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Please note that some, if not many of the links on this page may be broken. This is just an archived copy of the news for this month. We cannot guarantee that the links will work because we remove old versions as we update. For the newest software releases please always refer to the main news and software pages. If you really need a file then please contact us and we'll do our best to help.

Date News
4/30 321 Studios, the guys who are currently fighting the MPAA in court over fair use rights, maker of the infamous DVD Copy Plus (AKA the package of freeware software that isn't quite free because it comes with a guide) and DVDXCopy (they hired away Derrow thus effectively stopping IfoEdit development) have released another one click tool: DVDXCopy Xpress. It looks like another compressed domain transcoder, but it only does main movies while being more expensive than the competition.
4/28 The PluginPac Frameserver can be used to frameserve out of the major NLE video editing tools (Vegas, Premiere and MediaStudio Pro) into any application. It supports both video and audio and is available free of charge. Please discuss this software in the forum. Pegasys Inc., the company distributing the commercial version of TMPGEnc, has released a new tool called TMPGEnc DVD Author. As the name says, it's a DVD authoring tool, mainly designed for beginners, and it's tailored to support any kind of TMPG output. One interesting feature is that you can process already existing DVD video files to cut out certain scenes. For this tool there's also an forum thread where you can discuss the program. Xmpeg 5.0 beta 2 contains optimizations for modern processors (like Hyperthreading) and fixes a lot of bugs. IfoUpdate 0.71 fixes angle handling in adjusted cell mode. Last but not least, Hypercube Transcoder 3 is an MPEG2 multichannel encoder supporting AC3 and DTS input. It can also be used to generate 6 RAW PCM files thus enabling DTS transcoding to any format. For more info visit the forum.
4/27 Another bit for the your rights online section: An LA judge ruled that Grokster and StreamCast p2p services cannot be held accountable for illegal file sharing by its users. The court based its decision on the fact that those services are hard to control because they are decentralized, and that the services also offer significant value for legal use. The plaintiffs (MPAA and RIAA) are expected to appeal to the decision. Read the full story at thereg or get the court ruling as PDF file.
4/26 Gordian Knot 0.28 has finally been released. It supports all DivX5 releases and XviD releases, uses VDubMod for encoding and muxing (except for DivX3 encoding), AviSynth 2.51 for faster frameserving, video window and save avs settings are persistent and more filters have been added. Gordian Knot is released in the form of two packs: the RipPack 0.28 includes GKnot and all the required applications for encoding. The CodecPack 1.1 includes all codecs for video encoding, and audio / video playback. The pack also contains the brand new DivX5.05 codec fix fixes encoding problems in DVD2AVI, AviUtl and other applications not using ICImageCompress (VirtualDub and derivates are not concerned by those problems). As usual, there's the standard and the pro edition.
4/25 In anticipation of the Gordian Knot 0.28 release (by the time I'm writing this it has reached release candidate status) I have updated all Gordian Knot guides and added a guide on XviD encoding using Gordian Knot.
4/24

ChopperXP 2.51 contains some bugfixes, has a resizeable window and saved VOB files start with a navigational pack.

And the case 321studios Vs MPAA is going to court next Friday.

4/23

DVD2One 1.1.3 has an improved layer break removal in full disc copy mode. There's also a DVD2One version for Mac OS X now, called DVD2OneX. As it's Windows counterpart it's not freeware.

On the hardware side, Intel finally released the 800MHz FSB P4s, lowered prices, while AMD released the Opteron Server CPU and also lowered CPU prices considerably. Many hardware manufacturers are readying products based on the new processors, including mainboards, chipsets and whole server solutions (the latter of course only for the Opteron).

4/22

Sony has released a new firmware for the DRU500A/X DVD burner. v2.0f improves audio CD playback. So far the patch has only been released on the Japanese Sony support pages, I simply extracted the changelog from a very bad automatic translation.

