Theora 1.1 (Thusnelda) Is Released

SD-Arcadia writes to tell us that Theora 1.1 has officially been released. It features improved encoding, providing better video quality for a given file size, a faster decoder, bitrate controls to help with streaming, and two-pass encoding. "The new rate control module hits its target much more accurately and obeys strict buffer constraints, including dropping frames if necessary. The latter is needed to enable live streaming without disconnecting users or pausing to buffer during sudden motion. Obeying these constraints can yield substantially worse quality than the 1.0 encoder, whose rate control did not obey any such constraints, and often landed only in the vague neighborhood of the desired rate target. The new --soft-target option can relax a few of these constraints, but the new two-pass rate control mode gives quality approaching full 'constant quality' mode with a predictable output size. This should be the preferred encoding method when not doing live streaming. Two-pass may also be used with finite buffer constraints, for non-live streaming." A detailed writeup on the new release has been posted at Mozilla.

Comments

Maybe now Google will change their mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe now Google will use Theora instead of the patent-encumbered H.264 in their new HTML5 Youtube.

That is if the issues have been addressed.

Dirac isn't shabby

[jbn-o]

Dirac strikes me as another codec worth following. It's available to all developers, high-quality, and in production use by the BBC during the Olympics (they said so in their Dirac promotional video). VLC has support for playing back Dirac streams. I'd guessing other players do as well.

I expect Theora and Dirac to be of interest to all who want high-quality free video codecs.