Theora 1.0 released

I understand that some of the changes in Thusnelda are improvements to the encoder that are actually within Theora 1.0 spec; these don't actually change the spec, but rather implement it better than in the current encoder -- things like actually using dynamic coefficient matrixes instead of ignoring them and using a fixed coefficient set. These improvements seem to bring Theora up to Xvid-like quality (quite a jump!), and seemingly could be folded into the existing encoder while maintaining decoder compatibility.

There are further improvements in Thusnelda that do exceed the Theora spec and will need to be described in an updated spec version.

The problem in all these seems to be that almost nobody actually uses Theora, so the interest level in it is low, and the developer love it receives is minimal -- Thusnelda, which is the bleeding edge of Theora development appears to be a one-person effort. The image quality Theora offers is also not very good, which closes the vicious circle.

Let's hope that its inclusion in Firefox will drive some dynamism into it. And let's also hope that it is conceptually good enough that it can be made competitive with other codecs, which also remains to be seen.