Dear experts,

I have uploaded a new release of the JM reference software to my web site at:

http://iphome.hhi.de/suehring/tml/

Please note that this version will BREAK all your existing CONFIGURATION FILES. We have changed some of the most frequently used parameters. But I'm pretty sure you will like these changes.

FrameSkip: counts now only really skipped input frames. This no longer includes the B frames (which never really made sense). You can now set this parameter to "0" and still have B frames.

FramesToBeEncoded: In contrast to FrameSkip this parameter now includes B frames. This means FramesToBeEncoded is now the total number of encoded frames (or field pairs). You will no longer have to multiply P and B-Frame settings to calculate this number.

We also introduced some new parameters, e.g. for explicitly specifying the GOP structure in an external file, for re-sending parameter sets, discarding the input chroma components, or restricting motion vector ranges. You can easily find these by comparing the example encoder.cfg files.

I didn't find the time yet to review the changes in the JM manual yet. So please refer for the moment to the comments in the encoder.cfg file. I will try to release an updated manual within the next days.

We have also fixed a number of bugs and put some extra time into testing this new version. So we will hopefully have a much more stable release than the recent versions.

This version also uses much less memory for encoding which should allow coding of large scale sequences again. We have included some speedups, cleaned up much code and also added support for reading bitstream files larger the 2 GB.

I think the list of changes below is not complete this time, but it contains more details especially about the bug fixes.

Best regards,
Karsten & Alexis

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Changes in Version JM 15.0 (since JM 14.2)
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- encoder: Various bug fixes relating to MBAFF and High 444P profile (EM)
- encoder: Adaptive Rounding reorganization and bug fixes(EM)
- encoder: Motion Estimation reorganization (AT)
- encoder: Various bugfixes related to 8x8 transform and submacroblock partitions (AT)
- encoder: Extension to support VLC codes > 32 bits (AL)
- encoder: RC bug fixes (ASe)
- encoder: SEI/AU support & cleanups (AL)
- encoder: Various bug fixes and cleanups, including bipred ME (AT)
- encoder: Weighted Prediction offset computation using Motion Compensation (PC, MK, YY)
- encoder: support of explicit sequence information functionality (AT/KS)
- encoder: support of separate & interleaved raw video files (AT)
- encoder: don't allow GenerateMultiplePPS in baseline profile (KS)
- encoder: encoder support of some ANNEX A level limits (AT/KS)
- encoder/decoder: Lossless encoding bug fixes (AT)
- encoder/decoder: memory alloc/free speedups (AT)
- encoder/decoder: VLC speedups (JaB/AT)
- encoder/decoder: don't access uninitialized memory in cabac.c (PL/KS)
- encoder/decoder: various cleanups and bug fixes (KS/AT)
- decoder: Support for 64 bit bitstream I/O (AT/KS)
- decoder: Severe code reorganization and various bug fixes, some relating to High 444P (AT)