and Windows. Watch Sebastian's [GstPlayer talk at the GStreamer Conference][gstplayer-talk] |
| for more information, or check out the [GstPlayer API reference][gstplayer-api] |
| and [GstPlayer examples][gstplayer-examples]. |
| |
| [gstplayer-api]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-bad-libs/html/player.html |
| [gstplayer-talk]: https://gstconf.ubicast.tv/videos/gstplayer-a-simple-cross-platform-api-for-all-your-media-playback-needs-part-1/ |
| [gstplayer-examples]: https://github.com/sdroege/gst-player/ |
| |
| ### Adaptive streaming: DASH, HLS and MSS improvements |
| |
| - dashdemux now supports loading external xml nodes pointed from its MPD. |
| |
| - Content protection nodes parsing support for PlayReady WRM in mssdemux. |
| |
| - Reverse playback was improved to respect seek start and stop positions. |
| |
| - Adaptive demuxers (hlsdemux, dashdemux, mssdemux) now support the SNAP_AFTER |
| and SNAP_BEFORE seek flags which will jump to the nearest fragment boundary |
| when executing a seek, which means playback resumes more quickly after a seek. |
| |
| ### Audio library improvements |
| |
| - audio conversion, quantization and channel up/downmixing functionality |
| has been moved from the audioconvert element into the audio library and |
| is now available as public API in form of [GstAudioConverter][audio-0], |
| [GstAudioQuantize][audio-1] and [GstAudioChannelMixer][audio-2]. |
| Audio resampling will follow in future releases. |
| |
| - [gst\_audio\_channel\_get\_fallback\_mask()][audio-3] can be used |
| to retrieve a default channel mask for a given number of channels as last |
| resort if the layout is unknown |
| |
| - A new [GstAudioClippingMeta][audio-4] meta was added for specifying clipping |
| on encoded audio buffers |
| |
| - A new GstAudioVisualizer base class for audio visualisation elements; |
| most of the existing visualisers have been ported over to the new base class. |
| This new base class lives in the pbutils library rather than the audio library, |
| since we'd have had to make libgstaudio depend on libgstvideo otherwise, |
| which was deemed undesirable. |
| |
| [audio-0]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-base-libs/html/gst-plugins-base-libs-GstAudioConverter.html |
| [audio-1]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-base-libs/html/gst-plugins-base-libs-GstAudioQuantize.html |
| [audio-2]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-base-libs/html/gst-plugins-base-libs-gstaudiochannels.html#gst-audio-channel-mix-new |
| [audio-3]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-base-libs/html/gst-plugins-base-libs-gstaudiochannels.html#gst-audio-channel-get-fallback-mask |
| [audio-4]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-base-libs/html/gst-plugins-base-libs-gstaudiometa.html#GstAudioClippingMeta |
| |
| ### GStreamer OpenGL support improvements |
| |
| #### Better OpenGL Shader support |
| |
| [GstGLShader][shader] has been revamped to allow more OpenGL shader types |
| by utilizing a new GstGLSLStage object. Each stage holds an OpenGL pipeline |
| stage such as a vertex, fragment or a geometry shader that are all compiled |
| separately into a program that is executed. |
| |
| The glshader element has also received a revamp as a result of the changes in |
| the library. It does not take file locations for the vertex and fragment |
| shaders anymore. Instead it takes the strings directly leaving the file |
| management to the application. |
| |
| A new [example][liveshader-example] was added utilizing the new shader |
| infrastructure showcasing live shader edits. |
| |
| [shader]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-bad-libs/html/gst-plugins-bad-libs-gstglshader.html |
| [liveshader-example]: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gst-plugins-bad/tree/tests/examples/gtk/glliveshader.c |
| |
| #### OpenGL GLMemory rework |
| |
| [GstGLMemory] was extensively reworked to support the addition of multiple |
| texture targets required for zero-copy integration with the Android |
| MediaCodec elements. This work was also used to provide IOSurface based |
