Why was there no news yesterday? Maybe you've noticed that recently the speed of this site wouldn't always be excellent. After the problems I had in December last year I got a 3rd server, which got shut down approximately 2 weeks ago due to excessive bandwidth usage. Then, last weekend I got a new server, which lasted for less than 48h in which it served a whopping 20GB. Multiply this by 3 and you get 30GB a day, which is way above average. Clearly, the recently released codec comparison which contains a large amount of screenshots (the whole comparison weighs about 3.5MB) is partly to blame here, and it seems that this article is extremely popular and attracting a lot of people. This is great, but with only 2 servers, one of which runs on a pretty much saturated T1 line (guess which site uses 99.5% of that line;) this slowed down operations considerably. So I decided that this couldn't go on anymore and drastic steps have to be taken. First of all I removed unused guides from my pages and the programs that go along with it, then I optimized the HTML code of all pages by hand, followed by the same operation for every single screenshot. Then I had a look at my server logs. On a single server the GKnot package used about 30GB alone, so I've added GKnot as a binary only download without the installer and the additional software which most people already have anyway. The rippacks also amounted for a large amount of traffic so I dumped them altogether and replaced the links in the guides to the appropriate applications so you'll still get all the software you need to follow a guide. In the case of some softwares I replaced the full installer with a reduced version that only contains the main program (all additional programs are still available on my software page), and in some cases I linked to the respective sites.

Last but not least I asked my webserver admins to look into ways to limit the bandwidth usage from the server side (you know what that means..). So, this is pretty much all I can do from my side. Now, there's other measures that can be taken but you have to implement them. If you find a site linking directly to my downloads inform the webmaster of that site directly that this is not permitted (send a CC of that mail to me). Do not use site-loader tools to download my whole site (it really won't do you any good but it uses up bandwidth that would permit a lot of others to have a look at a couple of guides and download a couple of small tools). Do not download a software just for the sake of having it. Keep in mind that the amount of donations I get is not enough to get commercial hosting that would allow me to use as much traffic as this site generates, but the free hosting I get still gets paid by somebody and they can only pay so much.

That being said, I'm looking for another host again to give the other servers a bit more breathing space, so if you have something where people won't complain if the traffic goes over 200GB a month drop me a line. And if somebody has an idea how to speed up the frontpage using HTML and CSS tricks let me know, this is the stuff I'm still working on optimizing. I think it's possible to dump some of the tables and use CSS tags instead but I haven't really worked with CSS positioning before.

And now for some happy news, I finally got around to writing an XviD guide.

Decomb 1.91 supports symbolic parameters, fixes a few bugs and contains some speed tips in the help file. cladMDec 1.6 now defaults to no audio stream stripping and has a few more options. cladDVD XP is basically the XP enabled version of cladMDec, it will only work in Windows XP and it has an XP like user interface.

It has been done: After 2 weeks of hard work, encoding encoding and encoding again, testing, finding bugs, crashing Virtualdub, etc etc I finished a brand new MPEG-4 codec comparision entitled MPEG-4 shoot-out 2002. Thanks to UHT we also have a brand new GKnot FAQ.

BeSure 1.1 is a direct VOB/AC3 -> CD / DTS CD conversion. Of course you need a DTS encoder (those aren't free) to create DTS CDs.

Sorry for the sporadic updates, but new software is rather rare these days. Furthermore I've been working on a rather big project that is nearing completion. I hope you'll find it worth the wait once it will be released.

There's another interesting development concerning future media streams: An Ogg Vorbis DirectShow implementation that allows you to use various MPEG-4 codecs and Ogg audio in a single media file. On a completely unrelated subject Philips is planning to have copy protected audio CDs relabeled and have the CD audio logo removed from such CDs as they're no longer conforming to the audio CD specs Philips and Sony set when they developed the format. Philips also plans to make CD burners that can copy such copy protected CDs.

The SimpleResize filter for avisynth is a fast alternative to traditional resize filters, it's faster but not as sophisticated. Then there's a DVD-R calculator that should help you with the bitrate calculations when you're re-encoding an mpeg2 stream for later use in IfoEdit.

