Still with DreamWeaver 3.0 but I have some great news: The Intel speed version of FlaskMpeg has been released. The same applies for the sourcecde. Remember, you've read it here first. And the author of AVIRevolution released a special mpeg2avi version (based on PX3's work) that allows you to encode two AVIs at the same time as in full creation in ProjectDivX. Remember that AVIRevolution works best when you use two low-motion files.

AVIRevolution 2.0c, FlaskMpeg0.594h2pre2 and MakeFilm TNG 1.2 are out. Unfortunately except for the new FlaskMpeg I don't know what has changed since the old release. Maybe, the authors could contact me directly when a new version is out.. The new Flask pre adds audio normalizing but it's still a manual task to find the loudest part of the movie. How about adding normalizing based on normalize 0.22 as PX3 did to his AC3 decoder? Talking of PX3 he's currently really busy so don't expect a new mpeg2avi release soon.

A few words about MM4 once again. Since Nicky Page was so nice to add a link to my ProjectDivX guide I'd like to extend the same courtesy to him. Check out his excellent MakeFilm guide. Saves me the time to do something like it on my own. There is currently a lot of talk about which of the 4 tools to make MM4 is best. Clearly a detailed test would be in order but I simply don't have enough time or computing power available to do it. It would require dozens of encodes of the same movie and the procedure would have to be repeated for many movies to have really good results If somebody feels like staying in the office for a weekend and has the possibility to use all the PCs there are contact me and we can share our thoughts about how a good test would have to be performed. I've checked out Nicky's guide and it appears to me as if MakeFilm was mostly made for 1 CD rips. As you may know 1 CD is simply not enough for me. A DVD takes as much space as it takes to look good.. that's my take on it. Nevertheless there are people who are more interested in size than looks but in that case my first suggestion would be to use a Macrovision buster and copy the movie to VHS. But that's just my view. It may be possible that MakeFilm is really better for 1 CD rips but that has to be tested extensively first and if you intend to do that please make your results verifiable, that is include the same amount of info about your tests as I did when I discussed the iDCT in FlaskMpeg, without visual proof and information that allows one to reproduce results comparisons are pretty worthless. Personally I think that Project DivX (and AVIRevolution) are better for low-motion&low-motion joining and 2 CD rips, but that's just a hunch based on the talk in the various forums and I have no hard data to back this assumption up. And Joern: Don't stop coding, the features you have planned for the next release sound very interesting and may not only be used for for MM4 encodes but for every encoder. A well-working scene detection, multipass MPEG-4 encoding together with variable bitrate settings at a 2nd pass and a well-working IVTC are probably the things most needed for DVD ripping right now but the latter may already have been found, but you'll have to wait a few days till I have some good results on that one.

And after all this talk I'm going to try to upgrade to Dreamweaver 4.0. I hope it won't do the same to my pages as when I switched from Frontpage 2000 to Dreamweaver 3.0. And last but not least: PowerDVD 3.0 is the only software DVD player that plays my "Man with the golden gun" disc, even tough it has a few seconds scrambled but it's able to recover and use the proper key at the beginning of the next VOB.

New AVIUtl English patch and m4c English plugin are out. The only new things are a couple of translation fixes so if you're happy with the current versions don't feel compelled to download. The author of AVIUtl has assured me that the PAL resolution issue will be fixed in the next release but I'm still waiting for confirmation about a fix of the 262144 frame limit.

I've added wavemp3 1.2, a small tool which allows you to add WAV RIFF headers to mp3 files to load them directly into VirtualDub so you can use a faster encoder than the Fraunhofer one like Lame. I've also added a bunch of AVIUtl filter plugins. Just copy the .auf files into the AVIUtl folder. All these filters haven't been translated but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how they work. The most interesting is probably the c_resize filter which allows for bicubic resizing instead of the default bilinear one. That one also comes with the sourcecode so you can recompile it and replace the menus with English ones. Also included in the package is a bbMPEG output plugin so you can encode to MPEG1/2 directly out of AVIUtl without VFAPI.

