The Core Media Player 4.0 beta 5 supports the REAL alternative codec, has a new Matroska CDL plugin, Matroska and Multi monitor support has been improved, video and audio are loaded faster and there are many smaller bugfixes and additions.

I finally cracked and ordered an 8x burner today. I chose the LiteOn model after finding out that there is already a tool to make the LDW881 and many other LiteOn DVD writers and readers region free using a tool called LiteonUtil.

The DVD forum has voted in favor of adopting Toshiba's and NEC's AOD format as the next generation DVD format. AOD will offer a capacity of 15 - 20 GB per side (per layer, so far I'm not sure if dual layer discs are also included in the approved proposal) and are rather similar to today's DVD discs. So far, only the ROM version of the proposal was approved, leaving recordable and rewritable media up for a future vote. It looks however, as if the decision isn't entirely certain yet because the voting mechanism had to be changed to get to a decision, and with upcoming changes in membership status of the DVD forum, it could shift the balance in favor of the alternative blu ray.

Zoom Player 3.3 beta 1 has been released (changelog), along with Media Player Classicv 4.6.7.0, which fixes some bugs.

Just in case you've missed it, GordianKnotFast4U 0.48 can handle PAL sources with switched field order, checks input folders for validity, muxes audio during the 2nd pass encoding to save some space and fixes crashes with sources that had more than 16 audio or subtitle streams.

If you live in Ohio, better be careful when using a camera or other audio / video recording equipment, because it can get you behind bars you dirty pirate. And here's an interesting article on DRM technology and their meaning for society.

Bye bye old guides. I've finally mustered up the courage to get rid of documents that were dealing with legacy applications and certain legacy softwares have also been removed from the archive. But don't worry, I still have a copy just in case. But you can't remove old stuff and not proceed to new things, so I've spent yesterday updating all the Gordian Knot guides to correspond to the latest GKnot release. The GKnot DivX5 guide also covers DivX 5.1.1 so we're once again up-to-date in DivX5 encoding as well. In the audio section, I've created a guide on OagMachine, which covers AAC encoding using Nero's AAC encoder and Ogg Vorbis encoding.
Since GKnot and the DivX / XviD codecs now come in an XP skin which uses more than 256 colors, I've had to use PNG for certain screenshots. PNG has been a standard for a long time so I hope you have all a reasonably modern browser that supports it.

BTW, about the DRM on Apple's ITunes. It appears there are ways to get rid of the DRM after all (or in other words: use the music normally). Both MyTunes and QTFairUse can be used to dump the DRM protected AAC files to a regular AAC file. The latter program is even released under the GPL (and released by the same Jon Johansen who released DeCSS 4 years ago).

Something I've forgotten in the reports about the Chinese EVD format: the audio codec used is called EAC, makes use of SBR (used in MP3 Pro and HE AAC) and is developed by Coding technologies.

Beware of the hidden irony in the following: Media giant Disney has had quite a good year, particularly thanks to the movie business, where revenue was more than twice as high as last year. On the downside, their parks and hotels made 18% less than last year. Now you might be (and rightfully so) wondering why Disney is using its TV business to indoctrinate little children about the evils of P2P networks and to push for legislation where you can get put away for several years for merely touching a video camera in a movie theater. After all, they made lots of money with movies, both in the theater and in retail channels. Never having used any P2P network since Napster I might be mistaken, but I have a hard time imagining how Disneyland tickets can be shared on P2P networks (since P2P networks are evil and create huge losses for the media industry, and since Disney is making less money with their parks, how else can you explain the revenue setback?). Maybe they intend to make up for the losses by making parents buy Finding Nemo and Lion King ten times over because your kids wreck the DVDs within a weeks time and thanks to the industry sponsored laws you cannot create a backup?

As reported earlier, Apple is loosing money with their DRM laden online music offering. Yet, other companies like Dell and Microsoft are eager to enter the same market. The founder of MP3.com has an interesting take on this phenomenon, and some radical ideas how P2P networks could be used to the industry's advantage. Other ideas have been discussed in the forum recently.
And this one goes upstream: the Informa Media Group, predicts that the music industry will be saved by piracy crackdown, not online music distribution. With many studies painting a quite different picture, it could be interesting to look for any ties between the Informa group and the RIAA...

Ogg Vorbis 1.0.1 has been released. The changes aren't groundbreaking, mostly small bugfixes and improved handling of quiet signals in low bitrate modes.

