ReClock 1.40 has improved multi-head support, supports time stretching, a maximum speedup /slowdown percentage can be specified and there are many more improvements and bugfixes.

I'm a bit late, but it hasn't been picked up by many news outlets yet: Dolby Labs announced a new audio compression scheme called Dolby Digital Plus at NAB. It is more efficient than the current Dolby Digital standard, allowing 5.1 audio at bitrates as low as 192kbit/s and the maximum bitrate has been increased to 6 MBit/s. Dolby Digital Plus is backward compatible (meaning a Dolby Digital Plus capable device can output the audio data in Dolby Digital format) and won't be available in hardware devices until 2006.

AutoGK 1.19 fixes the runtime 216 error on Hyperthreading CPUs, displays forced subs properly in the preview, uses BeSweet's hybridgain again and pressing Control-F9 launches the Hidden Options tool if it is installed in the same directory as AutoGK.

As if they weren't making enough money already (keep in mind: no distribution cost, no manufacturing cost, no production cost for the booklet (artist(s), photographer(s), designer(s), and finally lower quality and often DRM protected thus less valuable - bottom line: they make more per song selling online than on a CD), now the RIAA wants to have more money per downloaded song that they're already making. Way to go guys - there's probably no better way to kill online music stores than to have completely unreasonable prices.

Speaking of prices, I've always found DVD prices in the UK to be particularly high, and it seems I'm not the only one to think so: Scotland on Sunday has a story on how various organizations find that DVDs cost too much in the UK. The article also points out that despite additional production cost (extras and such, the actual physical production is significantly cheaper), the average margin on a DVD (66%) is significantly higher than the margins on VHS (45%). And combine this with the fact that you can market a virtual identical DVDs in multiple countries as discs contain multiple languages. No wonder studios are so crazy about DVDs, they're making boatloads of money, despite always complaining about piracy.

Last but not least, the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology has an interesting article on the effect of the DMCA on search engines. The conclusion is that free speech is restricted in favor of the interests of copyright owners and that Congress should grant search engines immunity from contributory liability for copyright infringement of third parties. So, congressmen, will you listen?

DVD Rebuilder 0.45 corrects error code #0004, separates fields prior to resizing (in case of interlaced 4:3 -> 16:9 conversions) and weaves them back together after resizing, runtime error 9 should no longer cause the program to exit, but show the proper error message and abort the preparation process gracefully (error 9 means you're dealing with an illegal input stream), QuEnc can now be used in one pass mode, the new QuEnc options have been added and there are numerous minor changes, enhancements and bug fixes. Note that the new version requires QuEnc 0.47 and DVD Decrypter 3.2.1.0+ (of course only if you're using QuEnc / DVD Decrypter in ISO mode).

If you live in Belgium, buy your DVD-Rs now as prices are going up steeply starting on May 1st. Now does the additional artist contribution at least give you the right to fair use?

And there you thought Microsoft was evil: Apple, now fully in the clutches of the RIAA, has forced the site of the iTunes fair use project PlayFair to be shut down, and that despite being hosted in India (you can still find links to it at Slashdot via a story posted on the 25th). Fortunately, there's already an alternative, called DeDRMS. As PlayFair, it also requires a valid license for the DRM removal, and the personal license information stored within the file will not be removed (so if you use DeDRMS on iTunes files and upload them to a P2P network, they can be traced back to you).

DVD Decrypter 3.2.2.0 has a dialog box to indicate if RCE protection has been found, ejects / reinserts a burned disc before the verify stage, supports brute force disc key cracking, has more CLI options and fixes a few outstanding issues.

QuEnc 0.47 has an option to turn on extreme quality settings (which can also be turned on/off from the commandline), and both interlaced encoding and bitrate control should have improved.

On the guide front, digidragon wrote a nice Nebula DVD-T guide and I'm still looking for volunteers to write more guides in the DVB area.

DVD Rebuilder 0.43b can encode all extras at half D1 resolution using half the bitrate of the main movie, the LPCM removal bug has been fixed and dynamically assign cell bitrates is enabled by default.

Zoom Player 4.0 beta 3 has a completely revamped and skinnable navigator interface, can play 3GPP cellphone videos and OptimFROG audio if the appropriate decoders have been installed, and the audio DSP requires less CPU power.

DVD Rebuilder 0.42 fixes a bug in the TFF/RFF frame flag setting process which could've resulted in stutter frames, fixes another bug where frames in the output were marked as progressive even though the source was interlaced, and the CCE default values have changed.

