DGMPGDec 1.4.2 fixes a bug in sequence end code processing. Keep your eyes on the DGMPGDec thread, there should be another release shortly.

ShrinkTo5 is to be a GPL'ed DVD transcoding engine, supposedly cross platform compatible. There's a free GUI wrapping the engine available as well but so far only available for Windows. Linux and Mac OS versions should follow soon, and you need to make a donation to get the CD/DVD burning plugin.

How long is VHS going to last? The latest Star Wars movie will only be released on DVD later this year. Disney has also started to release movies exclusively on DVD and might even stop releasing VHS completely next year.

DVD Rebuilder 0.94 fixes a lot of bugs and issues, comes with an installer containing all the applications needed to make backups, includes better support for HC and has some reorganized menus. You can get the installer here.

MeGUI 0.2.2.3a no longer enforces 25 fps for MP4 input in the MP4 muxer and comes with a compilation script for the .NET SDK.

DGDecode 1.4.1 final is out.

MeGUI 0.2.2.3 shows a play icon when you pause encoding rather than the pause icon, automatically sets the number of encoder threads in accordance with the number of CPUs installed in your system, uses x264's native fourCC for AVI output, supports mp4box 0.4.x with language tagging and re-enables 2/3 pass encoding using the Snow codec.

DGDecode 1.4.1 RC4 comes packed with a manual, shows VOB and Cell IDs in the title bar, has a background image instead of the black screen when you open the application, and it contains a hidden surprise.

I'm sure you remember TV stations rambling about rampant piracy and how much money they lose, and the remedy I proposed: streaming shows over the Internet simultaneously, akin to what radio stations are doing. And BBC plans to do just that. There are still many issues to be sorted out, and I'm sure copyright holders in Hollywood will throw a fit over this, but at least the message has gotten through to the executive floor in one place.

Meanwhile, the music industry is throwing their own fits: While reaping record revenues per song from services like iTunes, they are still trying to bully online download services to more expensive songs - and guess who's going to cash in on increased prices... The problem doesn't end with download services though - subscription based services are facing similar problems for the future, as the National Music Publisher's Association (where the labels are members) is no longer happy with the flat fee licensing fee's they're getting from these services, and they're asking for a 14 - 17% cut on the subscription revenue instead (German article).

AutoGK 2.16 has improved subtitle position adjustment, ships with a new XviD build and DGIndex, demuxing of two audio tracks is done directly during demuxing and the default target quality has been changed to 60% for DivX6.

DGDecode 1.4.1 RC2 can has an option to force open GOPs in project files, regardless of the actual GOPs in the source. This can help prevent problems with random access on sources that have the closed GOP flag set but don't actually contain closed GOPs.

Another technology the world doesn't need: HP is developing a system to prevent recording of movies in theaters. It is based on, big surprise, changing the image in a way the human eye should not detect but that fools the sensors in a digital camera. I won't even have to come up with a better way, Disney has already done so and proposed that movies be released simultaneously in the theaters and on DVD. There's no reason to film a movie in the theater if you can get the DVD, right?

And this one isn't really surprising anyone but Toshiba and Sony have definitely called it quits on the attempts to come up with a unified HD DVD format.

Do you recall proposals to use Internet subscription cost to compensate artists for file sharing? At the time, the music industry has been crying bloody murder, but they have now begun to embrace the idea: In about a month, a service called Playlouder MSP will launch in the UK. For £26.99 a month, users get a 1mbit DSL line and can share music licensed by SonyBMG with other subscribers. Obviously, there has to be a catch: music will be digitally watermarked and the service will monitor all network traffic and deny sharing with Internet users from other ISPs. And I guess it works the other way round, too: no unauthorized files via those filthy P2P services.

