If I'm not mistaken we're currently using the Ubuntu distro package of ffmpeg2theora; might have to backport the package or something if there's not a handy one available with the right versions linked in.

Quick note per discussion on IRC with Xiph folks:

The 1.2 Theora branch apparently has some unresolved regressions with fades in the middle of content, so we should probably run some more tests for comparison to make sure we're happy with the tradeoffs.

But it looks like it's probably a big improvement in many cases. See http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/theora/demo9.html for some background and samples -- the improvement on the 'dirty window effect' is particularly striking.

maikmerten wrote:

After some testing I can confirm that Theora 1.2 has some regressions I was not aware of regarding scene changes. This can be very visible. It appears that Theora 1.1 is the more reliable choice for the time being, which is desirable for automated transcodes.

So is this request a WONTFIX as per comment 3 (and we'd update the Theora encoder simply when upgrading the machines to a newer distribution version which might include a more recent Theora encoder)?

I don't want "at some future point we update a package as we upgrade the distro shipping that package update anyway" tickets in Bugzilla (if I got it all correctly). :)

maikmerten wrote:

I think WONTFIX is suitable here, as there's no action to be taken here.

(Later this may be a "free"/"automatic" upgrade once the new encoder is stable enough quality-wise to enter Ubuntu upstream.)

Alright, thanks :)