Theora 1.1 (Thusnelda) Is Released 184
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.
What every player is missing (Score:1, Interesting)
The one thing I'd like to have with players is good support for playing files off from compressed (rar/zip etc) files. And I mean good support, not just something that works like a stream, but where you can seek and do everything like you can do with actual files.
Other than the not so much interest in it, is there some actual reason this haven't been done good yet? VLC had some support for it in early days, and I understand it got better too. But it's still not the same. For example loading subtitles etc is impossible.
Please develop this aspect too, as many.. MANY people look and want it.
Maybe now Google will change their mind. (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Dirac [diracvideo.org] 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 [bbc.co.uk]). 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.
Re:What every player is missing (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Q. What is Theora? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hahaha, no. Just no.
Also hilariously wrong. Hell, one of the advantages (what few there are) of Theora its proponents like to bring up is that it takes less resources to decode than H.264. I have no fucking clue where you got this idea from.
Wrong again. There have been several comparisons between H.264 and Theora by the Xiph folks and they've all come out in favor of H.264. They've only tried to argue that Theora isn't really that bad. The problem is it is, and the only reason Theora didn't get utterly murdered in their comparisons is they've compared default Theora to default x264 and YouTube's H.264.
Default Theora is pretty much as good as it gets unless you want to set custom quantization/Huffman tables. Default x264 falls far short of x264 with its settings set for maximum quality, mainly because when you set them like that it's slow as fuck and most people will take worse quality over sub-1 FPS encoding. I don't know what YouTube uses or how they set it, but I seriously doubt a site that huge goes for the maximum possible quality.
Furthermore, Theora is simply inferior technology-wise to H.264. Theora-the-specification is far behind H.264 and it makes it pretty much impossible for Theora-the-software to ever be better than a decent H.264 encoder, as any improvements could simply be copied by the H.264 encoder (though it's more likely it'd be the other way around).
It is noticeably better than Theora 1.0, but remains noticeably worse than H.264 and will continue to be so.
Re:Q. What is Theora? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would rather that community based projects with low budgets distribute video using an absolutely free codec if the alternative is that they don't distribute at all because they can't afford the fees. If the quality is a little bit worse, but it's still fit for the purpose, and it's free, then it has more value than superior technology that is not affordable.
People shouldn't be using YouTube as their distribution mechanism in the first place. They should be using their own devices.
Re:Maybe now Google will change their mind. (Score:3, Interesting)
The version of Theora used in that comparison is also rather out of date. Nearly a year out of date, in fact - it's an SVN snapshot dating from 2008-11-25, not the released version 1.1. I think the experimental Thusnelda encoder was known to have regressed slightly on video taken from Touhou games back then.
Re:Q. What is Theora? (Score:2, Interesting)
Phrasing it as them using "a misappropriated unpaid-for format" is not saying they merely don't care.
Oh? I don't think so, but I'm not the one who phrased it that way.
You really have to read that line very loosely and optimistically to interpret it in a way
that doesn't make it seem like the author was thinking "damn filthy fucking pirates" when he wrote it.
You have to read it with quite a lot of prejudice to come up with "damn filthy fucking pirates".
I don't see how "in terms of quality per bit" changes anything, as that's the regular definition of "better" when it comes to lossy compression.
Really? You wouldn't at least consider performance?
And I do think patents are a valid consideration here -- that is, price.
anywhere other than commercial uses nobody cares about patents.
I'm surprised you don't consider "commercial uses" to be significant, especially when "ripping for personal use" often involves some sort of commercial software which had to pay that fee.
Re:Q. What is Theora? (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, I must admit I'm terribly prejudiced in favor of modern codecs that allow me to encode stuff at a reasonably bitrate without it looking terrible, and against people attempting to support their ideologies with blatant lies. However, "misappropriated unpaid-for format" is about a hair's width away from "stolen" and most certainly is not a favorable or even indifferent way to describe something. Unless you can provide evidence of widespread usage of "misappropriated" in anything but a negative way (which is going to be difficult considering it's part of the definition of the word), my complaint stands.
No, a better codec is better even if it's impractical or even impossible to use it given current hardware. Most people would agree that Crysis has better graphics than Pong even if their computer isn't powerful enough to run it.
A better codec is better even if you can't afford it. For example, not being able to afford anything other than a thoroughly-used car that was likely made before the invention of the wheel and looks like it would explode given a particularly strong breeze does not make it better than other cars.
I'm surprised you consider shoving words in my mouth a reasonable thing to do. I was objecting to you greatly exaggerating how important patents are to users of video codecs. I never said anything about commerical usage being significant or not significant.
No it doesn't. The most popular ripping tools are open source and use open source codecs and nobody gets paid a cent over patents. Even in the case of people who use commercial software for it, it's not like they'd care. The fee is so low that the price wouldn't be any different if they didn't have to pay it, and unless the user had to manually pay the fee themselves, they'd never even know it existed, price drop or not. For personal usage, few know about the patents, and nobody really cares about them except for the microscopically tiny minority who take the purity of the "freedom" of their software to near-religious levels.
Samples of current Theora, H.264, VC-1 (Score:3, Interesting)
I made a few samples using the latest versions of x264, VC-1, and Theora, testing both offline VBR and real-time CBR encoding.
http://cid-bee3c9ac9541c85b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/Theora%5E_1.1 [live.com]
Theora is defintely improved, but I see a lot of basis pattern throughout these samples. Theora would be well-served by a postprocessing filter. Theora's 1-pass CBR encoding definitely needs a LOT of tuning before it'd be viable for real-world content; I don't think we'll see it used effectively for live encoding this version.
Re:Q. What is Theora? (Score:3, Interesting)
MPEG-1 is completely free, in most areas of the world, due to patent expiration.
Possibly - so long as you don't want any audio with your video.
It'll also put Theora to shame in just about every respect.
Unlikely - even the original VP3 can beat MPEG-1, despite its major flaws.
Encoding and decoding complexity is so low your digital watch could handle it, and h.264 offers practically no quality improvement at high bitrates, and only a small improvement at VERY LOW bitrates (what it was designed for).
Encoding and decoding complexity for MPEG-1 is... actually going to be quite close to MPEG-2. h.264 also offers quality improvements at *every* bitrate - due to CABAC (which provides better compression of the encoded data), better motion compensation that allows the available bitrate to be used more efficiently, and possibly even in-loop deblocking.
Re:You know.. (Score:2, Interesting)