DVD Rebuilder 0.27 should fix the majority of runtime error 9 errors, audio selection can now be made when saving / opening project files, and the CCE quality_prec dropdown now accepts values from 0 - 64 to be compliant with newer CCE versions.

ImgTool 1.1.4 is now available in 3 different flavors: One for Nero 5.5, one for Nero 6.0.x and one for Nero 6.3.x.

To continue with the poor record industry around the globe, it now appears that the British Phonographic Industry (UK's RIAA), despite claims to huge losses due to piracy, actually sold an increased number of albums in 2003, and that losses are mostly in the singles area, which are not released as numerous as in previous years. Now I guess it's just a time before somebody digs up more truth than the German record industry wants you to know. Let's see: decreasing single sales? I think we know why. But the CD stats are interesting: we experienced the sharpest drop in sales in the full price CD area, and the compilation area, whereas there's an increase in the low price area. I could be wrong, but maybe price does matter, and those compilation CDs are not as interesting if you already have many of the individual songs? But then again, I never bought a single compilation CD in my life, and while my CD collection won't even get close to my DVD collection, it is still not too shabby. And one more thing: With people putting a lot more money into movies (DVDs), and not having more money thanks to a worldwide economic depression and thus little increasing wages, you have to save money somewhere, and maybe since you've already heard the charts up and down till your head spins from your local radio station and MTV, so there's no need to buy all the top chart CDs anymore.

And last but not least for this month, check out VobBlanker, a tool to blank VTS titles, replace titles, strip audio tracks and adjusting IFO tables.

AutoGK 1.12 fixes size issues when using the credits option in XviD, the credits file can now contain a quality percentage and an option to trigger the grayscale mode as well as the credits options, a no audio option has been added to the list of audio tracks, the hidden options are logged to the logfile.

DVD Rebuilder 0.26 fixes skipping and pixelation issues at chapter points, has a bitrate calculation algorithm that examines the original bitrate allocation and assigns bitrates consistent with the cells on the original DVD, encoders can now be run in a minimized no-focus state, and the number of possible runtime 9 errors should have decreased.

Last but not least, we have the Australian Recording Industry Association hard at work: Despite record sales in 2003 (album sales increased by 7.85 %), the ARIA is lamenting that it's still losing a lot of money due to filesharing. They go to great lengths stressing that single sales have decreased by 16.5%. However, the drop in single sales cannot be blamed entirely on filesharing: The music industry is at an all time low in releasing new singles, in many countries singles have virtually disappeared from the market (I have absolutely no recollection about the last time I ever bought a single CD even though I still buy albums regularly, and I wouldn't even know if there are any singles in the store I shop - OK it's a big one and these days I'm a lot more interested in the DVD department), and that the group of people most likely to buy less CDs thanks to P2P networks is the group of people that doesn't have a lot of money to spend anyway: kids.

Media Player Classic 6.4.8.2 contains a fix in the AAC decoder, making it work properly with mono sources, and the MPEG splitter can now read PVA (DVB) sources.

PVAStrumento 2.1 RC7 fixes a couple of bugs and contains improved TS parsing.

Last but not least, the copyright lobby has made another move: Their latest invention is a draft bill that would severely lower the burden of proof against file sharers, and increase the maximum penalty for file sharing to up to ten years in prison. Another bill put forward by Senator Hatch of Utah and Rep. Leahy of Vermont (both of which have received more than $150'000 in contributions from the entertainment industry in 2004 alone), would allow the Justice Department to pursue civil cases (right now that's up to the copyright holders, and the government can only launch penal cases, which is unlikely to happen as penal judges are not likely to look favorably upon minor cases like copyright infringement - they prefer to go after the big cases, like murder, et.) against file sharers. For those unfamiliar with legal terms, civil suits are about two individuals (or companies) duking it out in court, while penal cases have the government as one party. Considering the amount of money those elected representatives get, I guess I should consider changing the camp as well as it is much more profitable. Imagine, $150'000 in three months, $600'000 in a year, and that's only for lobbying for two organizations. Throw in a couple hundred thousand from another few organizations, the money you get from the government and you get a 7 digit figure.

