Ogg Vorbis optimized for speed, ca. 1.5x faster than 1.1 original ver. Options

[nyaochi]

Some Japanese guys work on speed optimization of libvorbis by using SSE. Blacksword (or 637) launched an Ogg Vorbis acceleration project (in Japanese only) and releases oggenc binary and libvorbis patch based on libvorbis 1.1. This optimization includes SSE implementations of FFT, MDCT, windowing, channel coupling, sorting, psymodel, floor/residue encode, and so on. In my computer (Pentium IV 2.4GHz), ICL8.1 compiled oggenc binary of the optimized version (Archer Beta03) encodes at 23.4x while the one without optimization (ICL8.1 compiled but no SSE patches) does at 15.5x. Hence, this optimization archives ca. 1.5x speed gain.

Unlike GoGo-no-coder, it's not forking: he releases a patch for libvorbis source code without absolutely changing algorithm or data structure. This is very good for source code maintenance to keep up with up-to-date official libvorbis, but limits optimization possibility in some degree. Actually, the author says in readme.txt that there's little room left for optimization. So I think it's time for quality evaluation although this optimization is in development stage. After several bugs are found and fixed for the last week, bitrates are quite similar to the reference encoder for all quality values. If you find any bugs or quality degressions from official 1.1 one, please tell us.

Contributors are:
- Blacksword (or 637)'s SSE optimization (Japanese only): A number of functions in libvorbis are vectorized to take advantage of SSE instruction set as well as Opt-Sort and wuvorbis. For complete list of optimized functions, see readme.txt (in Japanese but you may easily find it) attached with the binary.
- Manuke's OptSort: Optimization of qsort function that consumes 20% of compression processing time, by assuming that _vp_quantize_couple_sort and _vp_noise_normalize_sort functions in psy.c call qsort with 8 or 32 element. This accelerates the whole compression process by 10%.
- W.Dee's wuvorbisfile (Japanese only?): wuvorbis.dll is a fast Ogg Vorbis decoder with SSE and 3DNow!, which is a part of KiriKiri software (useful for developing multi-media contents or adventure games). wuvorbis.dll decodes 1.4x-1.8x faster (SSE) and 1.5x-1.9x faster (3DNow!) than official libvorbis.

Happy encoding!

[Poromenos]

OK, for the newb with no ability for critical thinking (me ), would you recommend switching to this version from "OggEnc v2.3 (libvorbis 1.1.0)"? I'd like to have the extra speed, but if it introduces bugs I can wait
I thought of encoding with both then comparing the files, but the size was a few bytes different and they were not identical (there were 80ish different bytes every Y bytes). What's that about?

[QuantumKnot]

OK, for the newb with no ability for critical thinking (me ), would you recommend switching to this version from "OggEnc v2.3 (libvorbis 1.1.0)"? I'd like to have the extra speed, but if it introduces bugs I can wait
I thought of encoding with both then comparing the files, but the size was a few bytes different and they were not identical (there were 80ish different bytes every Y bytes). What's that about?

IMO, it's best to stick to the normal compile of oggenc. More testing is required.