Xpra: Ticket #1315: support 16-bit depth

Similar to #909 but using less bits per pixel.

Not much to be gained from using 16-bit colour instead of 24 bits per pixel. Most libraries will convert to 24-bit internally and very few encoders support 16-bit - apparently, libvpx does. I guess some very specific applications might benefit on very bandwidth constrained links. Or some application may just require those modes?

We could at least handle this a little bit more gracefully than we do now and convert to 24-bit rather than just failing:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/xpra/x11/gtk2/window_damage.py", line 171, in get_image
    shm_image = shm.get_image(handle.get_pixmap(), x, y, width, height)
  File "xpra/x11/bindings/ximage.pyx", line 561, in xpra.x11.bindings.ximage.XShmWrapper.get_image (xpra/x11/bindings/ximage.c:7071)
    imageWrapper.set_image(self.image)
  File "xpra/x11/bindings/ximage.pyx", line 267, in xpra.x11.bindings.ximage.XImageWrapper.set_image (xpra/x11/bindings/ximage.c:2404)
    raise Exception("invalid image depth: %i bpp" % self.depth)
Exception: invalid image depth: 16 bpp

Note: we cannot support 8-bit colour depth (or less) in seamless mode as the X11 server then disables compositing.



Sun, 19 Feb 2017 16:03:02 GMT - Antoine Martin: status, summary, milestone changed; resolution set

r15120 adds support for 16-bit display servers, we convert the pixels to RGB(X) before encoding, only png and rgb encodings are supported in this mode. (and scrolling detection).

8-bit depth (#1445) would be more interesting to support, but it is also harder to implement.


Mon, 20 Feb 2017 09:08:47 GMT - Antoine Martin:

Testing different bit depths is now much easier in r15124, see wiki/ImageDepth.


Sat, 23 Jan 2021 05:20:54 GMT - migration script:

this ticket has been moved to: https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/issues/1315