FW 2.4 Prerelease 2 info

After some initial feedback from the first prerelease, prerelease 2 is on its way.  This will very likely be the last one before the final release. We’ve fixed the new Windows ANE’s crash on Windows 7 and added better logging to all FW platforms (logging level can also be set to verbose in prerelase 2). There will be an updated documentation describing how to do this. We have plans to  improve the logging even more, but this is the first step to give users control over logging levels.

Another change coming by popular demand is the ability to force parts of FW behavior. In particular, the newly introduced realtime and non-realtime modes automatically switch various behaviors of FW. Most users probably won’t mind and will appreciate the simplicity compared to FW 2.3, but for advanced users this might not be great.

So we’ve made a compromise – the realtime and non-realtime mode of course stays, but you can now also force (non)realtime PTS calculations method or force framedropping off. This can be useful in situations such as:

  • In Flash version, you want non-realtime capture but still want to use multithreading (solution = capture with realtime mode on to use MT and force PTS to non realtime, framedrop off)
  • On mobile, you want non-realtime capture but still want to take advantage of the OpenGL accelerated capture mode, which works only when capturing in realtime mode. (solution same as above).

The current focus before releasing FW2.4 Prerelease 2 is Android – getting the audio to work again and possibly increasing the overall performance.

Even after Android is a bit more stabilized, that won’t be “it”. There’s still so much work & improvements to do, including better / faster capture methods (particularly on mobile but even on desktop). So don’t think we’re satisfied with FlashyWrappers at this point.

Just to name a few other things on our TODO list: native audio capture, video replay component, Android fallback mechanisms, API improvements, custom classes for simple FW integration (one-liner webcam recording class) and of course stability and less bugs – this should improve all the time.

 

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