[theora-dev] libtheora 1.1alpha1 (thusnelda) release

[Ralph Giles]

I'm pleased to announce the first alpha release of the rewrite of the
Xiph.org reference encoder for the Theora video format, codename
"Thusnelda".

  http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1alpha1.tar.bz2
  http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1alpha1.zip
  http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1alpha1.tar.gz

Please download one of the source packages and give us feedback.

This is a very alpha release, and may be unstable. We're making it
more widely available at this point to facilitate wider testing and
try to flush out those issues. The primary change is a completely
rewritten encoder with vastly improved quality vs. bitrate in the
default vbr/constant-quality mode, and better tracking of the target
bitrate in cbr mode. There are some minor changes to the decoder and
examples, but the new encoder is the reason to try out this release.

Caveats:

 * GNU autotools and scons builds should work on GNU/Linux/BSD
systems, including MacOS X
 * The Apple xcode project should work, but doesn't build a separate
libtheoraenc. Use the legacy libtheora build for now.
 * The xmingw32 build mostly works.
 * MSVC project files need updating for source code rearrangement.
This is straightforward; just import the current lib/enc/*.c and
delete things like encoder_disabled.c until it builds. Patches for
this appreciated.
 * Some minor build fixes haven't been ported from the 1.0 release yet.

Development work for this is still on a separate branch, and will
remain so until we have some of the build and code reorganization
issues settled. If you're curious to track the ongoing development,
please 'svn checkout http://svn.xiph.org/branches/theora-thusnelda/'.

SHA-1 checksums:

  0f57662206944377387f35688b9f95055b85fa1e  libtheora-1.1alpha1.tar.bz2
  cbda32b85aca442128f953d0a14a86ea1cfb80dc  libtheora-1.1alpha1.zip
  effcf0346d5d76b8fa14afd58c79640cba259b4c  libtheora-1.1alpha1.tar.gz

Thanks to Mozilla.org and Wikimedia for their support of this work.