Would you look at that? It appears that the MPAA is considering to use the Internet as distribution mechanism for new movies starting in 2005. If secure enough, movies could be released online before they are available in the traditional retail and rental channels. Obviously, the MPAA will want ironclad DRM to go with the menu, but Mr. Valenti should not forget to analyze the demands of potential buyers (e.g. you have three PCs in your household and several A/V systems capable of MPEG-x content and you'll want to use them all, not be restricted to one, to watch the movies you've paid good money for).

Last but not least, you might recall me reporting about a DivX capable DVD player I bought a while back. You might also recall that I was not too pleased that my player, and every other on the market, would not support MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP), and that DivXNetwork's certifications did not cover the ASP profile, thus encouraging manufacturers to release players capable of such content. The explanation was that players that would support such content would simply be too expensive, and would thus only see the market in a few years. Well, I'm happy to report that it only took half a year, and that the first player will be less expensive than what I paid for my MPEG-4 simple profile player (which also has some limits in the DivX3 area). German manufacturer elta has finally released the details about their upcoming player, the elta 8883 MP4: The slimline player handles both DVD video and audio, and is the first hardware player to fully support DivX PRO, GMC, B-frames, QPel, but also postprocessing, data partition and error resynch markers (you might see those features in an upcoming MPEG-4 codec;). IT also has a progressive scan output and according to the datasheet I have, it can also handle WMA audio (though that remains to be confirmed.. unfortunately nobody has gotten back to me on that issue). I'm still trying to get some more information about this player, like support for alternative containers (OGM support was planned for the predecessor player), subtitles (once again the predecessor was supposed to eventually support those) and whether GMC support applies to XviD as well (the DivX GMC implementation doesn't go as far as the MPEG-4 specs). Prices are still to be determined, but the player should be released within a months time, and has already been spotted on ebay. I must say that I'm pretty excited about this player.. it is perhaps the first that could live up to my expectations to an MPEG-4 capable standalone player (but I have to test the device to make sure).

DivX5.1.1 has been released. It supports generic MP4 fourcc codes, the encoder has been sped up considerably and quality has been improved in the fastest mode, codec internal deinterlacing is also available in the standard version of the codec and bottom field first encoding has been added. You can find the full changelog here.

With Computex currently under way, the next wave of DVD recorder announcements is coming our way: Cyberdrive's DX082D is DVD+R/W burner, capable of recording DVD+R at 8x and DVD+RW at 4x and CD-R/W at 32x/24x.
MSI's DR8-A is an 8x dual format burner, offering 8x/4x DVD+R/W and 4x/2x DVD-R/W recording and 40x/24x CD-R/W recording.
NEC is gearing up to release their 8x DVD burner next month. Initially, most devices target OEMs (PC makers like Dell and HP) and appear to be DVD+R/W only, but there will be a dual format version as well. The article talks about being the industry's first 8x recordable drive, so I presume they refer to a dual format 8x burner (Pioneer's offering is only announced for January, and that date depends on the DVD forum's approval of the 8x/4x DVD-R/W standard.. maybe NEC is simply skipping that step).

Last but not least, EE Times and Reuters have some more information on the EVD format, specifically about the cost of players and licensing fees. It appears while licensing fees are only $2 as compared to $9 for DVD (and there are no licensing fees for discs), players will initially be more than twice as expensive as existing DVD players.

As announced yesterday, the new 3ivx D4 4.5 MPEG-4 encoder has indeed been released. It is not only an encoder supporting MPEG-4 advanced simple profile features like QPel and adaptive quantization (but no GMC and B-frames), it is an entire MPEG-4 suite, with a DirectShow based AAC encoder, an DirectShow MP4 muliplexer and all that's need to play back AAC audio, MPEG-4 video and MP4 video streams.
DVDIdentifier 3.2 reports a drive's writing speed capabilities, has a new helpfile and fixes two bugs.
The first beta version of GordianKnotItFast4U has been released. v0.4 comes with an instruction manual, an installer, fixes some bugs and includes better detection for hybrid video sources.

Last but not least, On2's VP5 and VP6 are going to be recommended video compression mechanisms for the upcoming Chinese competitor to DVD, the EVD. The EVD working group has submitted the final standard today, and the format will be promoted in place of DVD in the coming golden sales season (whatever that may be). Now you, as I, might be wondering how the heck different codecs can be allowed, and why the On2 press release mentions VPx is an option for "future versions of the EVD in the People's Republic of China". I guess only somebody who has seen the standard can answer what EVD really is.

Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits is offering an evaluation version of their MPEG-4 player and encoding software. The encoder is limited to the simple profile (so no B-frames, GMC and QPel) but also handles AAC encoding.
For more codecs you might turn to the 3ivx page later today as they have announced the latest release of their codec (which is quite an improvement over the old one, we're talking about certain MPEG-4 ASP features, two pass encoding, AR flags and a lot of MP4 integration) for today.
And Ahead has announced a December release date for Nero Digital and released a datasheet of the upcoming Nero Recode which is going to integrate the Nero Digital codec.