Microsoft is really trying hard to make their WMV9 (which according to my finding is not such a great codec for DVD encoding by the way), a hit. Now they're getting makers of DVD authoring programs to add support for WMV HD authoring.

Download a file that has an illegal sounding name and you're Internet access is cut off? This could soon become a reality for students throughout the US. A new RIAA/MPAA sponsored program called Automated Copyright Notice System (ACNS) automatically turns off the Internet access for alleged copyright infringers on notice from a record label or movie studio. Note the alleged because this is guilty until proven innocent at its best. What happened to innocent till proven guilty? We all know that the RIAA has sued individuals that never infringed any copyrights, so quite obviously this will result in Internet access being cut off for a few (or many) unlucky people who just happened to download a file with a suspicious name, or were at the wrong place at the wrong time. At this point, maybe it's time to introduce a new law against unlawful Internet access suspension. How about $250'000 in damages and up to two years in prison for the president of the movie studio / record label that filed the improper notice? Now that could effectively restore the balance somewhat ;)

Back in good old Europe, the European Commission is looking into creating a EU wide collecting society for royalties and license fees on behalf of the copyright owners. There's one condition for the industry though: they have to settle on a DRM standard. Hey, here's an idea: no DRM is compatible with pretty much anything (except for IPods and a few other players that you should never even consider buying).

And back to the US: George Bush is really going for it and won't stop at making advertisement on edonkey.

DVD Rebuilder 0.41 fixes 0003 and 0004 errors, can remove layer breaks and now shows the average bitrate in the summary of the preparation step and the batch summary.

And then there's the updated GKnot guide, now covering XviD 1.0.

The admin of the Portuguese Doom9 mirror is desperately looking for volunteers, so if having a Portuguese mirror is important to you, better step up now before it's too late.

DVD Rebuilder 0.40 corrects an error that could've caused stuttering at chapterpoints, the disable interlaced option is now selectable for each VTS set separately, and if selected the VTS set will be treated as progressive (the AviSynth script and the encoder options will be set accordingly), a resolution error in half D1 mode has been corrected, runtime error 5 problems in the rebuild phase have been fixed, the options menu now contains options for QuEnc, and individual job failures no longer abort every batch job.

AutoGK 1.18 picks up the credits option properly even for FILM sources, and the bugfixed BeSweet 1.5b26 is included in the package.

Cuttermaran 1.56 can now cut MPEG-2 streams accurate to frame level. If the cutting position is a B-frame, the GOP before the cut will be re-encoded using TMPG, saves settings in an XML file that is preserved when upgrading to a new version, searching for similar images has been sped up and the automatic AC3 recognition has been improved.

The TMPG DVD Author guide has been updated to shine some light on one of the most interesting features of DVD author: its ability to import DVD assets and cut them properly. The DVD Rebuilder guide has also been updated to correspond to the latest DVD-RB version and to fix a few errors (thanks wmansir).

DVD Rebuilder 0.39 should eliminate most of not all error code 9's, offers ini options to set a minimum and maximum bitrate for CCE, handles BFF sources and the status window is no longer cleared after a job in batch mode.

Turn your single layer burner into a dual layer one? Well, sort of. BenQ's latest burner, the DW822A, is an 8x burner just like any other you can buy today. But, BenQ promises a free firmware upgrade to add dual layer burning capabilities once dual layer discs become widely available (or just in Q4).

There's a new build of BeSweet 1.5b26. The earlier build had the postgain module disabled, resulting in low volume output.

I've been quite busy these days and here's the result: CCE 2.66 guide, CCE 2.67 guide, CCE Basic guide, QuEnc guide and a DVD ReBuilder guide.

And Canadian filesharers can't rest yet: The CRIA has already filed an appeal against a court decision rendering P2P file sharing legal, and PR grabbing minister Scherrer is already working on a draft for an anti P2P legislation.

A few weeks before ATI, NVIDIA has released their latest generation of GFX cards. The GeForce 6800 looks promising, providing high framerates even for people with big screens. So, when we get flatscreens with native HDTV resolutions to play whichever format will win the HD DVD battle, our GFX cards will be able to deliver high framerates even at HD resolutions.

AutoGK 1.17 limits the Control-F10 shortcut to AutoGK, adjusts the resolution settings for XviD 1.0 comp tests and the AC3 muxing defaults are now 96/96ms.

Lame 3.96 is out. I've not yet replaced the old version because certain tests have discovered a bug in the new version, but it is not yet known if this is an isolated case.

