Celestia Forums

libOgg 1.1.4 released

Xiph.Org is pleased to announce a full release of libogg 1.1.4. This full release is code-identical to the preceeding 1.1.4-rc1 release candidate.

Changes in the new libogg release include:

* Updates to documentation, including new API documentation for API additions that had been missed in previous releases.
* New iovec write interface.
* A new asynchronous error reporting interface; rather than the need to check for an error return after every call, and internal or usage error will simply mark the working state 'not ready' and the error status may be checked at the end of a block. The libogg calls in-between become safe no-ops.
* Various build fixes intended to keep the autofoo and Windows build mechanisms up to date.

This release is ABI and API compatible with previous incarnations of libogg.

Theora 1.1 "Thusnelda" release

2009 September 24 «

After over a month of public testing, we're pleased to declare our 1.1 rewrite of libtheora stable. This is the reference implementation for the Theora video codec. Source code for libtheora 1.1.0 is available now, and will be incorporated in major Theora-supporting applications soon.

What's so great about the 1.1 release? The highlights are:

* Better-looking videos or
* Smaller files at the same quality.
* Much faster decoder.
* Two-pass mode for making files just the size you want them.
* Rigid bitrate controls trade off quality for the needs of live streaming applications.

This release incorporates all the work we've been doing over the last year, and the encoder has been completely rewritten, although some of the code had its genesis way back in 2003. It also brings substantial performance and robustness improvments to the 1.0 decoder.

* http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1.0.tar.bz2
* http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1.0.tar.gz
* http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1.0.zip

This release is API and ABI compatible with the 1.0 stable release and can be used as a drop in replacement, although some changes are needed to take advantage of new encoder features like two-pass. We recommend upgrading to all our users.

Rate-control has been substantially overhauled from the 1.0 release. 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.