AutoGK 1.10 supports mono audio tracks and the advanced settings are restored on startup even if the advanced window was never shown yet.

ImgTool Burn 1.1.3 can get the Volume ID from a DVD drive and uses Nero API 6.3.0.0.

Looks like the AAC on DVD-Audio decision wasn't so final after all, but it's still likely to happen.

How long should copyright law protect intellectual property? Stanford Center for Internet and Society believes that copyright protection for works that are no longer available but still protected under current copyright law is unconstitutional. They argue that current law, where no copyright has to be claimed, only helps the owners while hindering those who want to work in a digital world. A similar suit filed by Stanford professor of law Lawrence Lessing, which meant to find the extension of copyright protection in the US to be unconstitutional, has been dismissed by the Supreme Court in early 2003, even though the court criticized the extension law (proposed by media conglomerates like Disney) as having the effect that copyright is almost eternal. Which brings me to my point, that when law and reason are in conflict, courts should rule in favor of reason (I know, I'm dreaming).

While I couldn't be at CeBit (again), one of my forum moderators (bb) was, and he has posted an overview of what he saw.

AutoGK 1.08 enables you to force IVTC on hybrid detected manual via a control file, the location of the ini file has changed, and a couple more predefined output sizes have been added.

Media Player Classic 6.4.8.1 contains SSE2 optimizations for motion compensation and deinterlacing, the MPEG splitter supports 192byte/packet TS streams, OGM synch problems have been fixed and the core of all splitters have been tweaked.

We've all know this for a long, long time but now they're all but admitting it themselves: The big copyright cartels are out to destroy fair use with their hysteria tactics. New Zealand's economic development ministry has suggested (Hooray for a brave governmental department that actually still remembers it is here to serve the people, not the industry) to review New Zealand's copyright act, and change it as to allow CD buyers to make a single copy for their own personal use. What obviously doesn't hurt the music industry at all (would you buy two copies of the same CD? even the RIAA enforcement officers won't do that, though they never tell you about it), and with making copies for 3rd parties or copying discs you don't own still being illegal, what's the big fuss you might ask? Well, according to the recording industry association of New Zealand, this amendment is a "music pirate's charter", a horrendous proposal that would kill their business. Note that currently, there is no fair use in New Zealand's copyright law. Thus, according to the music industry, fair use equals piracy. Now if you live in NZ, I suggest you write to your government and let them know how much you support this amendment. Every couple of years politicians have to be reelected, and while during their time in the office, many only reap the benefits from being lobbied by big money, they still need your average citizen's vote to be reelected.

Last but not least, another UK outlet will start selling downloadable music in unprotected MP3 format. recordstore.co.uk will start selling music as DRM free MP3s and WMA9 (obviously DRM'd till kingdom come) shortly. If things continue like that, maybe a few years from now I'll actually be able to buy the music I'm listening to as MP3s. But with the large majority of online music sales still being DRM'd, I stick to good old CDs.

If you're into testing audio software, check out Lame 3.96b1. There's currently a big test ongoing over at Hydrogenaudio, to ensure that v3.96 will soon replace 3.90.x as the suggested version to be used.

Now while this is old history, it is still highly interesting: It turns out that the oh so poor MPAA was once upon a time a bunch of dirty pirates themselves: Roughly a hundred years ago, the movie industry fled the east coast do California to escape patens on film technology. In California, they could without fear from the arm of the law, pirate Edison's invention. Now the inevitable question has to be: Was piracy a good thing in this case and what would've happened in case those patents had been enforced in California, and if they were as everlasting as today's patents. I honestly can't answer that, but it gives you something to chew on.

CeBit is still ongoing, and today we turn to Blu-ray: Panasonic has demonstrated the first dual layer Blu-ray disc (link in German), capable of storing up to 50 GB on a single side of a Blu-ray disc. A standalone dual layer Blu-Ray writer is supposed to be released in Japan as early as August this year.

