Software update: Theora 1.1

The Xiph Foundation released version 1.1 of its Theora codec last Thursday. This codec evolved from On2 Technologies’ proprietary VP3 codec, which was initially closed but was donated to the open source community in 2001. Wikipedia already uses the codec for displaying its video content, for example, and Theora is also present in the Olpc project’s XO laptop. Firefox and Opera are also planning to support the codec by default. The main changes in the 1.1 release are summarized for you below:

Highlights of the 1.1 release 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.