[theora] Some Feedback for Thusnelda alpha 2

[Martijn van Beurden]

Hello everyone,

As asked on the news page, I'll give some feedback for this release. I
don't know were to put it, but this mailing list seems the best place.
(correct me if I'm wrong ;)) I haven't tested Theora in-depth before, I
use XviD and x264 mainly. As I support patent-free, open-source
software, I thought it would be nice to test and give some feedback.

At first glance, Theora functions quite well. I did some tests with a
Kingdom of Heaven rip (encodod with x264, at qp 20, so probably not
really fair for Theora, but I think there are no visible artifacts in
this rip) and most of the video was nice at ~800kbps. (quality 6 with
ffmpeg2theora)

Probably the biggest flaw I've come across is that the highest quality
setting (or specifying a very high bitrate, 10000kbps for example) does
still create artifacts. The bitrate at which it encodes doesn't get
higher then ~2200kbps, but especially fades, blurred backgrounds and
slow moving objects such as clouds are quite blocky and the borders of
inscreen text are ugly (looks like JPEG-like compression). It would be
nice if the highest quality setting would be (near) lossless.

Well, I think the claim that Theora is inbetween MPEG-4 ASP and AVC is
justified. Keep up the good work!