Last but not least, the DVD forum has chosen AAC as encoding format for the DVD-ROM part of DVD audio discs, in favor of MP3, Sony's ATRAC3 and Microsoft's WMA. The open source and patent free Ogg Vorbis was not considered as an option. So what is the DVD-ROM part of DVD audio discs? Well, it's about making the music on a DVD-audio available in another, computer and hardware friendlier format. However, adding a 2nd version of the music is up to the individual studio, and could even raise licensing issues. You might recall an earlier story where musicians sued record studios for putting two versions of their music on a CD (once the regular audio CD track, and then a WMV version as well), while only paying royalties for one copy.

More news from CeBIT: We already know about the release date of the next two generations of DVD burners, now what about the media? Verbatim will start producing dual layer DVD+R discs this month, but the real mass production will only start in July. Verbatim expects to charge up to 2.5 times as much as for single layer discs. Ricoh also expects to start shipping dual layer discs in volume by July, as well as Ritek. The 16x DVD+r specs will only be revealed in July, so the first discs won't be out until September, and companies like Ricoh and Ritek expect mass availability by the end of the year.

heise online has interviewed DivX creator Gej at CeBit. He mentioned that DivX5.2 should be released in June, and have an improved psy model, support custom quant matrices and multiple b-frames. The next major release of DivX, codenamed "Q", won't be out until 2005.

AutoGKnot 1.07 fixes problems with secondary audio streams and contains another attempt to fix HyperThreading issues.

QuEnc is an AVS (AviSynth script) to MPEG1/2 encoder based on ffmpeg. Since it's based on the LGPL ffmpeg library it's obviously free, and both faster and better looking that bbMPEG.

Now they've done it. Will we soon have to worry that our store bough DVDs cannot be played on our PCs and many standalones? Previous experience with audio CD copy protection seems to suggest so. Sony has announced a copy protection for DVD videos called ArccOS. So far there seem to be no discs using that mechanism yet, and neither is any data available as to how the mechanism is supposed to work, but if it's as screwed up as audio CD copy protection, here's a question to Sony, from a guy who owns more than 400 store bought DVDs: How am I supposed to get my daily dose of movies if I can no longer play the screwed up discs I can buy in a store? In absence of any legit way to download movies, what choice is there but far eastern pirate DVDs or illegitimate downloads from the Internet? And a message to their legal folks: With DMCA like laws being proliferated all over the world, what point is there in adding another layer of protection, that most likely is going to be broken just as audio CD copy protection mechanisms can still be circumvented. There are already two layers of legal protection, there's CSS, Macrovision and region codes for technical protection. Maybe it's time to start worrying about the cause of piracy, and do something against the root cause.

With CeBIT started, there's plenty of DVD related news these days, but mostly surrounding burners. Since work didn't permit me to go there, I have to rely on other sites to bring you the goods. CDRInfo has had a look around at the BenQ and Philips booths. For short, both had dual layer DVD+R recorders in store (to be released next month), along with 16 DVD+R due to be released in June, and BenQ continues the tradition with paid firmware upgrades to add DVD-R/W functionality. LiteOn and Sony will have the same schedule for their upcoming drives.

Pioneer is obviously showing their dual layer DVD-R burner (burning at 2x now), which won't be out until the end of the year. In the meantime, the A08, due in July, will have the same features as the drives form the abovementioned manufacturers with the exception of 16x DVD-R burning. While 16x DVD+R discs will already be hard to get, I'd expect 16x DVD-R discs to be even more rare. The A09, which will add DVD-R dual layer, might even be able to write the dual layer discs at 4x speed (the DVD+RW camp plans the increase dual layer speed to 4x by the end of the year as well).

Speaking of the DVD+RW camp, they won't create any specs for 12x burning, instead going directly to 16x which will be the end of the line. The announced 12x DVD+R burners from Plextor and LG , due to be released in May will thus have to unofficially write faster on 8x discs, or use 16x discs once they become available.

The DVD successor formats are also moving ahead, with TDK being the first company to create BluRay discs that do not need a cartridge, and Ritek announcing to start producing HD DVD discs in the 2nd half of this year.

Ahead has released a new version of Nero (v6.3.1.6). The new release adds support for dual layer burning, new recorders and booktype change for several recorders.

Elby has released CloneDVD 2 for good now. The new release features increased picture quality and improvements in the compression setup / title selection. In addition, you get a DVD drive emulator called Virtual CloneDrive.