Today, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFI) are calling for a demonstration in Brussels, against the decision of the EU Council of Ministers, to try and pass a controversial patent law amendment, which would allow trivial and software patents like we've seen them in the US already. This could eventually lead to a veritable patent minefield, where many free software we use today could no longer be distributed due to patent infringement. And since you could patent almost anything (you can get a patent on an idea - there has to be no physical applicability and implementation to be granted a patent), this could also seriously hamper economic progress of small and medium businesses, which would first have to shell out horrendous patent fees to be even allowed to release a new (and innovative) product. There have been similar actions in the past, leading to the EU parliament voting on clear limitations on patentability. However, without the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, no laws can be passed. And the Council of Ministers, with support from the patent lobby has now decided to ignore the decision of the EU Parliament and go for unlimited patentability instead.

DVD Rebuilder 0.35 no longer makes Rejig loop forever and fixes an error in the audio masking routine (which led to the removal of audio on certain VTS sets).

And yet another guide: This time I've been looking into TMPGEnc DVD Author.

DVD Rebuilder 0.34 can handle still frames (thus most if not all 004 errors should be gone), output undersizing problems should be fixed, the original state of progressive flags and rff/tff flags is retained, the frame structure is now being kept in all cases, FILM source encoding has been sped up and it's now possible to select to which VTS sets a 4:3 -> 16:9 conversion and Half D1 conversion should be applied.

Cuttermaran is a .NET based MPEG-2 cutting tool, similar to MPEG2Schnitt. Just yesterday, I've used it to cut some streams where MPEG2Schnitt would choke.

Interested in how good parametric AAC encoding really is? There was another public test at Hydrogenaudio, and here are the results.

Speaking of AAC, I've had this on my bookmark list for a while: an academic AAC encoder that appears to be free at first glance.

AVI-Mux GUI 1.16.4 supports Vorbis audio (only for MKV output), contains many improvements in the MKV department and fixes a couple of bugs.

That didn't take long. For once it's not the RIAA, but Apple, forcing the Playfair DRM stripping project to move to a country outside of DMCA reach.

Last but not least, a DVD player to bleep out swearwords and skips violent or sex scenes? What sounds like a nightmare scenario for every teenager, could just be coming to your living room. RCA, also known as one of the few makers of the now defunct (I have to reiterate how lucky we are that it went down the drain, it was an evil scheme by movie studios to control the way you watch and can watch movies - which they're now trying again with laws and DRM) DIVX, is releasing a player that supports on-the-fly censoring. The filtering program is developed by a company already on fire and defendant of a lawsuit of Hollywood directors and studios about unauthorized reproduction and editing of copyrighted motion pictures, ClearPlay. Quite obviously, the MPAA and their members are not too thrilled about this idea either. But the players might just be something for the censorship happy German government - I'm sure they'd like on-the-fly cutting to make an "evil" rated 18 movie and turn it into a more youth friendly, 16 rated, version that doesn't have to be sold under the counter.

ProjectX 0.81.7 has a redesigned GUI, subpicture demuxing from VOB/MPEG_PS/ES has been added, teletext decoding and synching has been improved, LPCM audio is now supported, and there are many bugfixes.

Decomb 5.1.1 fixes green screen problems.

Gordian Knot 0.28.8 supports XviD 1.0, contains updated language files and ships with the latest version of all the tools used.

Vanguard software, now calling themselves VideoSoft, has just released their H.264 baseline and main profile encoder. The decoder is freeware, the encoder is available as a 30 day test version. Depending on the quality mode, you can achieve real-time encoding on a very fast PC, but that's only if you're willing to sacrify quality. The codec supports dual pass encoding, QPel motion estimation but there's no indication of other advanced features like b-frames. Participate in an ongoing discussion about this codec in the forum.

NuMenu4U, the menu re-encoding companion to DIFU4, is available in a completely new version using Scenarist for reauthoring. This should enable the tool to handle titles that were previously undoable.

What will the HDTV age bring us? If it goes according to the copyright cartels, no more outputs that are not encrypted. And non-approved devices (PCs obviously being on the front-line because they are more likely to enable users to do with content what they, and not the content providers, want to do with the content they receive) might be locked out as well. Obviously, PC makers are not quite keen on this, which makes for some interesting negotiations before lawmakers and the Federal Communication Commission make any further decisions (and I'd expect whatever decision to be not in favor of the paying customer).

And an update on yesterday's story on online music sales. The Wall Street Journal has some more info on the subject: The music industry is still griping over decreasing single sales and now they want to make up for it by bundling high profile songs with less popular ones, and sell them as a package (just like with singles), or charge a higher price for the high profile song because they don't quite want to give you an equal choice between all songs of an album, thus putting power into the prospective buyer's hands. Needless to say, having the power is just what consumers want. Online music promises choice, while the music cartels want to go back to the old days where they could dictate you what kind of product you can get. CD burners took that power away from studios, making it possible to create your own best of albums (thus the decline of sales in that area), and instead of buying a single that contains 4 versions of the same song, people rather downloaded the radio version from wherever they could get it.