Last but not least, GFX card makers ATI and nVidia are gearing up for the DRM future and have released reference cards of their latest models with a HDMI interface (that's the digital interface you can't get without DRM, it also transfers audio so it's practical but restrictive). So even while you could use an adapter and potentially connect your DVI capable screen, you can bet good money on the fact that those signals will still be encrypted and unless your screen supports HDCP, your screen will remain blank. And how many PC screens are there that support HDCP?

MKVToolNix 1.5.5 no longer supports AVC video in VfW compatibility mode, can extract timecodes in a timecode v2 format, allows you to specify an output charactersets for all strings that are being exported, allows to extract raw AVC streams and fixes a number of bugs.

MeGUI 0.2.2.2 disables useless x264 options in function of the selected encoding mode, sets default values in the calculator for you, warns you if your audio size is too large to allow the desired output size and contains a couple of fixes for the bitrate calculator.

DGIndex 1.4.1. beta 7 contains new picture decoding code which improves error resilience and corrects rare decoding errors that occurred in previous versions and shows the reason of video errors in the info dialog.

BeLight 0.22 beta 6 has a logfile, is available in Italian and fixes two bugs.

DVDFab Decrypter 2.9.3.5 is better at recovering from reading errors and fixes compatibility problems with certain one click tools.

SubRip 1.30 beta 11 fixes a few GUI bugs and is now available in French.

BSPlayer 1.3.5 can extend the video to a predefined height, improves compatibility with the Haali media splitter and corrupt AVIs, supports VobSub subtitle files natively and fixes a few bugs.

DVD43 3.6.2 contains updated ArccOs code.

The latest Haali Media Splitter fixes occasional errors in subtitle switching.

MeGUI 0.2.2.0 fixes crashes when accessing the codec configuration dialog under certain conditions, asks for confirmation before aborting an encoding session, properly encodes audio even if automatic gain is disabled, displays the job name and percentage done in the title bar when encoding and properly takes configured audio files into account when the bitrate calculator is used in the x264 only version. Last but not least, the commandline preview options now also support 120dpi fonts.

The MPEG Surround standard has been approved. MPEG Surround is a collection of mechanisms to allow bitrate conservation fur multichannel encoding, and it is encoder agnostic, meaning it could be used with an MP3 encoder, as well as an AAC encoder, and others.

As time is slowly running out for a compromise in the HD format battle, the HD DVD camp reports successfully producing HD DVD-R discs on a standard DVD-R production line.

This summer has so far not been a good one for the movie industry. Theater attendance is lower than in previous years. However, the industry's favorite culprit - piracy - does not seem to be the reason. Both Reuters (see link before) as well as Harris poll cite different reasons for the slump: quality, as well as competition from DVD and other alternative products like video games are mostly to be blamed.

And an update on the SN25P front: The final release of the Y BIOS seems to be a success for many (I have yet to fully use my box again and see if all problems are gone), but another issue has already come to light: the PC Mark 05 Memory write test crashes the box when 1T memory timing is used, regardless of the number of CPU cores.

AutoGK 2.15 resizes PAL MPEG-1 sources to a width of 384 (or lower, depending on your preferences) automatically, supports 24/30/60 fps sources, the File / DVD mode selection has been removed (it's now done in function of the input, an IFO triggers DVD mode), multiple VTS jobs can be queued from the same directory, DV sources are filtered using the default filters and the standalone compatibility options have been re-added to the installer.

PgcEdit 0.6.1 beta 4 has a button to launch DVD Decrypter and an option to disable the automatic check for the number of streams, and fixes a few bugs.

NuMenu4u 2.0.21 records all HC issues and fixes a few bugs.

ScenAid 1.7.5 fixes a bug in the IfoUpdate routines.

I've been revising a few more guides and I think I'm pretty much done by now. The following guides are still in the pipeline: Big3 (the whole bunch that is available right now will undergo a major overhaul), DVD Rebuilder, and analogue capturing. If there is anything I missed, guides that are in dire need of updates besides those mentioned ones, please let me know. Oh yeah, I will write a MeGUI guide of course.