We might get more from the MP3 surround format than we want: It has not been confirmed yet, but Fraunhofer and Thomson are also working on DRM technology for the MP3 format. And it might just come as a free "upgrade" hidden inside the multichannel feature.

From the author of DVD2One comes yet another DVD tool: DVD+Audio creator is for you music fans out there and allows you to create music video DVDs (meaning the format is DVD video, it can be read by any DVD video player but the discs only contain audio) in both PCM and MP2 format. They even claim an improvement over the source CD, which is obviously to be taken with more than a grain of salt ;)

This is certainly going to re-spark the old DVD- Vs DVD+ discussion: 4x DVD-RWs will not be compatible with existing drives that support burning of DVD-RWs up to 2x speed (the latest 8x/4x DVD-R/W drives are not affected though). It could even be that DVD-R discs are also affected (8x DVD-Rs are yet to become available), which is part of an ongoing controversy between the DVD- and the DVD+ camp.

These days more and more standalone DVD players can handle MPEG-4 video and it looks like it won't be too long until recorders can handle MPEG-4 (recording obviously) as well. Danish manufacturer KISS has announced to release MPEG-1/2/4 recorders based on WIS Technologies' GO7000 encoder chip this summer. Speaking of KISS, the GPL issues surrounding their firmware still seem to be unresolved.

MP3 isn't dead yet: Fraunhofer Institute will present their MP3 surround technology at CeBIT. MP3 Surround supports 5.1 audio while being compatible with existing 2.0 MP3 decoders

Media Player Classic 6.4.8.0 supports MPEG-2 frame dropping when appropriate (to keep video and audio in synch), there's a new AAC decoder based on libfaad and there are a couple more minor tweaks and fixes.

Ahead, maker of the popular Nero Burning ROM burning (and much more) suite, has announced to add AVC/H.264 and parametric audio coding to their NeroDigital offering. For those who don't know, AVC is an addition to the MPEG-4 specs, designed to make MPEG-4 compression even more efficient. Parametric audio coding should allow for even lower AAC bitrates.

Last but not least, we finally know for sure where all those ridiculous copyright law proposals are coming from: directly from RIAA/MPAA. The latest attempt to ban P2P networks sponsored by a California State Attorney, has actually been co-written by the MPAA.

DVD Decrypter 3.2.1.0 can verify written ISO images, the supported media write speed is now written to the log when burning, CSS cracking has been improved along with ISO burning and a couple of bugs have been fixed.

Jdobb's newest creation (that's the author of IfoUpdate just in case you didn't know), has released a one click DVD transcoder called DVD ReBuilder, which can use both Rejig and CCE and does not require a separate DVD authoring package. It's currently in early beta stage, but the author is looking for a lot of feedback.

Despite reports of self destructing DVDs not being too successful, Disney is expanding the EZ-D trials in Florida and introduce them in Phoenix AZ, San Antonio TX and Denver CO in April and May. So far, both 7-Eleven and the pizza chain Papa John's International are carrying the trial discs.

Like it or not, Internet gives you the means to share your ideas and thoughts but you have to keep your integrity. No matter what you think of HardOCP's reviews their standfast position against Infinum Labs is worth a cheer. (more)

Auto GKnot 1.05 has XviD 1.0 support and will split a two audio-stream movie correctly.

Since the DVD Forum has taken a first step, although they can (and hopefully will) revoke this at the next meeting, towards making Microsoft's WMV9 mandatory for the HD DVD Video and Taiwan wants it in their own FVD-format, it is a good time now to read Microsoft's DRM-licence (Start with the FAQ).
4. License Acquisition To play a packaged media file, the consumer must first acquire a license key to unlock the file. The process of acquiring a license begins automatically when the consumer attempts to acquire the packaged media file, acquires a pre-delivered license, or plays the file for the first time. Windows Media Rights Manager either sends the consumer to a registration page where information is requested or payment is required, or "silently" retrieves a license from a clearing house.
"Silently"?
By releasing HDTV-trailers under this license they might want you getting used to the active client/server-connection to watch any video (btw, isn't a license for a trailer a bit contradictionary)

DVDShrink 3.1.7 can read and write ISO files and has an option to burn the ISO using DVD Decrypter.