Auto GK 1.16 now ships with XviD 1.0 RC4 and the latest BeSweet, has a new logo and icon, comes with a textfile explaining all the hidden options and properly calculates the audio stream overhead of a secondary audio stream.

Perhaps you've heard of MPEG > 4. MPEG-7 and MPEG-21, both upcoming standards, don't actually include new video compression mechanisms, but new ways for interactivity, and (not surprising considering the content industry is participating), DRM. While ISO is congratulating themselves on the approval of the DRM mechanism for MPEG-21, I once again dare to ask what the customer gets from these shenanigans. Better product? Yeah right. Better prices? Hell no! Here's an example: You'd think considering that the distribution cost for online music delivery are almost nil (we aren't talking more than a few cents per album), and with all the distributors cut out, no costs for manufacturing, no artist cost for posing for the cover (and all the other people involved in the making of the physical packaging of a music CD), buying songs online should be significantly cheaper than buying a CD in a store. Yet, even though the cost for the music industry are obviously considerably lower, and the fact that it is an inferior product (all those compression schemes are lossy, and DRM de-evaluates the product even further - personally I'd say by 99.99% but let's say we're talking about at least 30% reduction in value since you no longer can make a copy for your car, your portable MP3 player, etc.), buying an entire album online can be more expensive than buying a CD (German story). Okay, so the music industry makes a higher profit per song since their costs are lower, they sell you an inferior product and on top of it they charge you more (and plan to increase prices for popular songs in the future). And the same industry is complaining about reduction in sales?

It looks like I got something backwards yesterday: The DRM scheme Apple is using is called FairPlay (this is so ironic it's almost funny, how can DRM ever be fair unless it's no-DRM?), and the de-DRM tool is called playfair.

Last but not least, the Taiwanese sponsored FVD format now officially has Microsoft on board.

While you shouldn't buy into DRM in the first place, here's another way out for the Apple iTunes DRM scheme: playfair removes the DRM from songs bought via iTunes, provided that you have a license to play those songs.

It seems that we'll get 12x burners after all. LiteOn has announced to release 12x models later this month, along with dual layer capable models. Speaking of dual layer burners, it appears burning won't quite be as straightforward as though. Judging by the latest news from Ahead, you can't just write data on one layer, rather, both layers must be written to (I suppose this has something to do with reflection). Ahead's solution for this is called LayerMagic and automatically evens out video data over the two layers, rather than pad the 2nd layer with dummy data.

XviD 1.0 RC4 codename Hola! has an improved bitrate calculator, the decoder has been improved to not crash when encountering broken bitstreams and GMC decoding has also been fixed and there are some fixes in the VfW GUI as well.

DVD Rebuilder 0.31 no longer requires that a path for decomb.dll be configured, the interlaced/progressive detection has been modified, and problems when adding an empty audio stream to the AviSynth script have been fixed.

Since loosing in court, the Canadian music industry has been crying bloody murder and painted a picture of their immediate doom. Politicians have started to bite (I suspect the hook didn't contain a worm, rather a wad of cash), Mrs. Scherrer, a minister of Canadian Federal Heritage (no idea what exactly that is, doesn't sound too interesting so maybe she's looking for some action), has promised the threatened music industry to plug those holes in Canadian copyright law. Now you know whom not to vote for in the next election ;) BTW, the announcement was greeted by studio execs as follows "Copyrights have value, and artists and songwriters would like to get paid for the use of their music". Well, how much do those people get per song? I'm afraid I seem to be unable to locate the exact value (I was under the impression it was posted in a story about double royalties for a CD containing both CD audio and WMA songs), but it is extremely low. So, dear studio execs, I'd like the full amount of what I pay for my next music CD to go to the artist (minus whatever the production and physical distribution costs, and of course the cut from the retailer). How about it?

DVD Rebuilder 0.30 fixes a couple of bugs (most notably runtime error 6 stuff, and audio dropouts at chapter/cell points) and warns if the input project is already small enough to fit on a DVD-R.

BeSweet 1.5b26 re-adds support for AC3 output based on the latest ffmpeg.

Have you ever wondered what the heck all those options do in ProjectX? Well, wonder no more, as here's the official ProjectX reference, translated from the German original.

Fair Use 0.41 produces higher quality output, supports external DVD drives and fixes several major bugs.

