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    Replace TightVNC encoder with TurboVNC encoder. This patch is the result of... · 7124b5fb
    DRC authored
    Replace TightVNC encoder with TurboVNC encoder. This patch is the result of further research and discussion that revealed the following:
    
    -- TightPng encoding and the rfbTightNoZlib extension need not conflict.  Since
       TightPng is a separate encoding type, not supported by TurboVNC-compatible
       viewers, then the rfbTightNoZlib extension can be used solely whenever the
       encoding type is Tight and disabled with the encoding type is TightPng.
    
    -- In the TightVNC encoder, compression levels above 5 are basically useless.
       On the set of 20 low-level datasets that were used to design the TurboVNC
       encoder (these include the eight 2D application captures that were also used
       when designing the TightVNC encoder, as well as 12 3D application captures
       provided by the VirtualGL Project--
       see http://www.virtualgl.org/pmwiki/uploads/About/tighttoturbo.pdf), moving
       from Compression Level (CL) 5 to CL 9 in the TightVNC encoder did not
       increase the compression ratio of any datasets more than 10%, and the
       compression ratio only increased by more than 5% on four of them.  The
       compression ratio actually decreased a few percent on five of them.  In
       exchange for this paltry increase in compression ratio, the CPU usage, on
       average, went up by a factor of 5.  Thus, for all intents and purposes,
       TightVNC CL 5 provides the "best useful compression" for that encoder.
    
    -- TurboVNC's best compression level (CL 2) compresses 3D and video workloads
       significantly more "tightly" than TightVNC CL 5 (~70% better, in the
       aggregate) but does not quite achieve the same level of compression with 2D
       workloads (~20% worse, in the aggregate.) This decrease in compression ratio
       may or may not be noticeable, since many of the datasets it affects are not
       performance-critical (such as the console output of a compilation, etc.)
       However, for peace of mind, it was still desirable to have a mode that
       compressed with equal "tightness" to TightVNC CL 5, since we proposed to
       replace that encoder entirely.
    
    -- A new mode was discovered in the TurboVNC encoder that produces, in the
       aggregate, similar compression ratios on 2D datasets as TightVNC CL 5.  That
       new mode involves using Zlib level 7 (the same level used by TightVNC CL 5)
       but setting the "palette threshold" to 256, so that indexed color encoding
       is used whenever possible.  This mode reduces bandwidth only marginally
       (typically 10-20%) relative to TurboVNC CL 2 on low-color workloads, in
       exchange for nearly doubling CPU usage, and it does not benefit high-color
       workloads at all (since those are usually encoded with JPEG.)  However, it
       provides a means of reproducing the same "tightness" as the TightVNC
       encoder on 2D workloads without sacrificing any compression for 3D/video
       workloads, and without using any more CPU time than necessary.
    
    -- The TurboVNC encoder still performs as well or better than the TightVNC
       encoder when plain libjpeg is used instead of libjpeg-turbo.
    
    Specific notes follow:
    
    common/turbojpeg.c common/turbojpeg.h:
    Added code to emulate the libjpeg-turbo colorspace extensions, so that the
    TurboJPEG wrapper can be used with plain libjpeg as well.  This required
    updating the TurboJPEG wrapper to the latest code from libjpeg-turbo 1.2.0,
    mainly because the TurboJPEG 1.2 API handles pixel formats in a much cleaner
    way, which made the conversion code easier to write.  It also eases the
    maintenance to have the wrapper synced as much as possible with the upstream
    code base (so I can merge any relevant bug fixes that are discovered upstream.)
    The libvncserver version of the TurboJPEG wrapper is a "lite" version,
    containing only the JPEG compression/decompression code and not the lossless
    transform, YUV encoding/decoding, and dynamic buffer allocation features from
    TurboJPEG 1.2.
    
    configure.ac:
    Removed the --with-turbovnc option.  configure still checks for the presence of
    libjpeg-turbo, but only for the purposes of printing a performance warning if
    it isn't available.
    
    rfb/rfb.h:
    Fix a bug introduced with the initial TurboVNC encoder patch.  We cannot use
    tightQualityLevel for the TurboVNC 1-100 quality level, because
    tightQualityLevel is also used by ZRLE.  Thus, a new parameter
    (turboQualityLevel) was created.
    
    rfb/rfbproto.h:
    Remove TurboVNC-specific #ifdefs and language
    
    libvncserver/rfbserver.c:
    Remove TurboVNC-specific #ifdefs.  Fix afore-mentioned tightQualityLevel bug.
    
    libvncserver/tight.c:
    Replaced the TightVNC encoder with the TurboVNC encoder.  Relative to the
    initial TurboVNC encoder patch, this patch also:
    -- Adds TightPng support to the TurboVNC encoder
    -- Adds the afore-mentioned low-bandwidth mode, which is mapped externally to
       Compression Level 9
    
    test/*:
    Included TJUnitTest (a regression test for the TurboJPEG wrapper) as well as
    TJBench (a benchmark for same.)  These are useful for ensuring that the wrapper
    still functions correctly and performantly if it needs to be modified for
    whatever reason.  Both of these programs are derived from libjpeg-turbo 1.2.0.
    As with the TurboJPEG wrapper, they do not contain the more advanced features
    of TurboJPEG 1.2, such as YUV encoding/decoding and lossless transforms.
    7124b5fb
tjunittest.c 12 KB