While in the US, manufacturers of commercial DVD backup programs and the MPAA are still duking it out in court, German software manufacturers seem to be more law abiding, scared or both as all available German programs have been sold without the CSS scrambling part since the enactment of the German DMCA. However, now one manufacturer is going the reverse way and has announced to release a patch to re-enable CSS decryption in the near future (link in German).

Do you recall the report about the possibility of dual layer DVD+R recording on existing 8x DVD+R burners? A Philips representative has contacted cdfreaks.com and given them more info on the subject. Bottom line is that at the moment they cannot say whether there really is a reliable upgrade path or if dual layer will require new hardware.
Staying with burners for a moment, TEAC, who was selling a rebranded Pioneer single format 4x burner now seems to be joining the DVD+ camp. Their DV-W58E unit, already available as part of certain Dell computers is an 8x DVD+R burner, writing DVD+RW at 4x and CD-R/W at 32x/16.

I really need to see a copy of the ART Act as online journals are reporting quite different things about the act. Stories vary from up to 5 years in prison for merely touching your camcorder the wrong way, to 3 years in prison if you have one prerelease movie in your P2P shared folders. Depending what is really the case, can you imagine what is going to happen by the time the law had passed and we're having mobile phones with built-in video cameras. With an SD card slot you could easily record an entire movie, so that would probably mean that taking a mobile phone to a movie theater gets you behind bars...

We seem to have another format battle at our hands in the DVD area. What was already the case prior to the DVD standard is happening again, with proponents of the DVD forum fighting over Blue Ray vs. AOD discs for the next-gen DVD format. The HD-DVD spec also includes more efficient codecs like WMV9 and H.264. Next week we should know how it all turns out as the DVD forum is meeting to discuss just those issues.

The latest version of Media Player Classic, v6.4.6.8 does not come with a changelog so I have no idea what changed. I presume it comes with the latest VSFilter (subtitle display) and Matroska splitter which have both been updated at the same date, so changed could be in the handling of VobSub files in Matroska files.

This Week in Consumer Electronics has a story on dual layer DVD+R. It mentions the first half of 2004 as launch date, as well as launch partners and what kind of drives they will start out with. The specs should be finalized next month, and there is the possibility that some existing 8x DVD+R drives might be upgraded to handle dual layer DVD+R (though personally I wouldn't bet any money on that). Dual layer DVD+RW is also in the works but details are sketchy at this point.

And according to Heise online (somebody tell them that linking to sources is not forbidden), the movie industry's paws in the US senate are pushing for yet another piece of outrageous legislation: Under the Artists Rights and Theft Prevention (ART) Act, offering an unreleased CD or movie before the official launch date is supposed to be a felony, punishable up until 3 years of prison and 250'000$ of damages, regardless if any copyright were violated. Regardless of copyright violation? Hmm. And there I was thinking that it was all about copyright infringement. I'm wondering though, is a crappy camera recording really cheating the movie industry out of so much money to warrant 3 years behind bars and a quarter million in damages?

VirtualDub 1.5.9 has the autodetect additional segments by filename option selected by default, trackbar ticks are removed when using a long timeline and there's an option to disable the use of DirectX in the preferences. As usual, a few bugs have also been taken care of.

In the DVD burner area, Pioneer has now officially announced the A07 burner. As previously reported, the dual format burner will burn both DVD-R and DVD+R at 8x, and the DVD±RW discs at 4x, making it the first DVD burner to support the increased burning speed for minus media. The press release also mentions where the 8x DVD-R specs are... they have still not been released and the press release mentions that the release date of January depends on the DVD forum's final approval of 8x DVD-R and 4x DVD-RW discs).
Meanwhile, the DVD plus proponents are ready to switch gear again. Philips has just announced that they can successfully burn DVD+R discs at 16x, but so far the technology is still only available in laboratories and there's no known release date for 16x burners so far, but it is to be expected that 12x and 16x burners will appear sometime in 2004.

BSPlayer 1.0 RC1 has been rewritten from scratch and should be more stable and extensible.
AviSynth 2.53 features some major stability improvements, many bugfixes and much improved DirectShow support. A full changelog can be found in the forum.

Memorex has announced their dual format 8x burner, the Memorex 8X Dual-X. It features the usual 8x/4x DVD+R/W and 4x/2x DVD-R/W writing along with 40x/24x CD-R/W recording, making it yet another drive that offers 8x writing only for the plus format (and the 8x DVD-R specs are still MIA).