Seeing that Intel, as well as the rest, are phasing out ATA you might want to take a look at Plextors PX-712SA, a SATA (Serial ATA) 12x DVD±R/RW.

As reported in November the FCC wants to force the Digital-recording manufacturers to incorporate the 'broadcast-flag' and therefore making it impossible to share a recording (What do I do if my DVD-recorder breaks? Throw away all my recordings?). Now a group, including EFF, is fighting to make the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia Circuit stop this since the consumers rights should not be revoked due to content format. Needless to say the MPAA opposes. (Wired)

And just when you thought the self-destructing DVDs were gone Disney starts to roll them out in Florida.

I'm sure that all you Europeans are aware that the 'DMCA on steroids' passed the European Parliament 2 days ago and today it is expected that the ministers will approve the "Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED)" giving member states two years to adopt the directive's provisions into national law.
Now we are all at the risk of, whilst browsing a site with a copyrighted background tune, becoming a Pirate and therefore according to BSA could become a drugdealer. ("Pirates often use relatively easy profits from piracy to fund other criminal activity such as arms trafficking and drug dealing.")

On the brighter side there is a new release of Media Player Classic (6.4.7.9) with a new MPEG splitter that includes support for cvd/SVCD subtitles (changelog).

FairUse 0.40 integrates XviD 1.0-RC3, has chapter support (OggMedia and Matroska containers only) and should be able to read a region-mismatched DVD in a non-regionfree drive, as well as a couple of bugfixes (changelog).

ExtremeMHz has reviewed the new Soyo SY-P4VAL. An interesting "Multimedia Ready Motherboard" aimed for builders of "Media Center PCs" that plays Audio CDs, VCDs, DVDs and has TV tuner support without the need of an OS.

Some users have reported that installing a new codec sometimes makes old (or new) ones disappear. Koepi wrote a very small and quick utility that should remove those empty videocodec-lines in the registry. Feedback from successful/unsuccessful runs is appreciated.

Zoom Player 4.0 beta2 contains a lot of fixes and smaller modifications, and the professional version can automatically extract and play any archive format.

I've finally gotten around to connecting the DVB and DivX/XviD/SVCD guides. The result is a DVB to DivX/XviD and DVB to SVCD guide. I have also taken the opportunity to add an updated ProjectX 0.81.6 version to the software archive.

Elby has released another sneak preview version of CloneDVD2: v 1.9.2.4 allows you to start and stop the sheep animation, the title/chapter configuration in split mode can be inverted and many bugs have been fixed.

Then I got an email from an ATI PR rep about MPEG encoding and decoding support in GFX card. It appears that ATIs Radeon 9800 contains hardware DCT and iDCT blocks that can be used for MPEG-2/4 encoding and decoding. Furthermore, the chip does also support WMV9 decoding. However, at this point I'm still waiting to get a link to an official documentation on those features as the ATI website only mentions MPEG-2 decoding acceleration in the Radeon 9800 specs.

321 studios had to face another defeat. This time, a New York judge ruled in favor of Paramount and Fox, making it the 2nd time that 321 is ordered to cease distribution of CSS decryption code in their products.

Speaking of 321, today is the last day of their "fight for fair use week" so if you want o join the action, it's now or never. Europeans will have until Monday, and to make it even easier for you, here's a list of all EU members of parliament so you know whom to write to.

NVIDIA's next generation chipsets are only a few weeks away, but one interesting feature has not been known until now: The NV4x generation cards are rumored to handle MPEG-2 transport streams, support HDTV output up to 1080p, accelerate MPEG-1/2/4 encoding and decoding and accelerate WMV9 decoding. I kinda had an ATI card as my next-gen card, especially since ATIs upcoming generation of GFX card has a native PCI Express interface, but if an NV40 card speeds up XviD encoding, then I might just stick to NVIDIA yet again.

