Media Server Studio 2018 R2 - SDK

This release of Intel® Media SDK is part of Intel® Media Server Studio 2018 R2 release.

• Whats new:

  • Media Server Studio 2018 R2 - SDK and Driver are open sourced. Source code is available on GitHub:
    • Media SDK and Samples https://github.com/Intel-Media-SDK/MediaSDK/releases/tag/MSS-2018-R2
    • Media Driver https://github.com/VCDP/media-driver/releases/tag/intel-media-16.9.0
    • Intel® Graphics Compute Runtime for OpenCL™ https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/releases/tag/18.33.11309
    • LibVA https://github.com/intel/libva/releases/tag/2.1.1.pre1-20180601
    • KMD https://github.com/VCDP/linux-kmd/releases/tag/4.14.20_intel_media_16.9.0
  • This release supports Broadwell, Skylake families. See the Known Limitations section in release notes for details.

  • OS and hardware support

    • CentOS 7.4. The release supports original 3.10.0-693.17.1.el7.x86_64 kernel of CentOS 7.4.
    • The release contains a set of patches for open source components on top of 4.14.20 kernel suitable for other variants of Linux OSes.

  • SDK API 1.27

    • Added mfxExtFeiHevcRepackCtrl, mfxExtFeiHevcRepackStat for HEVC FEI ENCODE repacking control and status report.
    • Added mfxExtAVCRoundingOffset for AVC Encode rounding offset control.

  • Multi-Frame Encode

    • H.264 FEI ENCODE support is added.
    • Performance improved for Xeon E3 1200 v5 Family.
    • Added dynamic slice shutdown support
    • Improved performance for 1:N workloads when different frame rates present in pipeline.

  • H.264 encode

    • Scene Change Detection (SCD) feature for improved BRC Rate handling and quality improvement.
      • Scene Change Detection feature is enabled when mfxExtCodingOption2::ExtBRC is ON.
      • Added AdaptiveI & AdaptiveB encoding functionality using SCD
      • Added adaptive PRefType=2 encoding functionality using SCD.
      • Limited to CBR/VBR, progressive and display order encoding.
    • Adaptive Long Term Reference (LTR) Coding Feature for compression efficiency and quality improvement.
      • Adaptive LTR coding feature is enabled when mfxExtCodingOption2::ExtBRC is ON and extended buffer MFX_EXTBUF_BRC is not set.
      • AdaptiveI, AdaptiveB and PRefType=2 are enabled when mfxExtCodingOption2::ExtBRC is ON and extended buffer MFX_EXTBUF_BRC is not set.
      • Adaptive LTR coding can be disabled using mfxExtCodingOption3::ExtBRCAdaptiveLTR.
      • Limited to CBR/VBR, progressive and display order encoding.
    • [41854] Support customized rounding offset control for encoding quantization. User might customize the rounding offset to achieve better encoding quality.

  • HEVC encode

    • Hardware HEVC Encoder merged back to library, plugin interface now optional, but remains for backward compatiblity.

  • HEVC FEI

    • [40651] Support multi-pass PAK for HEVC FEI Encode, and repack status reporting.

  • VPP

    • Motion compensated temporal filtering [MCTF] support.

  • Changes in behavior compared to Media Server Studio 2018 R1 - SDK:

    • Intel Media SDK and Driver are not compatible with previously released versions of Intel Media Server Studio - Essentials and Professional Editions including HEVC Decode plug-in, HEVC Encode plug-in, HEVC GPU Accelerated Encode plug-in, Premium Telecine Interlace Reverser plug-in, etc.
    • MPEG-2 encode:
      • [37189] Previously Query() function with MFX_RATECONTROL_AVBR mode in input parameters returned MFX_RATECONTROL_VBR. The logic is removed in this release.
    • VPP:
      • [35218] VPP resize of interlaced streams may produce output that is not bit-exact with output of previous release.

  • Additional limitations specific for open source release:

    • SW fallback is unsupported for all components.
    • Rotation is not supported.