FlaskMpeg 0.594h2pre1 introduces the following: AC3 decoding based on ac3dec, AC3 Player which allows you to set the same gain options as in ac3dec in order to spare you from normalizing afterwards, includes the same subtitle fixes as FlaskMpeg subtitlefix, the 300'000 default encoding frames have been increased to 3 million to prevent early aborts when encoding long movies, and the option to start encoding at a specified LBA offset. And last but not least FlaskMpeg now remembers the end playing position of the included player.

DVD Decrypter 2.0 adds the following goodies: M2V stream information, fixes on the intelligent keysearch algorithm, keysearch by VOB / Cell ID, rewritten multiangle processing, a couple of bugfixes and yet another keyearch option. It now passes my ripper test by the way but I haven't updated the test yet.

A few words about that Intel special Flask version mentioned on Tom's hardware guide: I also got contacted by Intel and given a so-called optimized version but it seems it's not the same as the one Tom got since the version I have didn't perform well (only a couple of % faster whereas FlaskMpeg PX3 was much faster) and so I did not publish any results yet but was waiting for feedback from Intel (and I'm still waiting) after I sent them my preliminary test results.

I've also added a lot of trivia and blabla to the about part of this page... if you're interested in my favorite encoding method, why I chose that particular name, etc. then you can check it out.

A new MPEG-4 encoder has emerged, which allows for multipass MPEG-4 encoding as well as keyframe insertion on keyframes - and manual keyframe settings are possible as well. Read all about the Lotus m4c encoder exclusively on this site.

Along with the m4c guide goes AVIUtl 0.96f with English resource patch - comes packed with the English m4c as well - m4c_19, the command line based version of m4c including sourcecode, the latest English and Japanese m4c plugins for AVIUtl. Last but not least I've also added DVD Genie 3.81 which adds support for WinDVD 2.3 and RCE 3 discs. AVIRevolution 2.0 is an alternative to Project DivX which I have yet to test - you know how long these things take?

I've finally fixed the slight bugs in the old news section and removed some duplicate news items that were introduced when I converted the site to the new format. I'm wondering how long it takes until we see the software I've just added on all the other places that deal with DVD ripping ;)

Many of you are probably trying out the new PS2 that was launched today in Europe. Personally.. I don't like consoles at all. And a test in my favorite PC magazine showed that my mediocre PC still smokes every console when it comes to good looking 3d graphics. And I've been able to play DVDs for a while now.

For the rest of you I have an interesting piece: 2 days ago Tom's hardware guide revised their P4 evaluation when they encoded using the IEEE-1180 reference iDCT algorithm. Now the question has arisen whether or not that algorithm is actually better. On the page they claim that encoding Matrix at 1.5mbit/s using that algorithm would result in DVD-like quality. As you know, when it comes to quality I tolerate no compromise so I started testing.

The results are surprising.

Sorry about the down links. Looks like infernix couldn't handle 3+GB traffic a day. And let me just say that nobody is more surprised of the amount of data than myself..

In any case it should be fixed now and I've re-added vstrip0.6c_css since the 0.6d version doesn't work with the GUI (at least the IFO parsing part does not).

vStrip 0.6e_css fixes a nasty bug of the d release which had a pretty useless IFO parsing since it always crashed to due a malloc error.

In other news I've heard that there should soon be a special PIII/P4 version of FlaskMpeg that should be significantly faster on Intel CPUs than the normal FlaskMpeg version. Stay tuned.

I've updated the miniDVD guide with a simpler cutting method and added the software needed for it. I've also updated the DVD Ripper comparison to be up-to-date again.

A few words about some VobDec GUI problem: When the GUI crashes when you press go and you get this status bar that has a lot of /// over it then you should select another destination path. In beta testing a realized that when you use a pathname that contains special characters like a space, -, comma, dot, etc. that it would fail. The problem is being fixed for the next release.

I've also added a DVD2AVI forum to the forums and I've updated the FlaskMpeg packages with some info about what has changed in the cases where there wasn't already a readme file. And you can now also get a file that contains every flask readme for every FlaskMpeg version so you can see which version to get.

