OK guys.. this is it. As soon as I shut down the pc I'll be officially moving. That means that I will have no internet access for at least 3 days. If the phone company works fast I should be online again by the end of next week.

So just to remind you: The SVCD section can be reached by pressing the SVCD link on the left. There's 2 urls: go.to/doom9 and doom9.has.it, the latter is a backup that contains all but the software archive. If anybody out there knows a place where I could host my site or would like to host it him/herself please contact me. I'd need about 50megs of space, preferably on a fast internet connection, no bandwidth limit, no banners and ftp access. Please... I really need your help on that. I've just seen a free host shut me down without giving notice and without explaining why (Crosswinds... I'm still waiting for your response!).

Not directly ripping related but still important for the future of DVD:

Record producers were appalled last week when they found they could hear a supposedly inaudible "watermark" designed to make DVD-Audio players reject copied discs. The industry's Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) had chosen a commercial watermarking system, called Verance, which adds digital changes to music waveforms. The mark must be robust enough to survive MP3 transmission over the Internet, but remain inaudible when played on the yet to be launched DVD-Audio players. After the disastrous London demo, an SDMI spokesperson admitted: "We are starting all over again."

Well... told you so my favorite pc magazine will tell you. Watermarking was to fail from the very beginning. But today I'm going to be really nice to the movie/record industry and give them a hint on how to render piracy a less grave problem: Check the news from July 24th on DVDResource.com. For short: Make it available & make it affordable is the key.

"The paranoid always win." How right Andy Grove was when he said that. A few days ago my own paranoia paid off. Today I had a mail from Crosswind's tech support telling me that my account had been deleted. Now my precaution of always having 2 operating sites has finally paid off big time since the down-time was only minimal. I've written a really nice rant about the whole issue but I don't think it should be on my main page. 

Also... I'm about to move to another place. One of my pc's is already away and I'm going to sell the other very soon. I don't know yet what soft of internet connection I'm going to have at the new place and I don't know yet how long it's going to take till I'm fully operational again. Being an optimist I hope not longer than a week but history has learned me to always expect the unexpected. So if there are no updates for a few days and if I don't reply to your mails that means that I currently have no internet connection. 

To prevent any further trouble in the time I'm away I once again set up a backup host. Use doom9.has.it to get to it whenever go.to/doom9 should not work anymore. A word of advice tough.. the backup does not contain any software!! So emails about software not being there will get deleted automatically.

I'm currently having a major technical problem. One of my computers is completely down and at the moment I can't access to all data stored on it. That means among other things that all mails I got within the last 36 hours are lost. If you sent me a mail during the period which deserves an answer (questions, proposals, suggestions) and I haven't answered yet that means that it's one of the mails that I can't access anymore. Could you please  resend it? Thanks a lot. 

It has been brought to my attention that apparently the speed mod of FlaskMpeg was only optimized for the Panasonic MPEG encoder and that it could lead to serious synch problems. 

Check out the SVCD section (by clicking on the corresponding link on the left side..)  if you're interested in VCD/SVCD..

I'm also looking for people who could write a guide about things that I haven't covered yet, like how to handle PCM audio (since Flask can't do that) or how to convert an MPEG-2 multichannel audio files or any other thing you may come up with. If you have an idea don't hesitate to contact me and we can work something out. I'd be more than happy to publish any serious work on my site. 

I think there's some confusion about my SVCD section.. you have to press on the SVCD link in the left frame and it'll load a whole new frameset... the section is somewhat separate at the moment. Then pressing the DivX link in the left frame will get you back to the DivX section. You can clearly see the difference at the logo on the left.. if it's an SVCD logo you're in the SVCD section, if it's a DivX logo you're in the DivX section. 

And after the long talk: I finally made some SVCD guides and more coming soon... stay tuned. 

I finally updated the WME7 test... it now contains all the screenshots. 

All people interested in (S)VCD should definitely check out their section...

Software: DivXPlayer 0.076 and BSPlayer 0.63 are out. 

