Compressonator 4.2 – Features update for BC1 and BC7 codecs, and more

Version 4.2 of Compressonator was released in July 2021. Here are the new features introduced with this version:

BC1 improvements by up to 38% in performance and 0.6 dB in quality

• We added new refine steps to improve quality of images with mixed low and high-frequency content.

• We boosted max quality encoding performance by 38% and +0.6 dB for smooth texture-mapped surfaces.

The BC1 codec now has four discrete step settings; prior releases for CPU encoding only used Step 4. Any value can be set in the ranges to enable the specific algorithm used. Changing values within the range will not change the resulting image quality.

The first three steps will run on CPU and GPU, while the last step will run on CPU. On GPU, Step 4 achieves the same results as Step 3.

Users should adjust quality settings used in prior releases to new values to match or exceed prior performance and quality results.

BC7 improvements

• BC7 HLSL bug fixes and improved overall quality of the shader.

API interface updates for BCn codecs

The interfaces and include dependencies are been updated to support switching from CPU/GPU API and switching from CMP codecs and any developer-based codecs. Currently BC1 and BC7 have been modified, and additional changes are pending for these and all other BCn codecs.

GUI updates

• Added “Refine Steps” settings for BC1 image processing.
• Removed “Use Alpha” and “No Alpha” setting for BC1. Just set a threshold above 0 to enable BC1 punch through ranges.

SDK updates

• Removed framework.h file, replacing it with compressonator.h .
• Added new kernel setting options for BCn codecs in CMP_Framework. See the Readme.md or SDK example code for details.
• New single header shader files added for CPU-GPU common APIs and type definitions.
• Added FidelityFX types to common_defs.h to support programming FidelityFX shaders with CMP type definitions. These new definitions will allow developers using FidelityFX code to run and debug shader code on CPU, and then compile them on GPU for production.
• Improved CompressonatorLib BC1 performance and quality.

CMake build updates

• Added options to select build of external libs, SDK libs, and applications.
• Build updated for CLI on macOS.
• OpenCV 4 supported.
• Improved compiler standard revision detection and extensions.
• Visual Studio® 2019 support.
• Qt 5.15 support.

Latest links

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