As you can see I've completely changed the design. I hope you like it and I'd like to thank Syncaio who worked this out. If you have an idea how to better structure the guides and download page don't hesitate to contact me since I deem those two to still be somewhat confusing. And if you know a good tool to resize an image without having lots of aliasing effects which virtually destroy the image please tell me..

Check out the latest tool by Inwards: pulldown.exe. It allows you to insert rff/tff flags into a 23.976fps MPEG2 stream. Now you no longer have to encode at 29.97fps in CCE. This tool can possibly also be used for other encoders if they support frame based encoding at 23.976fps. Note that LSX only supports field based encoding if I'm not mistaken.

The use is really simple: Encode your movie at 23.976fps, open a command prompt and type: pulldown inputfile.m2v. The program will then create a file called pulldown.m2v with the correct rff/tff flags. You can then use that file to multiplex with bbMPEG.

DVD2AVI 11/18 and its VFP plugin are out. It fixes a bug in I-Frame backward and adds support for field sequence decoding.

I've updated the guide on MM4 to include the latest in DivX encoding: Using profiles somebody else has created will spare you from finding the ideal settings for your MM4 movie. 

VobSub 1.21 is out. It supports drag&drop positioning, resizing with bilinear filtering, semi transparent subs, and some changes in the dialogs. 

I've also added a number of DivX autorun utilities, and a guide to them. Furthermore the new SVCD Rippack is out, and the VCD / SVCD profiles for bbMPEG & TMPG are now also available separately. FlaskMpeg Multipass is not in the pack since it does not support going backwards.. it'll just start serving again when the last frame has been decoded. Last but not least I've made some small updates to the subtitle guides and I've added a few subtitle programs. Now you should be able to find every subtitle tool you might need on this site. I hope that my software archive is much more complete now that I've added these things along with autorun utilities.

VobSub 1.20 and Project DivX 1.5 final are out. Project DivX has a nice new feature: You can save and export encoding settings. This allows sharing of encoding settings... and makes your life a lot easier. Of course.. it's suggested that you use VFAPI AVIs for that operation because that way you can ensure that you have the same source. 

DVD Decrypter 1.7 is out. Among the highlights: integrated DVD authentication, AC3 extracting now Soft Encode compatible, a once found decryption key will be remembered for the whole session, tons of bugfixes, options moved to a special settings dialog, etc.

New FlaskMpeg and mpeg2avi packs have been released containing the latest software. Actually I even wanted to include the FlaskMpeg Tsunami version but that one seems to have another bug in the framerate detection.. it always detected my NTSC sources as 25fps. 

After 20 betas mpeg2avi/ac3dec/vstrip GUI 0.20 is finally out. It includes support for all the latest programs and many small changes. 

A new SVCD pack should come before the end of the week as well. 

Maybe I was a bit overenthusiastic in releasing new rippacks as Danni Din has just updates his GUI to v 0.20b. VirtualDub's joblist has been restored to c:\. But So far I haven't had any problem with the GUI that's in the rippack (I used it all day..).

I've found a whole bunch of new software you might find useful: AVI-Output Plugin 0.591, its sources, CompressAvi 1.04b9, a small FourCC changer, FlaskMpeg PX3 Tsunami 0.2, FlaskMpeg multipass, AVIMux 0.2 (to make multilanguage AVIs which can be played with the BSPPlayer) and SMR codecs. The new Flask versions add up to an already impressive list of FlaskMpeg derivations. I really hope that Flasky can merge all the new features in the next release before the situation gets even worse. 

If you take a look at the guides page you'll see that almost every guide has been updated within the last 48 hours. I hope I've updated all the guides to the new navigation format and I also hope that now the navigation will be a bit easier. It's really hard to have so many guides and make it all accessible in an easy way. If I just put all the info that concerns a certain method in one guide, I'll have a huge lot of duplicates all over the place and updating a certain thing would require me to update dozens of different pages, which it close to impossible. I still remember the early DivX days where I only had 3 guides but still.. whenever a new rippack was released I had to update all the guides with the same new info.. and sometimes I forgot to copy&past a certain part. Now this way of updating it simply not possible anymore... I have about 100 html pages alone and more than 300 different images. 