Thanks to Klona for his Dreambox howto, the first article on how to capture digital TV using a settop box (and much more).

DVD Rebuilder 0.28 won't start encoding, if the preparation phase was done for another encoder, the CCE version is reset to match the one selected during the preparation phase (apparently a source of many errors), a warning message will appear if the source contains multiangles or interleaved titles (those titles can't be properly reauthored at the moment) and the TargetSectors value has been replaced by a separate value for each supported encoder.

It appears that the US Justice Department is low on work, as they've just formed an intellectual property task force to analyze how to address piracy. As if stripping away your constitutional rights weren't enough..

If you live in Australia, you might want to get in touch with your elected representatives before the Australia - US free trade agreement passes. Why? Have a look at chapter 17 - Intellectual property rights. What has certainly been written by MPAA and RIAA lobbyists (or paid off politicians - is there a difference?), is essentially another DMCA export. It seems that in the 21st century, the leader of the free world is now exporting IP dictatorship (where IP stands for intellectual property, not Internet protocol ;) Europe already got it, now they're targeting Asia and Australia. Will we be able to bring this madness to a stop before all information and knowledge has been patented, copyrighted, DRMd and locked away?

Along the same line, Microsoft is rumored to prepare an iPod killer. Instead of using the pay per download model as Apple and other online services does, Microsoft's upcoming devices allow you to store rented music on the device, thus allowing you to download an almost unlimited number of songs. However, all those songs are DRM'd beyond reason (are you surprised) and have a built-in timebomb. If you don't pay your subscription fee, your entire collection becomes useless. But it gets better, if the DRM system fails (and my current experience with encrypted digital satellite TV that fails regularly at the beginning of each new month, strongly hints that things can potentially go very bad), or a computer hickups improperly flags your account, you're also locked out. So, what might sound as a good idea at first, to get an unlimited number of songs, will seriously backfire. Apple obviously argues that users prefer to own songs, but what they don't tell you is that their songs are equally DRMd and tied to certain hardware. So, if you want to be on the safe side, accept only unlocked MP3 downloads. When you can put it anywhere you like, then you really own it. If it requires a license, you just have the right to use it, under certain conditions, and for a certain amount of time (licenses can obviously be revoked).

Maybe we should make April 1st the official no news day, so that you won't fall for stuff like this: XviD 1.0 has not yet been released, Dolby is not offering a 2ch AC3 encoder for free, we won't see 1 minute DVD burning for the foreseeable future (unless you only write a couple of MBs on the DVD), and I seriously doubt there is a DVD virus that can kill your standalone player, and since Macbeta.org is still not up, it'll only be a matter of time until Winbeta returns in their usual colors. cdfreaks must've shocked some of their members with their made-up story (where are the other 102 targeted sites?), but some of our own forum members should take a closer look because the scenario is rather realistic. In other words: If you pirate, make sure you keep it to yourself, or you risk getting into trouble eventually. And Google's 1GB email service with video ads also raises a few warning signals.

Back to real news, a Canadian court has ruled that placing personal copies of music into a shared directory (shared in terms of a P2P software making it accessible to the rest of the world) does not constitute copyright infringement. However, putting files at a certain location on your PC does not amount to distribution, I guess that the CRIA (Canada's RIAA) will now try to go after ISPs and the P2P service operators yet again (the latter might be difficult because they are not located in Canada, nor the US or any other industry friendly (some would say: bought) country).

Forbes has a story on the next gen DVD format. According to a Philips rep, Hollywood will decide whether Blu Ray or HD DVD will make the race, and that the decision won't be made until the 4th quarter of 2004. Once again, the most problematic issue is copy protection. Whereas studios want to strip us of any possibility to make copies just like they tried with DVD (thank god that didn't work out), they'll certainly try again. According to the article, we won't see prerecorded HD content until 2006/2007.

With the record industry of various countries posting their yearly numbers in March, and their usual complaints about piracy, a study by Harvard and University of North Carolina study shows that there's little correlation in between (illegal) music downloads and CD sales numbers. Of course, the RIAA has dismissed those results as irrelevant. I guess it all comes down to this: don't believe in any statistics until you've faked them personally. But while the record industry is dead set on their version, they use download statistics from P2P networks for marketing purposes. But, if P2P is the devil, and giving your little finger to him leads to, well, what does that mean for the record industry?

Oh, and keep in mind the date. So, if anybody tells you today that the MPAA and RIAA are suddenly sponsoring pro fair use laws, take it with a grain of salt. That also means that Doom9's DVD audio ripper is probably not going to be released today ;)

Last month's news can be found here.