MeGUI 0.2.1.9 has an improved bitrate calculator allowing for insane filesizes to still be calculated correctly, contains a bunch of minor improvements and bugfixes.

AVI-Mux GUI 0.17.1 supports MP1/2 muxing for AVI and fixes a few bugs.

NuMenu4u 2.0.20 supports multiple GUI languages, supports HC (requires the very latest build of it), allows to set a custom quantization matrix for HC including the use of the original matrix used for the assets to be encoded, tries to restart encoding of assets that have failed for some reason and contains a bunch of bugfixes.

BatchCCEWS 0.9.1.6i includes a simple quantization matrix editor and will automatically load .mat files present in the installation directory and make them available from the GUI.

In the ongoing quest to bring the guide archive up-to-date I've done some more work in the MPEG-4 and Subtitle areas. Most notably is the addition of DivX6 to the GKnot DivX guide.

VirtualDub 1.6.10 is the first of the 1.6 series that the author marked as stable. It supports the Y800 FourCC for monochrome video and fixes a few bugs.

Now the BluRay camp has made up their minds for their copy protection mechanism as well: They will be using AACS just like HD DVD, but with two additions: the ROM mark is a unique undetectable identifier in prerecorded BD discs, which can only be mastered by licensed BD manufacturers. This does not sound terribly new to me: The CSS ring on DVD-R/W discs is rather similar. It's detectable, but you need the proper DVD mastering equipment to produce DVD discs with CSS as well. The second mechanism, known as BD+ allows dynamic updates of compromised code. I suppose that means they can update your player firmware without you being able to do anything against it, thus potentially locking you out, because somebody managed to crack a player similar to yours.

And a notice about the guide archive: I'm currently going over guide, replacing outdated ones, removing no longer used guides, adding guides for the most recent tools. In that process, there might be certain inconsistencies in the guide archive temporarily, for which I'd like to apologize in advance. So far, I have removed a bunch of old CCE guides, added guides for the latest CCE and CCE basic versions, as well as the latest x264 build and I have replaced all BeSweet GUI based guides with BeLight based ones. I have also thrown out the old DVD2AVI guides and replaced them with DGIndex based ones (guides might still refer to the application as DVD2AVI, that'll be taken care off eventually).

HC 0.15A supports I-frame insertion at chapter points. Speaking of HC, I have written a guide for this popular free MPEG-2 encoder.

PgcEdit 0.6.1 beta 1 introduces trace mode snapshots which can be taken at some point and to which you can return at any time, introduces a bunch of keyboard shortcuts in trace mode, has a progress bar in the status bar, launches the fix number of streams macro automatically when a DVD is opened, and it contains a lot of enhancements and bugfixes as well.

PSP Video 9 AVC is an AVC video encoder based on ffmpeg (using x264 for video and faac for audio) to create AVC content for the PSP (PlayStation Portable).

DGMPGDec 1.4.1 beta 4 sets a default filename in the save project dialog and has a revised video error handling to prevent blocking and AV desynch.

DVD43 3.6.1 contains code to deal with the most recent ARccOS releases.

Scenaid 1.7.4 no longer supports BatchEncodeM2V (use BatchCCEWS instead), can reuse VOB / Cell IDs in the same PGC and fixes a few bugs.

MeGUI 0.2.1.8a sets the x264 quantizer delta to the x264.exe default and fixes automated 2/3 pass x264 commandlines if the turbo option is not used.

ProgDVB 4.54.2 contains bugfixes to increase stability.

What would happen if you went out, got really wasted, took the car to drive home and in the process ran over and killed a few people? You'd go to prison of course. However, you'd be out a lot sooner than the 19 year old guy that was caught taping two recent movies in a movie theater and uploading them for further distribution (presumably to a P2P network). So, is taking one (or multiple) human lives really a lesser offense than uploading a few crappy copies of a Hollywood flick to some P2P network? I consider it doubtful that many people would accept a taped copy, probably even with people walking in front of the camera and the sound of people eating popcorn, as a substitute to watching a movie in the movie theater, yet the fines approach the range you get for murder in the first degree (25 to live - and drunk driving, no matter how many people you kill in the process, is a lesser offense than that).