Then there's some interesting technical developments: there's a an MP4 player capable of playing MPEG-4 compatible audio and video streams. Then, the people over at powerdivx.com are working on a new a/v format designed to replace AVIs. It offers a lot more features like proper VBR audio, support for alternative audio codecs (like ogg), subtitles, etc.

DVDx 1.7 can export AC3, export in YUV mode, there's a bitrate calculator for splitting, P4 optimizations and other speed improvements. Talking about P4s.. does anybody realize that there are A LOT of P3 and Celeron users out there (not to mention Duron 1+GHz, Athlon MP/XP) that would love to have SSE optimizations, not SSE2. Decomb 1.7 has better field matching, FieldDeinterlace is faster and a memory leak has been fixed. And, before you start flaming me, the DVDx source can only be downloaded from labdv and their downloads are currently down, and the decomb source release is pending so there's nothing I can do.. please talk to the respective authors if you need the source. BeSweet 1.0 now uses vStrip instead of bbdmux which gives us faster VOB input handling and makes direct DVD->MP3 conversions possible, full mp2/mp3/mpa input suppport, wavemp3 input support, calculation of A/V delay for vobs, the attenuation parameter in SSRC is accessible and there's a new payload mode that will simply extract the audio streams from the VOB without decoding. Please note that the vStrip.dll in the package is not CSS decryption capable.

No new guide today but I'm still working on something new, but it will take a bit more time than the other guides. Stay tuned.

Apparently Pioneer now starts selling DVD-RW discs that contain CPRM. This is just another blow for your fair use rights as a customer of audio and video content. You can find out more about CPRM about.com: link1, link2. And in older news (sorry, completely forgot about that, I was busy working on new guides) Jon Johansen, the alledged creator (though he really didn't crack the CSS.. but the MPAA doesn't care) of DeCSS has been indicted by the Norwegian government.

On the software side there's a new IVTC plugin for avisynth called Decomb. Apparently it works really well with difficult anime content. HeadAC3he pre18 has a fixed and enhanced block size management (upt to 40% more speed when using an optimal block size - use PTB to find out which is ideal), values for the start and end frame can be entered directly and there are some mior fixes and enhancements.

I finally got the readme for the bicubic direct show resize filter and it's in the zip now.

I've updated the HD playback guide and added yet another possibiliity. And I've written yet another IfoEdit guide, this time how to split up a DVD-9 into 2 DVD-5s including menus and extras. I've also adjusted the ReMPEG2 part of the old guide with some more accurate bitrate calculation (I got the DVD-5 size wrong and then I took the wrong bitrate to calculate the scale factor).

Another guides day today: I redid the NTSC -> PAL conversion part of my AVI to VCD & SVCD guide as the old method would give choppy and asynch results. I also took care of AVIs not having the right framerate for this conversion (though that's still limited by BeSweet). Then I've written the inverse of this guide: a VCD -> DivX and SVCD -> DivX guide. The latter includes 2 pass encoding in both DivX3 and DivX4 (based on GKnot) and VBR audio using the latest lame version (and the optimized --alt-param parameters). And while I was working with GKnot I also updated that guide and added some more info about SmartRipper (audio stream selection) and how to use the latest lame in it. Furthermore I changed all the screenshots in the SmartRipper and DVD2AVI pages to XP style.

On the software side we have DVD2SVCD 1.0.6b1 which now uses BeSweet for the audio part, the Failed to get data for list1 pos (left) error has been fixed as well as a problem with overburning images. There's now AVI input support. It currently only supports standard DVD framerates (23.976, 25.00 and 29.97) and pcm, mp2, mp3 and ac3 sound. Then there's a few other bugfixes: CCE freezes caused by DVD2SVCD should no longer happen, when ripping chapters the AC3 could be flawed, the incorrect parameter issue has been solved, the CD-image sizes should be correct, and it's possible to select a bitrate for both audio streams separately as well as choosing the resize algorithm.