I've finished my tests on the Windows Media Encoder 7.0. Please excuse the lack of some pictures but at the moment I have no access the clips to make even more screenshots. I should have the missing pictures by Wednesday. 

I've received some feedback on the modified FlaskMpeg and it looks even more like there were no changes at all... I'll keep you informed.

Software: A new Dvd2avi_gui is out. It has a really *long* list of changes so I won't print them all here. Definitely worth upgrading.

A word about the speed-modified FlaskMpeg: I tested it on 2 movies now and I didn't notice any speed increase at all (yes I'm sure I ran the right exe..). However this maybe due the audio codec I used (mp3 - I know I shouldn't write that I used it since it gives people a wrong idea... so here's it: NEVER use the mp3 codec in FlaskMpeg unless you are 200% sure that you won't get any synch issues), I'll have to test whether it'll run faster if I select another audio codec. Any comments regarding the issue are welcome. 

I have translated the readme file of the package... from now on the speed-FlaskMpeg comes with the original readme and the translated version so you don't have to use online translator... and get ridiculous results..

I've tested the Windows Media Encoder v7. As it was to be expected the interesting codecs can't be used in any ripping program. I've yet to try the ISO compliant MPEG-4 codec on a longer section but encoding appeared really slow to me. The Windows Media Video V7 codec can't be used.. that would have been the interesting one. Also.. Windows Media Video V3 is still included but as before can't be used to create avis. There are also a lot of disappointments hidden in the encoder itself: First of all you can only select integers as fps. Furthermore the encoder would not load avs scripts... otherwise we could frameserve from flask and still use the new codec. I tried the patch to make the program avs compatible but the application would not start anymore after patching. The Windows Media Audio codecs would only lead to Media player crashing when I selected them in FlaskMpeg. I also suddenly missed the mp3 audio codec in FlaskMpeg and I found out that it had been replaced by a newer version of Microsoft which can't be used in FlaskMpeg. So if you've already installed the WM7 encoder you have to reinstall the radium mp3 codec - or just run the Register_DivX.exe file in the directory where you've installed the DivX codec in.

So my take is don't bother with the new version unless somebody finds a way to make them work in our favorite ripping apps. After Gej has left the scene.... is anybody up to take up his work and make the Windows Media Video V7 and the updated Windows Media Audio codecs work in FlaskMpeg & Co?

Of course you could make an intermediary AVI using a high bitrate MJPEG codec and then load that AVI into the WM encoder but that's a really lengthy process and probably not worth the time. However go ahead and try and report back to me. I'd like to know whether WMV7 beats DivX in terms of quality. 

Software: VobDec GUI 2.5b is out and it now works in W2K, although it still has its glitches. I've also found an interesting software called DeCSS plus which can decrypt DVDs. It includes the source code and is supposed to work on any system with a C compiler... so this will probably interest all users with an operating system other than Windows or MAC OS. Last but not least I have the DivXAuto source code. 
Note: DeCSS+ has nothing to do with the original DeCSS... 

Can somebody please give me a break with all these server troubles? Once again a site is down, another is up, etc. Can't wait to have a more reliable host... I'm supposed to get one soon.

Yesterday was supposed to be a day of celebration: 100'000 hits, a nice article on the Wall Street mentioning my site but then soon after my dinner all hell broke lose. The main host went down. Then the go.to redirect went down so I couldn't even change the url to a working backup. As you're reading this everything is working again and I'm really sorry to not having been able to offer you a better service. I learned one thing tough: Whenever one of your service provider upgrades, don't use that service for another 2 weeks or so, find a replacement for the time being because it's not the first time that such a things happened to me. 

Many have asked me to provide yesterday's article and so here's a free url at msnbc.com. Note that an interesting part has been cut out.. or rather has been displaced and made shorter (you can find the links well hidden at the bottom of the article)... the links to some of the major DivX sites. Well.. what did you expect at MSNBC? Microsoft certainly won't push DivX... I hope I will get permission to print the full article as appeared in the WSJ soon. 

And then there was light: This URL should get you to the full WSJ article on DivX for all those without a WSJ subscription.