DVDFab Decrypter 2.9.3.2 has an improved DMA enable function and fixes crashes when trying to rip scratched discs.

MeGUI 0.2.1.8 allows the use of a predefined bitrate rather than size in auto encoding mode, allows you to change the process priority to high while encoding, shows consistent automated 2/3 pass commandlines in commandline preview, and the x264 and Snow section are properly resized at 120 dpi (AKA granny fonts ;)

BeLight 0.22 beta 6 writes a log, is available in Italian and fixes two bugs.

While the BluRay camp is toting a study that seems to show consumers are in favor of their format (well, obviously or the BR camp wouldn't be talking about it, would they?), more independent numbers from manufacturers show a slight preference for HD DVD - at least in Taiwan. If you ask me, I tend to think consumers would prefer a unified format, and so do the video retailers.

They may have brought down DVD Decrypter, but it appears they won't always win in court if the other party is willing to fight: Macrovision just lost against ViTec on the charge of patent infringement (German article). ViTec produces video copy enhancers that get rid of Macrovision, and they still sell those today. There's no word at all about Macrovision in the product description, but perhaps you want to take bets if Macrovision tries again using the Euro DMCA...

Speaking of the DMCA, all member countries of the CAFTA got more than they bargained for: DMCA style legislation, along with software patents and a considerable extension of copyright. The copyright and patent lobby has once again successfully managed to use the US state department to serve their agenda. CNET outlines that with lack of success in international bodies, this approach seems to be much more promising, and has already brought the same legislation to Australia, Chile and Singapore. So keep this in mind if you live in a yet DMCA free country and contact your elected representatives at the earliest opportunity if they start talking about a trade agreement.

While a lot of the planned DRM features won't make it into Windows Vista after all, there'll still be plenty of locking out mechanisms. Microsoft has been so nice to list them all. As a concerned user, and developer, I have to ask: what do I benefit from that all? Don't tell me it's playing high def content, because if nobody plays their game and everybody flat out refused to implement those completely unnecessary mechanisms (PCs work fine as they are, and all those mechanisms do is require new hardware and make the system more complex and thus more error prone), the entertainment industry would have to adapt or face declining sales if they just don't provide any content for PCs.

I'm afraid this one got completely lost and I'm sure most of you have already seen it, but for those who live under the rock I've been living under, AutoGK 2.13 allows spaces in filenames even when external subtitles are used, comes with DGIndex 1.4.0, allows the input and output to be in the root directory at the same time and fixes minor bugs in IFO parsing.

For those that have been plagued by the same issues as I with their SN25P barebone, there's now a beta BIOS that might fix these issues. Unfortunately I can't say more as my box died after flashing the BIOS. But if you're in the market for an SN25P and an AMD X2 CPU, better wait until a final BIOS is available and has been properly tested. Also, speaking of Shuttle barebones, if you're in the market for an SN95G5, make sure you get a V3 model, as only the V3 supports that latest single and dual core AMD chips.

The latest Haali Media Splitter works properly with WMV9 video and has a more accurate bitrate graph.

Mac users might get more than they wish when Apple moves to the Intel platform next year: The Intel based Macs seem to contain a TPM (trusted platform module) chip - a chip that they can use to lock us out from our own computers.

If you're in the market for a DV codec, there's now an open source one: Cedocida DV Codec.

MeGUI 0.2.1.7 allows reopening of the status window, inserts filler zones for XviD and fixes a few bugs. And for those who just need a GUI for x264.exe, or Snow encoding, look no further than the MeGUI x264 edition and the MeGUI Snow edition.

Zoom Player 4.51 final contains several bugfixes and optimizations.

Last month's news can be found here.