The forum has got a new URL (old ones still working the new one just looks nicer;): forum.doom9.org

Well, I finally solved my VCD issues. As it turns out the DivX3 playback filter must be used for DivX3 content or TMPG will screw up and create a partially choppy output file. So here's the guide on how to convert AVI to VCD & SVCD. As you can expect it works with AVIs that contain VBR MP3 audio, and it also includes a part about NTSC -> PAL conversion. Note that I haven't extensively tested the last part and it uses some beta software so it may not always work :/

On the software side, VobSub 2.08 has a new DVobSub that dynamically reloads the opened subtitles after their modification, anti-aliasing support for win9x, saving the full path has been fixed in Graphedit and the crash of ssa input in prebuffered mode has been fixed too. Subresynch writing bad files in W2K/XP has also been solved. Eugene's DVD Player 0.99.2 has a slow motion mode, a capture frame function, color controls and it should work with the v2.3 drivers.

Not much new today. I practically wasted my whole day trying to get some DivX -> (S)VCD conversions working and mostly failed miserably. I can tell you that most of the guides on that subject you can find on other sites are going to fail a lot. If I ever get it working then you'll get the real deal.. something that works not just in some special cases. Of course.. I should've known it.. now I get a lot of mails with, unfortuantely, useless suggestions. So.. you can find the full specs of my problems here, as usual very detailed so that it can be reproduced. It almost looks like there's a bug in TMPG. Please post any test results to that thread directly.

There's a bicubic resize filter that you can use to zoom or resize your picture on the fly during playback. It's open source software so here's the source. Unfortunately the readme got list in transit so I can't tell you much about it..

While there were no news yesterday I've been working hard to present you a collection of DVD -> DVD-R/W guides working with IfoEdit. They contain pretty much everything you need to know about IfoEdit explained on a few illustrative examples. Then I also wrote a guide explaining how to rip a DVD to your harddisk and play it from there using PowerDVD, WinDVD and DVD Station (Hollywood Plus).

Good news on the form side: We finally moved to a faster server and we now have the search functionality turned on. You should use the official urls (forum.doom9.net and forum.doom9.org) to get to the forum as the rilanparty.com URL can still point to the old board which is on another server (and the board is closed) because it takes a while for all the DNS servers to synch. My forum admin ( kaizen - cgratwick@hotmail.com ) has been having many problems recently with various things that have caused him to neglect his duties here. He has all your emails and reply to them as soon as possible.

As promised, here's the software: MaestroSBT 2.0.3.0 has support for various BMP formats, TIFF and TGA and the support for style priority in the collision resolution has been corrected (and if you're wondering what the latter means you're not alone, I'm merely quoting here ;) AviUtl 0.97a has a couple of fixes in the audio area when writing an AVI2.0, some arithmetic mistake in the RGB YCbCr conversion has been corrected, the way the INFO chunk is added to the AVI has changed and the frame loader should work with W2K now (this time this is an interpretation of an online translator as the changelog is in Japanese). VCDEasy 1.0.7 supports VCDImager 0.7.12, allows the user to change the Playback Control information (makes it possible to have menus.. but there's no menu generator support, you have to do it all manually atm), when VCDEasy analyzes the MPEG files it uses APS information at chapter design time which allows you to know where exactly the chapter points lie during the design phase. When PBC is on you can assign numerical keys to chapters (sounds very familiar after all my TSCV work;), and when pressing the prev button during the first chapter of a sequence the beginning of the previous sequence will be played. VCDEasy also checks for filenames that make VCDImager choke, there's a bugfix concerning duplicate chapter points, the defaults gaps and margins button is back, ASPI layer updates are detected and CDRDAO is re-activated if a working ASPI layer is present, there's a new logo and some new translations. CCE SP 2.64 (demo of course) is XP compatible (even though older versions already worked in XP), has a plugin that supports Premiere 6 and VCD&SVCD support (even though I couldn't actually locate that support, the profiles are not selectable.. but the Japanese site clearly states VCD and SVCD in the specs). I don't think this means CCE actually got its own resizer or 3:2 pulldown, and the input reader still doesn't accept .avs (I haven't tested .vdr but I'd presume it's the same story). However, I've heard CCE 2.6X's input reader actually has some improvements over its older versions as large AVIs were not supported in 2.50 and before but that doesn't really compensate for the loss of .avs, does it?