AVI-Mux GUI 1.15.2 can read and write Matroska files and, read subtitle, script and language files using utf-8 encoding and fixes many bugs.
You might also want to check out the latest GordianKnotFast4U version, which features a more accurate compressibility test, features automatic IVTC/Interlacing detection, the video is now split automatically and LPCM audio tracks are supported.
And the other tool of the moment, Rejig is still under heavy development. v 0.4a does IFO parsing, rips streams and can convert straight from a DVD. It can also convert subtitles to .sup (required for IfoEdit DVD authoring) and correct AC3 delays. DIF4U integration is also in the works.

Last but not least a program for all the forum members using Internet Explorer: ieSpell is a free spell checker for Internet Explorer, so that you won't have to hide in shame over your broken English anymore ;)

Ahead has released a new version of Nero 6, and Nero Package 2, including a new Recode (version 0.9.7.0), but so far there is no changelog for the software. Anyway, use the One click forum to discuss this new release.
And the competition hasn't been idle either: elby has released CloneDVD 1.3.11.2 which contains some bugfixes and preliminary support for IFO files generated by Philips standalone DVD recorders.

Is DVD±R/W overtaking CD-R/W? In an interesting move, Fuji announced to raise prices on recordable CDs by 10-15%, effective January 2004. Since they're citing a shift in manufacturing focus I think this means that Fuji sees the DVD market as more profitable and and is thus reducing investments into the commodity product CD-RW.

And as a sidenote, now we know why online music distribution hasn't taken off yet. It appears that all that is left from a 99 cent ITunes song after deducting distribution cost, goes into an RIAA bankvault, in other words, you have to charge more than a buck per song to make some money. Needless so say that if license fees are that high, lower prices are almost impossible.

Sorry for the news blackout, but I was in bed with the flu and am still recovering.

VirtualDub 1.5.8 disables DirectDraw support over remote connections (WTS, Windows Remote Desktop), the places bar on open and save dialogs has been reenabled, and there are a couple of bugfixes.
DivX 5.1.1 beta2 speeds up the slow and slowest mode by 5-10%, resize and psychovisual issues in the encoder have been fixed along with B-frame and deblocking issues in the decoder and the psychovisual mode is now disabled by default.

Then we have a couple of new DVD burners: The HP DVD400i is a single format burner that writes DVD+R/W at 8x/4x and CD-R/W at 24x/10x. The LiteOn LDW-881S is a dual format burner, burning at the usual 8x/4x for DVD+R/W, 4x/2x for DVD-RW and 40x/24x for CD-RW. On the media side, Verbatim is launching the first 8x DVD+R discs later this month and Fuji is readying a dye (that's the colored stuff you'll see on the recordable side of a recordable medium) that allows up to 16x writing on DVDs (German article).

The broadcast flag to prevent digital copying of digital TV, has been passed unanimously by the FCC. Touted by MPAA chieftain Valenti as "big victory for consumers and preservation of high value of over-the-air free broadcasting", one can only suspect the worst (which essentially is true.. for instance the flag allows to copy protect content which is no longer protected by copyright law, and just imagine how useful such provisions can be when it comes to abolish the time shift right of the viewer - AKA your right to record content and watch it at some later point, this right was established by the Supreme Court in the Universal vs. Sony case two decades ago).
Last but not least some rather disturbing CPU news: It appears as if AMD's 64bit processor has a feature, which when supported by the CPU can be used to disallow the execution of unauthorized code. Obviously, this is being advertised as making your PC more secure, but on the downside you're loosing control and loss of control always comes down to DRM measures.

DVD Identifier 3.1 now also reports the recording speed of DVD-R/W media, the entire disc media code block can be extracted, Windows XP themes are supported and there are a couple of bugfixes and smaller improvements.
RadLight Filter Manager is a tool to change the merit of DirectShow filter and it can also be used to list all registered codecs and to register or unregister codecs.

Last weekend, the UK DMCA went into effect. Considered to be the toughest implementation of the Euro DMCA yet, the law has the usual consumer hostile provisions that we've known since the US DMCA. Or in short: a law from the entertainment industry for the entertainment industry.

Last but not least, the DVD+RW alliance is hoping to release the first dual layer DVD+R burners (the format has since been dubbed DVD+R DL - DL as in dual layer) by April next year. Prices are yet unknown but the initial recording speed will be 2.4x, as fast (or slow) as the first generation of DVD+R burners (which was the 2nd generation of the plus technology, right now we're entering the 4th generation with 8x DVD+R burners).

Last month's news can be found here.