| GLMemory on OS X for zero-copy with OS X's VideoToolbox decoder (vtdec) and |
| AV Foundation video source (avfvideosrc). There are also patches in bugzilla |
| for GstGLMemoryEGL specifically aimed at improving the decoding performance on |
| the Raspberry Pi. |
| |
| [GstGLMemory]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-bad-libs/html/gst-plugins-bad-libs-gstglmemory.html |
| |
| A texture-target field was added to video/x-raw(memory:GLMemory) caps to signal |
| the texture target contained in the GLMemory. Its values can be 2D, rectangle |
| or external-oes. glcolorconvert can convert between the different formats as |
| required and different elements will accept or produce different targets. e.g. |
| glimagesink can take and render external-oes textures directly as required for |
| effecient zero-copy on android. |
| |
| A generic GL allocation framework was also implemented to support the generic |
| allocation of OpenGL buffers and textures which is used extensively by |
| GstGLBufferPool. |
| |
| #### OpenGL DMABuf import uploader |
| |
| There is now a DMABuf uploader available for automatic selection that will |
| attempt to import the upstream provided DMABuf. The uploader will import into |
| 2D textures with the necesarry format. YUV to RGB conversion is still provided |
| by glcolorconvert to avoid the laxer restrictions with external-oes textures. |
| |
| #### OpenGL queries |
| |
| Queries of various aspects of the OpenGL runtime such as timers, number of |
| samples or the current timestamp are not possible. The GstGLQuery object uses a |
| delayed debug system to delay the debug output to later to avoid expensive calls |
| to the glGet\* family of functions directly after finishing a query. It is |
| currently used to output the time taken to perform various operations of texture |
| uploads and downloads in GstGLMemory. |
| |
| #### New OpenGL elements |
| |
| glcolorbalance has been created mirroring the videobalance elements. |
| glcolorbalance provides the exact same interface as videobalance so can be used |
| as a GPU accelerated replacement. glcolorbalance has been added to glsinkbin so |
| usage with playsink/playbin will use it automatically instead of videobalance |
| where possible. |
| |
| glvideoflip, which is the OpenGL equiavalant of videoflip, implements the exact |
| same interface and functionality as videoflip. |
| |
| #### EGL implementation now selects OpenGL 3.x |
| |
| The EGL implementation can now select OpenGL 3.x contexts. |
| |
| #### OpenGL API removal |
| |
| The GstGLDownload library object was removed as it was not used by anything. |
| Everything is performed by GstGLMemory or in the gldownloadelement. |
| |
| The GstGLUploadMeta library object was removed as it was not being used and we |
| don't want to promote the use of GstVideoGLTextureUploadMeta. |
| |
| #### OpenGL: Other miscellaneous changes |
| |
| - The EGL implementation can now select OpenGL 3.x contexts. This brings |
| OpenGL 3.x to e.g. wayland and other EGL systems. |
| |
| - glstereomix/glstereosplit are now built and are usable on OpenGL ES systems |
| |
| - The UYVY/YUY2 to RGBA and RGBA to UYVY/YUY2 shaders were fixed removing the |
| sawtooth pattern and luma bleeding. |
| |
| - We now utilize the GL\_APPLE\_sync extension on iOS devices which improves |
| performance of OpenGL applications, especially with multiple OpenGL |
| contexts. |
| |
| - glcolorconvert now uses a bufferpool to avoid costly |
| glGenTextures/glDeleteTextures for every frame. |
| |
| - glvideomixer now has full glBlendFunc and glBlendEquation support per input. |
| |
| - gltransformation now support navigation events so your weird transformations |
| also work with DVD menus. |
| |
| - qmlglsink can now run on iOS, OS X and Android in addition to the already |
| supported Linux platform. |
| |
| - glimagesink now posts unhandled keyboard and mouse events (on backends that |
| support user input, current only X11) on the bus for the application. |
| |
| ### Initial GStreamer Vulkan support |
| |
| Some new elements, vulkansink and vulkanupload have been implemented utilizing |
