{"id":1867,"date":"2009-09-25T08:13:59","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T15:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/?p=1867"},"modified":"2009-11-23T14:59:38","modified_gmt":"2009-11-23T21:59:38","slug":"theora-1-1-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/theora-1-1-released\/","title":{"rendered":"Theora 1.1 Released"},"content":{"rendered":"

No sooner did I press “Publish” on my last post pertaining to multithreading FFmpeg’s Theora decoder<\/a>, than did I receive an email from the theora-dev list regarding the release of Theora 1.1.0<\/a>. It took them many, many years to release the first official version<\/a> and about 10 months to get the second version out, so congratulations on that matter. This release includes the much-vaunted Thusnelda encoder which is supposed to offer substantial encoding improvements vs. the original 1.0 encoder.<\/p>\n

So, fair warning: Be prepared for a new round of “Theora Bests H.264 \/ HTML5 Video Poised To Conquer Internet” type of stories.<\/p>\n

Since I have been doing a bunch of optimizations to the FFmpeg Theora decoder this past week (a.k.a. the Theora decoder that most people actually use<\/a>), I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to benchmark Theora 1.1 alongside FFmpeg’s decoder. Fortunately, libtheora has an example tool called dump_video that decodes video directly to YUV4MPEG2 format, the same way I was testing FFmpeg’s decoder.<\/p>\n

FFmpeg command line:<\/p>\n

\r\nffmpeg -threads n<\/em> -i big_buck_bunny_1080p_stereo.ogg\r\n  -f yuv4mpegpipe -an -y \/dev\/null\r\n<\/pre>\n
Libtheora command line:<\/p>\n
\r\ndump_video big_buck_bunny_1080p_stereo.ogg > \/dev\/null\r\n<\/pre>\n
The results (on my Core 2 Duo Mac Mini) were thus:<\/p>\n
\r\n6:44 - FFmpeg, 1 thread\r\n6:09 - FFmpeg, 2 threads *\r\n4:51 - libtheora 1.1\r\n<\/pre>\n
* multithreaded version isn’t complete yet<\/em><\/p>\n
Mind you, libtheora’s decoder is singly-threaded and only has basic MMX SIMD optimizations. After seeing libtheora’s relative performance, I think I blacked out. Or maybe I just went to bed since it was so late; it’s sort of a blur. I awoke in a confused stupor wondering what I’m doing wrong in the FFmpeg Theora decoder. Why is it so slow? Actually, I know why– unpack_vlcs(), which continues to dominate profiling statistics. Perhaps the question I should start with is, how does libtheora unpack VLCs so quickly? That’s a good jumping-off point for a future investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Theora 1.1 is out and their decoder puts FFmpeg’s to shame<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vp3theora"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t