v0.2.4

Release Notes

Added

• VAAPI: tonemap with libplacebo when a Vulkan device on the same GPU is available
  • libplacebo is preferred over tonemap_opencl and tonemap_vaapi, and shows Dolby Vision profile 5 with correct colors
  • Padding right after the tonemap is drawn by libplacebo in the same pass instead of by a separate (or, on AMD, software) pad
  • Requires ErsatzTV-ffmpeg 8.1.2-6
• Channel config 0.1.3:
  • normalization.video.vaapi_low_power (auto or never, default auto)
  • fallback.background_image, a still image shown instead of black when there is nothing to play or an item fails
    • Black is used for the rest of the session if the image fails to play
• /channels.m3u includes each channel's number as tvg-chno and channel-number
  • Clients that number channels from the playlist (e.g. Channels DVR) no longer assign their own numbers

Changed

• VAAPI: encode HEVC with the low-power entrypoint when the GPU also has the default entrypoint and low-power supports bitrate rate control
  • Set normalization.video.vaapi_low_power to never to keep the previous behavior
• AMF: decode MPEG-2 in software
  • Software decode is as fast or faster than AMF's MPEG-2 decoder, and avoids a hang on older (Polaris) GPUs

Fixed

• Fix output being tagged with the source's non-square sample aspect ratio when the probe hint reports square pixels at the output size
  • Players showed the whole stream, watermark included, at the wrong aspect ratio (e.g. 16:9 squished to 4:3)
• Fix AMF channels crashing on Windows before producing any output with some AMD drivers (e.g. RX 9000 series)
• Fix AMF washed-out colors in 10-bit output with some AMD drivers
• Fix burning the wrong embedded text subtitle when a file has more than one subtitle stream
  • The first subtitle stream in the file was burned regardless of the selected stream index
• Fix VAAPI stream failing to start on AMD when an OpenCL runtime (e.g. NVIDIA, rusticl) is installed
  • pad_opencl and tonemap_opencl are now only used with an Intel VAAPI driver and an OpenCL device that supports cl_intel_va_api_media_sharing
• Fix QSV stream failing to start on Linux when the VPL runtime reports a decoder the VA driver has disabled (e.g. VC-1 and VP8 on Arc)
  • Those formats are now decoded in software
• Fix brief heavy blocking in VAAPI H.264 output with the i965 driver after static scenes
  • H.264 encodes on i965 now use a minimum QP of 24
• Fix QSV stream failing with Can't allocate a surface on pre-Tiger Lake Intel GPUs for files that store audio far behind video (e.g. some WMV)
• Fix QSV VC-1 streams failing or hanging on Windows with pre-Tiger Lake Intel GPUs (e.g. Haswell, Kaby Lake)
  • VC-1 is now decoded in software on those GPUs
• Fix QSV MPEG-2 streams starting very slowly or failing to start in time due to improper segmentation
• Fix AMF streams starting very slowly or failing to start in time due to improper segmentation
• Fix AMF streams hanging with loudness normalization when video is not scaled or converted on the GPU

Compatibility

• Channel config: reads versions 0.1.0 to 0.1.3
• Lineup config: reads versions 0.0.0 to 0.0.1
• Playout: reads versions 0.0.0 to 0.0.7
• ErsatzTV-ffmpeg: 8.1.2-7, bundled in the docker images and recommended for the native binaries