| the new Vulkan API. The implementation is currently limited to X11 platforms |
| (via xcb) and does not perform any scaling of the stream's contents to the size |
| of the available output. |
| |
| A lot of infrasctructure work has been undertaken to support using Vulkan in |
| GStreamer in the future. A number of GstMemory subclasses have been created for |
| integrating Vulkan's GPU memory handling along with VkBuffer's and VkImage's |
| that can be passed between elements. Some GStreamer refcounted wrappers for |
| global objects such as VkInstance, VkDevice, VkQueue, etc have also been |
| implemented along with GstContext integration for sharing these objects with the |
| application. |
| |
| ### GStreamer VAAPI support for hardware-accelerated video decoding and encoding on Intel (and other) platforms |
| |
| #### GStreamer VAAPI is now part of upstream GStreamer |
| |
| The GStreamer-VAAPI module which provides support for hardware-accelerated |
| video decoding, encoding and post-processing on Intel graphics hardware |
| on Linux has moved from its previous home at the [Intel Open Source Technology Center][iostc] |
| to the upstream GStreamer repositories, where it will in future be maintained |
| as part of the upstream GStreamer project and released in lockstep with the |
| other GStreamer modules. The current maintainers will continue to spearhead |
| the development at the new location: |
| |
| [http://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-vaapi/][gst-vaapi-git] |
| |
| [gst-vaapi-git]: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-vaapi/ |
| |
| GStreamer-VAAPI relies heavily on certain GStreamer infrastructure API that |
| is still in flux such as the OpenGL integration API or the codec parser |
| libraries, and one of the goals of the move was to be able to leverage |
| new developments early and provide tighter integration with the latest |
| developments of those APIs and other graphics-related APIs provided by |
| GStreamer, which should hopefully improve performance even further and in |
| some cases might also provide better stability. |
| |
| Thanks to everyone involved in making this move happen! |
| |
| #### GStreamer VAAPI: Bug tracking |
| |
| Bugs had already been tracked on [GNOME bugzilla](bgo) but will be moved |
| from the gstreamer-vaapi product into a new gstreamer-vaapi component of |
| the GStreamer product in bugzilla. Please file new bugs against the new |
| component in the GStreamer product from now on. |
| |
| #### GStreamer VAAPI: Pending patches |
| |
| The code base has been re-indented to the GStreamer code style, which |
| affected some files more than others. This means that some of the patches |
| in bugzilla might not apply any longer, so if you have any unmerged patches |
| sitting in bugzilla please consider checking if they still apply cleany and |
| refresh them if not. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. |
| |
| #### GStreamer VAAPI: New versioning scheme and supported GStreamer versions |
| |
| The version numbering has been changed to match the GStreamer version |
| numbering to avoid confusion: there is a new gstreamer-vaapi 1.6.0 release |
| and a 1.6 branch that is roughly equivalent to the previous 0.7.0 version. |
| Future releases 1.7.x and 1.8.x will be made alongside GStreamer releases. |
| |
| While it was possible and supported by previous releases to build against |
| a whole range of different GStreamer versions (such as 1.2, 1.4, 1.6 or 1.7/1.8), |
| in the future there will only be one target branch, so that git master will |
| track GStreamer git master, 1.8.x will target GStreamer 1.8, and |
| 1.6.x will target the 1.6 series. |
| |
| [iostc]: http://01.org |
| [bgo]: http://bugzilla.gnome.og |
| |
| #### GStreamer VAAPI: Miscellaneous changes |
| |
| All GStreamer-VAAPI functionality is now provided solely by its GStreamer |
| elements. There is no more public library exposing GstVaapi API, this API |
| was only ever meant for private use by the elements. Parts of it may be |
| resurrected again in future if needed, but for now it has all been made |
| private. |
| |