Last but not least a virus warning: Beagle.K is an extremely devious email virus. It opens a backdoor on your computer which the virus writers can use to take control over your computer, propagates itself through a built-in mail engine and attempts to spread through P2P networks. But what makes it even worse is that it tries to make you believe it is sent from a legitimate source. Not only the sender address is faked, but the emails seems to come from legitimate webmasters. In fact, some people have even received emails that look like they come from this site. Rest assured that we do neither send out unsolicited email, nor virus infected email. And please, everybody tell your 10 most closest friends about how to keep their computers safe: regular security patches, a firewall and caution when dealing with emails (that's right, many people with virus scanners get infected because they are careless and virus writers are always a step ahead of virus scanner makers. If you do it the other way round and filter out emails manually before any virus could ever get active on your system, you'll be in fact much safer).

ImgTool Classic 0.91.2 fixes a possible buffer overflow when using long directory names, and supports automatic shutdown after burning (requires the latest DVD Decrypter version).

Philips looks like the first burner manufacturer to release a dual layer burner. Besides dual layer DVD+Rs, which can be burned at 2.4x, the drive writes DVD+R/W at 8x/4x. The drive, including Nero6, will retail for €169 in April. The drive is Philips' last single format burner, and even for this particular drive Philips will offer a DVD-R/W firmware upgrade in fall. In June, Philips will release the DVDRW1640K, which writes DVD+R at 16x, DVD-RW at 4x and dual layer DVD+Rs at 2.4x. It'll retail for €199 and will be the first drive from Philips to support DVD-R/W out of the box.

If you're into AAC, the results of rjamorim's 128kbit/s AAC listening tests might interest you. Apple's iTunes comes in first, followed by Nero. What is also very encouraging is that the open source AAC encoder, faac, is no longer so far behind.

VideoLAN is an MPEG video streaming project, allowing you to stream any kind of MPEG video over a LAN and play it on any platform. Yesterday, version 0.7.1 of the player part, known as VLC, has been released. Being capable to decode MPEG-2 stream, VLC makes for a good, and free, software DVD player. The latest version includes software DTS decoding, menu support and is the first software player to handle selectable SVCD subtitles.

Have you ever given a password protected login to a friend, colleague or family member? Then drag your ass down to the next police station and have yourself arrested because you're a dirty pirate. According to a New York judge, a login/password scheme is a technical measure to prevent access to a copyrighted work. And telling somebody your password is considered an act of circumvention and thus in violation of the DMCA. Where will this nonsense end?

Last but not least, 321 studios is calling has launched a "fight for fair use week", destined to involve the public in their fight for fair use and against an overly strict interpretation of the DMCA. Now as you might well know, I'm no particular fan of this company for reasons that have been stated many times, so I'm a bit conflicted about this, but it's a free world and I leave it up to you if you want to get involved or not.

Subtitle Workshop 2.51 has an undo/redo function and a new and improved system for adjusting subtitles in the worst case. It is also possible to write custom code scripts in pascal, subtitles can be joined, the Adobe Encore DVD format is supported as well as Ulead DVD Workshop 2.0 and many bugs have been fixed.

DVDtoOgm 1.41 features a chapter preview and contains many bugfixes.

RadLight 4 pre-beta 1 has a fullscreen option, shows elapsed and remaining playtime, volume, balance and the last directory are remembered and various playlist bugs have been fixed.

According to cdrinfo.com, Sony is also entering the codec business with a H.264 codec. Details are extremely sketchy though so we'll just have to wait for a publicly available version to make up our minds.

DVD Decrypter 3.2.0.0 locks the disc during ISO writing and erasing, media change notification can be disabled for any selected drive, dual layer DVD+R burning is theoretically supported (there's no burner out to verify if it really works), CSS detection and key finding has been improved and there's a lot more.

BSPlayer 1.0 RC1 b806 displays the full screen color properly, no longer overwrites the config file of previously installed versions, and fixes many bugs.

XviD 1.0 RC3, codenamed "ni hao" (I know the people translating my site to Chinese will know what that stands for), contains fixes for the bitrate calculator, status window, decoder and the installer now supports multilanguage.

TitleSet Blanker v0.9.5 can remove audio and subtitle maps of blanked titlesets and supports commandline arguments.

And a follow-up to yesterday's story about HD DVD-RW: Three compression formats have been tentatively been approved for HD DVD: MPEG-2, WMV9 and H.264.

Last month's news can be found here.