[Openexr-devel] OpenEXR 1.1.1 development release

[Drew Hess]

Hi,

OpenEXR 1.1.1 is now released.  I'll update http://www.openexr.com with
the new source tarball and images on Monday when our webmaster has
returned.  Until then, the best way to get the new release is via CVS, see
here for details:

  https://savannah.nongnu.org/cvs/?group=openexr

If you access Savannah's CVS and you want to grab this before Monday,
email me privately and I can probably get you a source tarball this
weekend.

Version 1.1.1 is another significant release with new functionality and 
some changes.  Most importantly:

    *** The tiled file format has changed ***

This means that tiled files created with version 1.1.0 of OpenEXR are no
longer compatible with version 1.1.1 and future releases of OpenEXR.  
We're sorry for the inconvenience, but this was necessary to fix a bug in
the previous tiled format that would have caused problems with new
compression methods.  If you have generated tiled OpenEXR images with
version 1.1.0 that you want to keep, please contact me; we should be able
to help you convert these images to the new format.

This also means that the tiled and multi-resolution images in the previous
version of the OpenEXR-images sample images release cannot be read by
1.1.1 and later releases of OpenEXR.  I have updated the OpenEXR-images
CVS tree with new versions of these images (in addition to a few new
images, see below), and will make these sample images available for
download on Monday at openexr.com, as well.

Note that the scanline file format has *not* changed and remains
compatible with all past and future versions of OpenEXR.

Finally, version 1.1.1 is still a development release.  Please don't use
it for production ("shipping") software, but please do test it thorougly,
and let us know if you find any problems.  We are freezing the API with
this version in preparation for a release of version 1.2, which will be
the first production version of OpenEXR to supported tiled image files.  
That means that we won't add any new functionality between now and the 1.2 
release, in order to get it out the door faster.  If no major bugs or 
issues are found in 1.1.1 over the next month, we'll put out a 1.2 release 
around the end of April.


With that out of the way, here's a list of the major changes in this 
version of OpenEXR (see the ChangeLog in the source code for details):

  * includes Pxr24 compressor, contributed by Pixar Animation Studios.  
    See my previous email to the list or the documentation included in the 
    source tarball for details.

  * OpenEXR now supports high dynamic-range YCA (luminance/chroma/alpha)  
    images with subsampled chroma channels.  These files are supported via 
    the RGBA convenience interface, so that data is presented to the 
    application as RGB(A) but stored in the file as YC(A).  OpenEXR also 
    supports Y and YA (black-and-white/black-and-white with alpha) images.

  * Tiled file format is changed in 1.1.1, making 1.1.0 tiled files
    incompatible with all other versions of OpenEXR.  Tiled files in
    the old format can be converted to the new format, contact me for
    details.
   
  * when compiling with gcc, expressions using half are up to 25% faster.
    Other compilers may also experience speedups.

  * exrdisplay has new command-line options for viewing channels other
    than the RGB channels.

  * exrenvmap and exrmaketiled have options to select the compression type 
    of the output file.

  * OpenEXR now compiles properly on 64-bit architectures.

  * fixes a few minor bugs and performance issues discovered in 1.1.0.