| GStreamer-VAAPI now unconditionally uses the codecparser library in |
| gst-plugins-bad instead of shipping its own internal copy. Similarly, |
| it no longer ships its own codec parsers but relies on the upstream |
| codec parser elements. |
| |
| The GStreamer-VAAPI encoder elements have been renamed from vaapiencode_foo |
| to vaapifooenc, so encoders are now called vaapih264enc, vaapih265enc, |
| vaapimpeg2enc, vaapijpegenc, and vaapivp8enc. With this change we now follow |
| the standard names in GStreamer, and the plugin documentation is generated |
| correctly. |
| |
| In the case of the decoders, only the jpeg decoder has been split from the |
| general decoding element vaapidecode: vaapijpegdec. This is the first step to |
| split per codec each decoding element. The vaapijpegdec has also been given |
| marginal rank for the time being. |
| |
| #### GStreamer VAAPI: New features in 1.8: 10-bit H.265/HEVC decoding support |
| |
| Support for decoding 10-bit H.265/HEVC has been added. For the time being |
| this only works in combination with vaapisink though, until support for the |
| P010 video format used internally is added to GStreamer and to the |
| vaGetImage()/vaPutimage() API in the vaapi-intel-driver. |
| |
| Several fixes for memory leaks, build errors, and in the internal |
| video parsing. |
| |
| Finally, vaapisink now posts the unhandled keyboard and mouse events to the |
| application. |
| |
| ### GStreamer Video 4 Linux Support |
| |
| Colorimetry support has been enhanced even more. It will now properly select |
| default values when not specified by the driver. The range of color formats |
| supported by GStreamer has been greatly improved. Notably, support for |
| multi-planar I420 has been added along with all the new and non-ambiguous RGB |
| formats that got added in recent kernels. |
| |
| The device provider now exposes a variety of properties as found in the udev |
| database. |
| |
| The video decoder is now able to negotiate the downstream format. |
| |
| Elements that are dynamically created from /dev/video\* now track changes on |
| these devices to ensure the registry stay up to date. |
| |
| All this and various bug fixes that improve both stability and correctness. |
| |
| ### GStreamer Editing Services |
| |
| Added APIs to handle asset proxying support. Proxy creation is not the |
| responsibility of GES itself, but GES provides all the needed features |
| for it to be cleanly handled at a higher level. |
| |
| Added support for changing playback rate. This means that now, whenever a |
| user adds a 'pitch' element (as it is the only known element to change playback |
| rate through properties), GES will handle everything internally. This change |
| introduced a new media-duration-factor property in NleObject which will |
| lead to tweaking of seek events so they have the proper playback range to be |
| requested upstream. |
| |
| Construction of NLE objects has been reworked making copy/pasting fully |
| functional and allowing users to set properties on effects right after |
| creating them. |
| |
| Rework of the title source to add more flexibility in text positioning, |
| and letting the user get feedback about rendered text positioning. |
| |
| Report nlecomposition structural issues (coming from user programing mistakes) |
| into ERROR messages on the bus. |
| |
| Add GI/pythyon testsuite in GES itself, making sure the API is working as expected |
| in python, and allowing writing tests faster. |
| |
| ### GstValidate |
| |
| Added support to run tests inside gdb. |
| |
| Added a 'smart' reporting mode where we give as much information as possible about |
| critical errors. |
| |
| Uses GstTracer now instead of a LD\_PRELOAD library. |
| |
| ## Miscellaneous |
| |
| - encodebin now works with "encoder-muxers" such as wavenc |
| |
| - gst-play-1.0 acquired a new keyboard shortcut: '0' seeks back to the start |
| |
| - gst-play-1.0 supports two new command line switches: -v for verbose output |
| and --flags to configure the playbin flags to use. |
| |
| ## Build and Dependencies |
| |
| - The GLib dependency requirement was bumped to 2.40 |
| |
| - The -Bsymbolic configure check now works with clang as well |