In any case I also have something new in terms of guides: Subtitles when using DVD2AVI. Simply follow the DVD2AVI thread and you'll get there. It's not really anything new.. just combining well-known techniques. 

The rippacks will be updated (along with some final changes to the guides) when the next version of DVDDecrypter and mpeg2avi GUI are out.

I've been ripping and working for this page more in the last 24 hours than in the 7 days before that and here's some of the results: MM4 guide is completely done and the results are truly amazing. MM4 stands for Mixed MPEG4 and allows you to easily create DivX files based on movies encoded at different bitrates, or using the two flavors of the DivX codec. It's also possible to only run one encoding session, and have a fully automated selection of the high and low motion file. Or in other words: Make your movies look better and save a lot of space while doing so. 

I've also added ProjectDivx 1.05beta on which the MM4 guide is based. Furthermore the latest release of AVIMux allows you to add more than one additional audio track. 

If you browse around you might notice many more changes. Currently the whole site is a big construction yard. There will be more and updated guides soon, along with rippacks. The latter is just depending on the release of 2 new softwares. I'll try to make this site even more user friendly and get rid of all these 10 choices links collections. You might see the >> followed by a link a couple of times. These will usually refer to a more detailed description of the procedure mentioned in the guide and if you don't need additional info you can hop over it.

I'm fully back :) I've just used the time off to work on resolutions and aspect ratios again. I've created dozens of mpeg2avi profiles and I've made considerable changes to the bitrate&resolution guide. More to come..

I've also forgotten to upload ProjectDivX 1.04 but here it is now.

Quite a long time without any updates have passed, but you didn't miss anything important. I've received some reports on undecryptable VOBs but not enough info to make a conclusion. Therefore I created another guide which is specifically designed to help you in case of ripping problems. It's a precise step-by-step explanation of almost everything you can do if you can't decrypt a movie / file.

I have some new software for you: BSPPlayer 0.81 and DivXFix 1.03.

I hear there are DVDs where the first VOB can't be decrypted because it's larger, and also that there are some DVDs where the 5th VOB can't be decrypted by any tool out there. If you know such a disc please let me know - I need name of movie, studio/distributor, region and country where it's being sold. 

Wimpy has already provided me with some very interesting information concerning that problem: Stigmata, R2 has the problem that vts_01_4.vob can't be decrypted, both DVD Decrypter and VobDec GUI abort during that file. He has then tested on another PC where it worked. Interestingly the PC where it worked had a DVD drive without firmware patch, whereas the PC where it failed had patched firmware. When he exchanged the hacked firmware with the original firmware everything worked out. It may well be that some hacked firmwares have a slight but which makes ripping of some titles impossible. 

DVD2AVI 11/2 fixes a bug in 44.1KHz headers and the name of Dynamic Normalization has been changed to DRC: Dynamic Range Compression.

I have added 2 new unofficial versions of FlaskMpeg: FlaskMpeg subtitle-fix fixes some out of order subtitle pixel values, but the IFO parsing fix (to display the missing subtitles or wrong language) has yet to be done. FlaskMpeg 0.594h1 adds CSS support (you have to supply a key, no keysearch is being done, mostly for legal reasons), the output pad offers some new features (and if I'm not completely mistaken the aspect ratio is finally being kept, unlike in the official FlaskMpeg where you have to compensate for an incorrect resize.. as described in the bitrate & resolution guide), the processing dialog has changed and an installer has been added. The package comes with both the original and the modified sourcecode, which I'm sure will be highly useful for Flasky when he starts working on FlaskMpeg again. 
I also hope you like the changes I made to the software archive. It should now contain links to pretty much any software there's is available for download. 

DVD2AVI 11/1 adds dynamic normalization for people who are not happy with maximum normalization.