SUPer - BDNXML to BD SUP subtitle converter that supports animations

[cubicibo]

SUPer v0.2.3

New year release stress-tested with a heavily typeset ASSA of Kareshi Kanojō no Jijō. There should be fewer dropped events!
The "Normal Case Object Redefinition" feature should be production ready, it helps reduce the number of dropped events. Scenarist BD users are advised to check the README if enabled.

Front-end
• Changed the default value of `--extra-acq` (`-e`) from 0 to 2.
• Add `--ssim-tol` to slightly tune the event filter decision making. This should not be used in most if any realistic scenario.
• Add progress bar to display the event analysis and filtering progress.
• Add "Abort" button (currently only on the compiled Windows exe).

Back-end
• Use edge structural similarity measure (eSSIM) to improve the event filter decision.
• Use active window area to adaptively position in time the additional acquisition after a chain of palette update.
• Add mechanism to shift object definitions and drawing in time to reduce the number of dropped acquisitions.
• Fix a crash whenever a normal case object redefinition event was promoted to an acquisition due to epoch start collision.
• Improve binary mask definition in event filter.
• Fix two crashs linked to the rendering of bitmaps (hotfixes made for v0.2.2a)

[cubicibo]

SUPer v0.2.4

Multithreaded PGS encoding! Companies are no longer allowed to use the "Blu-ray subtitles are too limited" excuse card

Front-end
• Add support for HFR 60 fps BDN XML (UHD BD only).
• Add "abort" button to GUI for all OS.
• Remove `--tslong` (Conservative PTS/DTS strategy) - it had become unecessary.
• Remove `--nodts` option as it was not longer working, and pointless (it was out of spec).

Back-end
• Add multithreading. Available on both GUI (drop-down menu) and CLI (`--threads N` or `-t N`), 1 <= N <= 8.
• Fix orphaned composition objects with normal case object redefinition enabled.
• Fix crash in the logic that performs time shift of object decoding.
• Add more stream compliancy tests.
• Perform adaptive padding to renderer space and windows.
• Fix handling of BDN XML with split events.
• Fix a silent crash on some (ARM?) Windows related to numba.
• Fix crash due to object blinking.
• Add `use_gpu` option to config.ini to optionally disable GPU usage.
• Clean and optimise quite a few functions.

Thanks to Alllen for bug hunting and testing.

[cubicibo]

SUPer v0.2.5

Essentially code optimization, reduced memory footprint, smarter screen layouts, and fewer bugs.

Front-end
• Threading is now enabled by default.
• Warn user if the BDN has unusual FPS-Video Format combinations: the Blu-ray format does not support all possible pairs.
• Fix paths with dots (e.g. remote servers).
• Remove subsampled flag: a better feature was moved to ass2bdnxml (-z).
• Add layout_mode in config.ini. Value ranges from 0 (safe) to 2 (aggressive). If you have odd issues in Scenarist when (re-)building, decrease the value.
• Add support for both pngquant and libimagequant, when the first is in %PATH%.

Back-end
• Add a C-optimised bitmap run-length encoder.
• Add a C-optimised layout engine.
• Order windows to reduce DTS-PTS gaps and to define epochs more aggressively.
• No longer cache graphics to save RAM.
• Rewrite the threading orchestrator to manage threads more efficiently.
• Fix crash caused by the object shift logic hitting epoch start.
• Fix rare out-of-spec output (PTS-DTS issue flagged without any associated timestamp printed) due to an oversight in the epochs definition logic.
• Distribute palette entries dynamically in normal case object redefinition according to the object area ratio.

[cubicibo]

SUPer v0.2.5A

v0.2.5 shipped with two hard to trigger bugs coming from the new layout engine. Under very specific conditions, bitmaps could be cropped by 7 pixels in two directions. Authorers are strongly advised to update to v0.2.5A. Furthermore, the duplicate event filter is finally fixed.

Back-end
• Fix layout engine override method when it generates a single window. an overlay could be cropped by 7 pixels in two directions due to shifted coordinates.
• Fix logic to remove consecutive, yet duplicate, events.
• Always destroy instances of images whenever they are not immediately needed to reduce memory usage.

Dependencies
Update Brule to v0.0.3.

[cubicibo]

SUPer v0.2.6

This is pushing the limits, and likely the last release. Now, post-production facilities need to stop complaining about Blu-ray subtitles and use it.

Front-end
• Add `-d` (`--ahead`) flag to enable palette update buffering. Some Display Sets can be decoded early for later usage, while the PG Decoder is busy decoding upcoming objects. This flag enables a lot of stream optimization to avoid dropped events.
• Add `--layout` to override the config.ini `layout_mode=` value. This option is not available on the GUI.
• Add succint log output. `--log-to-file -10` will generate a single file listing all filtering decisions. Handy for inspection after batch conversion with the CLI.

Back-end
• Support BDN XML with unordered events [MonoS].
• Fix wrong palette shift with quantized bitmaps that had a transparent palette ID different than zero.
• Correct event shift on epoch start collision and reduce the shift to the minimum acceptable.
• Ensure orphaned display sets are discarded on epoch start collision.
• Improve the rendering code to avoid odd displays in some tricky contexts.
• Clean-up filtering code and fix some hard to trigger bugs.
• Improve debug logging.