[Theora] encoders

[Hannes Hauswedell]

hi everybody!
i have two questions:
1. which encoders do you recomend? i have tried most, and i am pretty unhappy 
with all of them :( . thoggen only works on linux and is very unstable 
(crashes always during the encoding process) and most frontends to 
encoder_example dont work or are very buggy. ogmrip also doenst look very 
promising since it seems to convert dvds into other lossy formats first and 
then into theora. 
the only decent encoder is vlc. it works fine, but the encoded movies have a 
lot of "freeze-frames" (the movies 'stutter'). is this a libtheora or a vlc 
issue? because right now i am back to encoding ogm files with vorbis and xvid 
codecs...
i am also thinking of writing a proper graphical 'ripper' myself, although 
right now i definitely do not have the time( i also miss other feauteres like 
ripping multiple audio streams into one file). if i should do so, would you 
recommend using gstreamer-theora or a different encoder as a base?
2. why is theora so slow? why is theora-mmx in an exrta branch (this makes it 
hard to setup)? it would be much easier if one could decide at compile time 
whether one wants mmx extensions or not... most modern day computers have mmx 
(all of the x86 family dont they?)

thank you very much for your work!
i hope theora gets more public attention in the future.
greetings

hannes