Software: Reuploaded VobDec GUI 2.4 because apparently v2.5 won't work in Windows 2000. And not (yet) related to ripping: Microsoft released the Media Player 7 and the Windows Media Encoder 7 today. Ac3dec 0.819, its source code and Decodevob 1.5 are also out.

A warm welcome to every Wall Street Journal reader who's found its way here. I hope you like my humble site.

And I would also like to say thank you to the 100'000th person to visit this site. My counter is going to show a 6 digit number any time now. 

I finally found the URL of the WSJ article on DivX. It appears to be one of the more balanced views of the subject. A clear distinction was made between pirate sites that offer pirated movies and information sites as the one you're currently visiting. Nice work, Lee.

Also.. the future of DivX is now known: Gej is currently working on a completely legal implementation of an MPEG-4 codec without the use of Microsoft software. The codec should be out in a couple of months. Check this site for more info. 

Software: VobDec GUI 2.5 is out. It now saves every key found in the keys.ini file so you can start building your own database if title keys.

Software: Subripper 0.3b2 and DivXPlayer 0.07 is out - stirred, not shaken <g> 

Guides: A new guide has been born: How to join/cut DivX files and how to combine DivX low motion and DivX high motion. I've managed to join 2 DivX files frame accurate. Neat, eh? I've also added instructions on how to use Subripper. I also brought the alternative audio recording guide up-to-date. 

I've also added a direct link to Nick Page's FAQ over at the DivX Digest to my FAQ and made some other small FAQ updates. So now you have the FAQs of the two major DivX sites right beside each other and all your questions should now definitely be answered.

A think that I should have done a long time ago: I've finally written some preliminary instructions for Newbies. Don't be shy to admit your new to this stuff. Just go ahead and spare yourself the frustration.. 

OK.. back to the main server. Just to remind you: go.to/doom9 is the primary server, doom9.has.it is the backup and will only be updated when the primary server is down. But if go.to/doom9 does not work try doom9.has.it

Also some great news from the Creative front: Finally Liveware 3.0 for Windows2000 is out. 

Now open: (S)VCD section open now. Just click on the (S)VCD link on the left... To celebrate the opening I also created a new TMPEGEnc patch.

Software: New Rippacks are out. I finally got rid of those non-working VobDec GUIs... The packs also include the brand-new VobDec GUI 2.4 which fixes some bugs in the AC3 Stream and DVD Info.

I just heard that Subripper 0.3b1 would actually work better than SubRip 0.7b... Stay tuned for a guide. 

I've also ripped 2 more movies.

Apparently go.to and excelland have a really long downtime. So I decided to set up a secondary redirect. From now on doom9.has.it will point to the primary backup site. That will not always be up-to-date - I'm sorry but I'm really at a lack of time here - but should be up when the main site is down.

Attention: At the moment the current main host is down. This means that some of the downloads will not be available. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Guides: Fixed a couple of bugs in my guides, made new screenshots corresponding to the latest utilities and added info for all FlaskMpeg DeCSS users.

Software: Check out the I-media Direct Show filters. There's one filter that allows you to use a streamlist to extract audio, another one to encode MPEG-2 to AVI (using an available MPEG-2 video codec) and an MPEG-2 resizing codec. The creators were also nice enough to release the complete source code for these filters and include a detailed description on how so use the filters - pictures included - so I won't have to write any new guides. The same guys also created the well-know Filemerger of which I have put up the latest version and the source code. 

Furthermore there's a new release of the mpeg2avi GUI which now detects AC3Dec 0.818 and offers scrollbars if the screen-size is too small to display the whole program.

Software: David Black from the official English Homepage of TMPEGEnc did a couple of modifications to my TMPEGEnc patch. Thanks a lot!

And I have a small follow-up to the story reported 3 days ago. Apparently Digital Digest and DivX had a couple of server problems. One of their hosts temporarily disabled their site, and another had their server down for a few hours. So it has nothing to do with Microsoft, yet. We're all still waiting for C&D letters to start flying.