| |
| - ffmpeg is now required as libav provider, incompatible changes were |
| introduced that make it no longer viable to support both FFmpeg and Libav |
| as libav providers. Most major distros have switched to FFmpeg or are in |
| the process of switching to it anyway, so we don't expect this to be a |
| problem, and there is still an internal copy of ffmpeg that can be used |
| as fallback if needed. |
| |
| - The internal ffmpeg snapshot is now FFMpeg 3.0, but it should be possible |
| to build against 2.8 as well for the time being. |
| |
| ## Platform-specific improvements |
| |
| ### Android |
| |
| - Zero-copy video decoding on Android using the hardware-accelerated decoders |
| has been implemented, and is fully integrated with the GStreamer OpenGL stack |
| |
| - ahcsrc, a new camera source element, has been merged and can be used to |
| capture video on android devices. It uses the android.hardware.Camera Java |
| API to capture from the system's cameras. |
| |
| - The OpenGL-based QML video sink can now also be used on Android |
| |
| - New tinyalsasink element, which is mainly useful for Android but can also |
| be used on other platforms. |
| |
| ### OS/X and iOS |
| |
| - The system clock now uses mach\_absolute\_time() on OSX/iOS, which is |
| the preferred high-resolution monotonic clock to be used on Apple platforms |
| |
| - The OpenGL-based QML video sink can now also be used on OS X and iOS (with |
| some Qt build system massaging) |
| |
| - New IOSurface based memory implementation in avfvideosrc and vtdec on OS X |
| for zerocopy with OpenGL. The previously used OpenGL extension |
| GL_APPLE_ycbcr_422 is not compatible with GL 3.x core contexts. |
| |
| - New GstAppleCoreVideoMemory wrapping CVPixelBuffer's |
| |
| - avfvideosrc now supports renegotiation. |
| |
| ### Windows |
| |
| - Various bugs with UDP and multicast were fixed on Windows, mostly related to |
| gst-rtsp-server. |
| |
| - A few bugs in directsoundsrc and directsoundsink were fixed that could cause |
| the element to lock up. Also the "mute" property on the sink was fixed, and |
| a new "device" property for device selection was added to the source. |
| |
| ## Known Issues |
| |
| - Building GStreamer applications with the Android NDK r11 is currently not |
| supported due to incompatible changes in the NDK. This is expected to be |
| fixed for 1.8.1. |
| [Bugzilla #763999](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=763999) |
| |
| - vp8enc crashes on 32 bit Windows, but was working fine in 1.6. 64 bit |
| Windows is unaffected. |
| [Bugzilla #763663](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=763663) |
| |
| ## Contributors |
| |
| Adam Miartus, Alban Bedel, Aleix Conchillo Flaqué, Aleksander Wabik, |
| Alessandro Decina, Alex Ashley, Alex Dizengof, Alex Henrie, Alistair Buxton, |
| Andreas Cadhalpun, Andreas Frisch, André Draszik, Anthony G. Basile, |
| Antoine Jacoutot, Anton Bondarenko, Antonio Ospite, Arjen Veenhuizen, |
| Arnaud Vrac, Arun Raghavan, Athanasios Oikonomou, Aurélien Zanelli, Ben Iofel, |
| Bob Holcomb, Branko Subasic, Carlos Rafael Giani, Chris Bass, Csaba Toth, |
| Daniel Kamil Kozar, Danilo Cesar Lemes de Paula, Dave Craig, David Fernandez, |
| David Schleef, David Svensson Fors, David Waring, David Wu, Duncan Palmer, |
| Edward Hervey, Egor Zaharov, Etienne Peron, Eunhae Choi, Evan Callaway, |
| Evan Nemerson, Fabian Orccon, Florent Thiéry, Florin Apostol, Frédéric Wang, |
| George Kiagiadakis, George Yunaev, Göran Jönsson, Graham Leggett, |
| Guillaume Desmottes, Guillaume Marquebielle, Haihua Hu, Havard Graff, |
| Heinrich Fink, Holger Kaelberer, HoonHee Lee, Hugues Fruchet, Hyunil Park, |
| Hyunjun Ko, Ilya Konstantinov, James Stevenson, Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig), |
| Jan Schmidt, Jason Litzinger, Jens Georg, Jimmy Ohn, Joan Pau Beltran, |
| Joe Gorse, John Chang, John Slade, Jose Antonio Santos Cadenas, Josep Torra, |
| Julian Bouzas, Julien Isorce, Julien Moutte, Justin Kim, Kazunori Kobayashi, |
| Koop Mast, Lim Siew Hoon, Linus Svensson, Lubosz Sarnecki, Luis de Bethencourt, |