Then, maybe you've already heard it. A US congressman wants to modify the DMCA to allow circumvention for fair use purposes. If you live in the state of Virginia it's time to give your elected representative a big thumbs up. I wish him much success against the powerful forces he's up against in his quest. If you follow the CES news coverage you may have heard a couple of interesting things that concern us: First of all Panasonic will release a DVD player supporting wma (windows media audio) and wmv (windows media video), then there's some rumours about Cirrus Logic making a decoding chip supporting DivX (though which flavor remains unknown), and imho I wouldn't bet much on it. Player manufacturers know that there's a demand, but on the other hand there's the movie industry that would throw everything they got against such a player so the consumer electronics majors are afraid of upsetting them and keep DivX support away from standalone players. Sonic did a license agreement with Microsoft which could mean that we get DVD authoring software in future Windows versions. Mac users will smile about that news since many Mac models have had full DVD support for a while now (including the necessary hardware to create your own DVDs).

After a lot of testing on all my servers I can tell you for sure that there are no corrupt files or wrong links in the guide pages on any of the servers. If you get problems the problem lies at your end of the connection (or in between and I have no control over either). Towards that end I re-wrote the contact page with some more info about these issues and stuff you have to be before sending a trouble ticket.

I've put up the latest version of the vStrip sources which also compile under linux. There's absolutely nothing new there, it's just that I still had and old vStrip release in the source package. IfoEdit 0.81 has a new button allowing you to copy the Listview-date to the clipboard and fixes the problem where IfoEdit would close after processing some VOB files.

MaestroSBT has a lie tiff format on bitmaps for those who convert the bitmaps to tiff, a safe area in the preview, key shortcuts in the preview mode to show/hide the safe area and a couple of bugfixes. DVD Decrypter 3.0.0.9 has an ISO output mode that should allow direct DVD -> DVD copies (of course, only DVD-5 sources and there might be problems with DVD-R/Ws as they have the CSS already zeroed), the find key option in the context menu has been replaced with an improved version in the properties menu, the look has been changed to XP-mode and there are numerous small improvements and bug fixes. VobSub 2.07 has a subtitle joiner mode (rundll vobsub.dll,Joiner), and the ifo is no longer needed for using the output (plugin, dvobsub, other included utils). On the DVobSub side the file names are correctly saved in Graphedit, the hide subtitle selection will be saved as will the selected language, there's an option to adjust the delay and speed of subtitle display, a memory leak when using the DivX3 decompressor has been fixed along with an upside down problem when using it together with DivXPlus.

Another issue: I get a lot of reports about supposedly not working links or corrupt files. 9 out of 10 times they're bogus and incomplete, making me waste a lot of time checking only to find out the obvious. Hence, unless I get good reports from at least 10 people about a problem (see the contact page for the details) I will not bother to check about such stuff anymore. You have no idea how frustrating it is chasing ghosts each and every day.

Happy new year again. The new year started with a barrage of updated tools: Madrona 1.3.0 adds batch processing, there's a warning box telling you when not to use your kb/mouse, the DivX codec installer and lame versions have been updated, the default lame parameter is not --alt-preset 96, there's a minimize button, imtermediate files an be deleted, a html help file has been added and all the settings are written to an ini file. DriveInfo 2.1 contains some Win98/ME fixes (a new year's resolution for the people needing that fix: Make sure you upgrade your Windows version until the end of this year ;) MaestroSBT 2.0.1.2 adds a control to the accidental misuse of the absolutein/absoluteout values, corrects color swapping in the preview and has a better time navigation in the preview mode. There's a new IVTC plugin v2.2 for Avisynth (no changelog included) and last but not least here's a version of Nandub RC2 lumafix that can load ecf files larger than 3mb.

And as the end of a year and the start of a new year is the time to look back here's an interesting tidbit about the digital video format we all love: Did you know that only 4 years ago not every studio fully supported DVD and that in fact some studios (Fox and Disney to be specific) clearly prefered the pay-per-use DIVX format over DVD. And that only half a year later the format died despite the strong support from some studios (which had very lackluster DVD support at that time). And in October 2001 DVD sales surpassed VHS sales for the first time in the US, as did DVD player sales. So, I guess DVD is a good business for them after all.