Software: There's a new Direct Sound filter which allows you to get multispeaker 3D-sound avis using 2 conventional stereo track compressed in any format (one for the rear speakers, one for the front speakers). Check it out. It contains a really nice how-to with pictures so you should have no problems using it. It also contains a small software to remove the absolute pathnames from a graph - that might also be interesting for people who do AVI/ac3.

SVCD/VCD Section now opened with a special goodie for you: TMPEGEnc 11f English language patch created by yours truly, Doom9.

Beware: This section is in early alpha stage, that means no questions allowed and no support at all!

Software: VobDec GUI 2.3 is out: All DOS windows are hidden now, a progress bar and info for full decryption was added, the DVD image button and ansi.com were removed. 

Some of you have probably already noticed: New server and finally no pop-ups anymore. How do you like that...

Exclusive: The future of DivX?

MyDivX.com reported a few days ago that Microsoft were apparently getting geared-up to launch full scale 'DivX Codec Crackdown'. If you missed this editorial then check it out here NOW!

Now whether this is co-incidence or not I'm not quite sure but Digital Digest and its new site - DivX Digest is down and so is the cladDVD site it hosts too. The official DivX site is still up however so, again, I'm not quite sure what's happening yet.

The legality of the DivX codec has always been in question since it first surfaced all those months ago. Many people still don't realize that the DivX codec is simply a hacked version of the Microsoft MPEG-4 codec to allow AVI output. Until now Microsoft have remained relatively quiet because DivX has been, until recently, an underground movement. With its rise in status and popularity and as people begin to realize its potential maybe it has only been a matter of time before 'big brother Microsoft' stamps its legal foot. As suggested on MyDivX.com the ball has always been in Microsoft's court (literally ;) and DivX's future looks to be halted by the powers that be. Maybe ... maybe not, who really knows. As always myself, Syncaio and Doom9 will continue to bring you the latest on any future developments.

Software: Mpeg2Avi GUI 1.04 and cladDVD v1.45 update are out. I've also removed a couple of older utilities. From now on only the most important utils will be offered 'outside' the rippacks because it usually doesn't take long for the software to be out-dated. If you've downloaded a rippack, you can bring yourself up-to-date by simply downloading the tools in the future section on the download page. 

Syncaio here ... thanks to Doom9 for returning from his break to cover the news for the past three days. I've been upgrading my system and to top it all off I've been unwell too. Anyway now I'm back we can get to business ;)

Software: VobDec GUI v2.2 is out. In this latest release the decryption progress bar is more accurate and there is more information added to the decryption process.

For those of you who like the idea of burning out your DVD drive and frying your DVDs then you'll be glad to hear that FlaskMpeg DeCSS v0.594 is out. Please note that I have not tested this release and since it's NOT connected to the official Flask author, you use it at your own risk.

Attention: My main site is down. I hope this backup contains all the necessary software. 

Software: VobDec GUI 2.1 is out.  Key search is now being done in hidden windows, a bug in key search was fixed and all files will be overwritten. A new BSPlayer is also available.

Software: Ac3dec 0.818 is out. It should work better on corrupted ac3 streams, can now save codec settings and most importantly the 41Khz downsampling should work better now.

This message was sent the FlaskMpeg egroup by Flasky himself:
"All DVD parts inside FlaskMpeg have been reversed engineered to make the stuff legal, and thus, there could be many glitches because we've never seen the DVD spec. We're following the 'try-error-fix' procedure to pull out bugs and to figure out how the stuff really works, so it's normal that sometimes with some particular titles our actual code fails."    

So that means that even though FlaskMpeg 0.594 now works on many titles - subtitles included - there are still some bugs in it. So rather than to bitch about errors in various forums you can take a look at the source code and see if you find out the error yourself - I know this seems a bit hard for all you Windows users but take a look at Linux and you know what I'm talking about - or you could send the not-working .ifo file to Flasky - but make sure you got the right one! I also noticed that sometimes the latest Flask would stop displaying the remaining time at about 50% of the process done. But that's not more than a small nuisance, don't you think? You could also help Flasky be buying the official DVD specs and send 'em to him.