| Lukasz Forynski, Manasa Athreya, Marcel Holtmann, Marcin Kolny, Marcus Prebble, |
| Mark Nauwelaerts, Maroš Ondrášek, Martin Kelly, Matej Knopp, Mathias Hasselmann, |
| Mathieu Duponchelle, Matt Crane, Matthew Marsh, Matthew Waters, Matthieu Bouron, |
| Mersad Jelacic, Michael Olbrich, Miguel París Díaz, Mikhail Fludkov, |
| Mischa Spiegelmock, Nicola Murino, Nicolas Dufresne, Nicolas Huet, |
| Nirbheek Chauhan, Ognyan Tonchev, Olivier Crête, Pablo Anton, Pankaj Darak, |
| Paolo Pettinato, Patricia Muscalu, Paul Arzelier, Pavel Bludov, Perry Hung, |
| Peter Korsgaard, Peter Seiderer, Petr Viktorin, Philippe Normand, |
| Philippe Renon, Philipp Zabel, Philip Van Hoof, Philip Withnall, Piotr Drąg, |
| plamot, Polochon\_street, Prashant Gotarne, Rajat Verma, Ramiro Polla, |
| Ravi Kiran K N, Reynaldo H. Verdejo Pinochet, Robert Swain, Romain Picard, |
| Roman Nowicki, Ross Burton, Ryan Hendrickson, Santiago Carot-Nemesio, |
| Scott D Phillips, Sebastian Dröge, Sebastian Rasmussen, Sergey Borovkov, |
| Seungha Yang, Sjors Gielen, Song Bing, Sreerenj Balachandran, Srimanta Panda, |
| Stavros Vagionitis, Stefan Sauer, Steven Hoving, Stian Selnes, Suhwang Kim, |
| Thiago Santos, Thibault Saunier, Thijs Vermeir, Thomas Bluemel, Thomas Roos, |
| Thomas Vander Stichele, Tim-Philipp Müller, Tim Sheridan, Ting-Wei Lan, |
| Tom Deseyn, Vanessa Chipirrás Navalón, Víctor Manuel Jáquez Leal, |
| Vincent Dehors, Vincent Penquerc'h, Vineeth T M, Vivia Nikolaidou, |
| Wang Xin-yu (王昕宇), William Manley, Wim Taymans, Wonchul Lee, Xavi Artigas, |
| Xavier Claessens, Youness Alaoui, |
| |
| ... and many others who have contributed bug reports, translations, sent |
| suggestions or helped testing. |
| |
| ## Bugs fixed in 1.8 |
| |
| More than [~700 bugs][bugs-fixed-in-1.8] have been fixed during |
| the development of 1.8. |
| |
| This list does not include issues that have been cherry-picked into the |
| stable 1.6 branch and fixed there as well, all fixes that ended up in the |
| 1.6 branch are also included in 1.8. |
| |
| This list also does not include issues that have been fixed without a bug |
| report in bugzilla, so the actual number of fixes is much higher. |
| |
| [bugs-fixed-in-1.8]: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=VERIFIED&classification=Platform&limit=0&list_id=107311&order=bug_id&product=GStreamer&query_format=advanced&resolution=FIXED&target_milestone=1.6.1&target_milestone=1.6.2&target_milestone=1.6.3&target_milestone=1.7.0&target_milestone=1.7.1&target_milestone=1.7.2&target_milestone=1.7.3&target_milestone=1.7.4&target_milestone=1.7.90&target_milestone=1.7.91&target_milestone=1.7.92&target_milestone=1.7.x&target_milestone=1.8.0 |
| |
| ## Stable 1.8 branch |
| |
| After the 1.8.0 release there will be several 1.8.x bug-fix releases which |
| will contain bug fixes which have been deemed suitable for a stable branch, |
| but no new features or intrusive changes will be added to a bug-fix release |
| usually. The 1.8.x bug-fix releases will be made from the git 1.8 branch, which |
| is a stable branch. |
| |
| ### 1.8.0 |
| |
| 1.8.0 was released on 24 March 2016. |
| |
| ### 1.8.1 |
| |
| The first 1.8 bug-fix release (1.8.1) is planned for April 2016. |
| |
| ## Schedule for 1.10 |
| |
| Our next major feature release will be 1.10, and 1.9 will be the unstable |
| development version leading up to the stable 1.10 release. The development |
| of 1.9/1.10 will happen in the git master branch. |
| |
| The plan for the 1.10 development cycle is yet to be confirmed, but it is |
| expected that feature freeze will be around late July or early August, |
| followed by several 1.9 pre-releases and the new 1.10 stable release |
| in September. |
| |
| 1.10 will be backwards-compatible to the stable 1.8, 1.6, 1.4, 1.2 and 1.0 |
| release series. |
| |
| - - - |
| |
| *These release notes have been prepared by Tim-Philipp Müller with |
| contributions from Sebastian Dröge, Nicolas Dufresne, Edward Hervey, Víctor |
| Manuel Jáquez Leal, Arun Raghavan, Thiago Santos, Thibault Saunier, Jan |
| Schmidt and Matthew Waters.* |
| |
| *License: [CC BY-SA 4.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)* |
