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

No wonder Open Source doesn't catch on

[Anonymous Coward]

With stupid nerd-sounding names like Theora, Thusnelda and Ogg.

Re:Q. What is Theora?

[DaMattster]

Actually, it's quality is better than H.264. It just suffered from needing a higher powered processor to decode video for play back. Theora 1.0 would not work very well on an ARM based device like the iPod. See www.xiph.org. I believe there is a link on there comparing H.264 and Theora. Theora is noticeably better but version 1.0 suffers in the live video streaming arena. My guess is Theora 1.1 should be noticeably better.

Re:What every player is missing

[hairyfeet]

Compared to the less than 3% that my AMD dual uses doing 1600x1050 that is a BIG fucking difference, even moreso when we are talking about running on a battery. And how much does that video gobble up on an iPhone? A Netbook? Not everybody is sitting at a desk you know, and every fricking mobile device I have looked at brags about having H264 and DivX, some even add WMV to that.

So I stand by my question: Do .mkv or Theora even HAVE hardware accelerated anything? At all? Because if it don't then I'm sorry, but it is about 5 years too late to the party. Is there anyone here who doesn't have a laptop/iPhone/other mobile video playing device? Anyone? Beuller? Hell even my 68 year old Luddite father now has a laptop, so I'd say not having hardware acceleration is a pretty big fucking deal.

So I hate to break the news to anyone, but only Linus and RMS gives a flying shit about "free as in freedom" as Joe consumer doesn't know, nor does he give a shit about patents. For him H264 WORKS, just as MP3 works. Give him an easy to use out of the box experience with hardware acceleration and you've got a shot. Don't? Well I hope you have a time machine so you can go back to 1999 when everything was on a desktop and CPU bound. Good luck with that.

Re:What every player is missing

[hairyfeet]

But will the containing video be accelerated, yes or no? Lets say I have a video that is....lets say H264 in a .mkv format. Now will any hardware accelerators actually recognize what it is through the mkv "wrapper" and accelerate it? I know that any .avi I play are nicely accelerated, and often use less than 2% CPU when running in high def. Will a .mkv wrapped video do the same?

And is there ANY devices that do hardware accelerated Theora. Anyone? Beuller? Hardware acceleration isn't just the wave of the future, it is the wave of the present. Folks want to be able to watch video on their mobile devices, and I have found my customers just rave about the new desktops I build them because I make sure to set it up to accelerate MPEG2/4, H263/264, DivX, and WMV. All they can talk about is how they can have all kinds of things going on and still be able to enjoy smooth video playback.

So while I say that .mkv maybe has a shot, as DivX is using it now (which means set top and mobile players) and P2P is full of BD rips in .mkv format, Theora on the other hand looks as it may be DOA. I have yet to see even an alpha much less RTM quality hardware accelerator for Theora. And today it is all about mobile, and green, and having a nice experience. Anything that is CPU bound simply won't be as nice to watch as one that is GPU bound. And despite the guy that keeps modding me down for daring to say anything but "open source rulez" customers don't actually give a shit about "free as in freedom". All they care about is does it work? And H263/264, DivX, Mpeg 2/4, and WMV9 all "just work" for them.