AccessTek (have you ever heard of that brand before?) has announced a new DVD burner, the DD0203. It supports both DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W at today's maximum speed (4x/2x for -R/W and 4x/2.4x for +R/W), 24x CD-R writing, 10 CD-RW writing and 12x/40x DVD/CD reading speed. As a bonus it supports the HD-BURN format allowing you to burn twice as much data on a regular CD-R as usual. It isn't that simple though, to read such discs you need a DVD-ROM or burner (CD-anything is a no go) which supports HD Burn (currently none except for the abovementioned burner) and to write it you also need a DVD burner supporting HD-BURN (once again, only one drive available yet). You can discuss this development in the forum.

4/21

ZoomPlayer 3.0 has been released. As previously mentioned, there are now two releases. The standard release, which is available for free from this very site, and the professional edition which includes DVD front-end playback capabilities and requires registration after an evaluation period. As usual a complete changelog can be found on the official homepage.

The extensive IVTC / deinterlacing basis document written by forum moderators has also been updated. It has 2 major new sections, one explaining the pros and cons of various deinterlacing filters and another one explaining the inner workings of DVD2AVI.

4/20 DoCCE4U 1.0.1.0 has a menu entry to delete logfiles, shows chapters that have been loaded, when there's a problem with CCE the program will attempt to restart the process and the log for multipass VBR information has been fixed.
4/19 If you're making OGMs containing XviD video this might interest you: r4r_enc continues where r4r finishes, it takes the DVD2AVI project and the audio file, encodes video to DivX (including forced subs if you like), then muxes and finally cuts the output to CD sized chunks. And new builds of ffdshow and ffvfw have been posted in the forum as well. Note that using that particular ffdshow build you'll also have to install ffvfw or the configuration dialogue of ffdshow won't work.
4/18

DVD2AVI 1.77.4 offers all features of 1.77.3 (except non working clip/resize and the additional IDCTs in 1.77.3 are not supported) while writing 1.76 compatible project files, so it can be used with the regular mpeg2dec.dll. ZoomPlayer 3.0 RC3 has also been released.

DivX 5.04 has some rate control improvements that should lead to more consistent quality, should no longer crash on K6-2 CPUs (does anybody still use those?), many CLI options have been resolved, synch problems when seeking have been eliminated, the MPEG-4 type indicator is correctly set according to the selected encoding parameters, the green first frame at high bitrates is gone, Nth Pass has been improved and should use less high quantizers (high quantizer = low quality) and the brightness and saturation sliders should work properly now. A full changelog can be found here. As usual there are two releases: the standard release supporting MPEG-4 simple profile and the Pro release supporting MPEG-4 advanced simple profile.

4/16

AC3Filter 0.68b allows for the deletion of presets and saving/loading of settings, has a system configuration property page, indicates output level overflows and supports time shifting to correct asynch audio. ScenChap 1.28 is a bugfix release and should eliminate an error message that could pop up when an internal chapter length checking routine would throw a fit. A new beta of AviSynth 2.51 has been posted which includes updates to conditional filtering. At the same address you can also find a build of ffvfw which allows you to open AviSynth scripts in virtually any application supporting AVI files. Gordian Knot 0.28 beta has been released. It comes as an installer including all the additional tools you need, and they also have a codec installer with all the codecs you might require ready.

Last but not least, here's a Pioneer document on DVD-R writing speeds. It looks like firmware updates to support new media will no longer be necessary with 4x DVD-Rs as the writing strategy for those discs is available on the disc, rather than having to be available in the drive's firmware.

4/15

Robot4Rip 0.4 fixes a bug when vStrip is used for ripping, full copy mode of the latest DVD Decrypter can be used as alternative to ISO mode and the French translation has been included.

ZDNet has a semi-interesting article entitled about commercial DVD -> DVD-R tools called "DVD copying: the good, the bad, the rip-offs". They warn you about a few tools not to get but fail to have a look at commercial transcoding programs like IC7, DVD2One or DVD95Copy and of course the free DVD Shrink. All those 4 programs are not rip-offs either (though you can debate on quality). And as a free competitor to DVDXCopy we'd have DVDToolbox.

4/14 DivX 5.04 beta4 is out. It fixes crashes on K6-2 CPUs, some cosmetic bugs have been eliminated and a lot of CLI problems have been solved. Then I have added SVCD2DVDMPG 1.1 to the download archive. It automates the procedure required to put SVCDs on DVD-Rs without re-encoding (okay, audio has to be re-encoded unless it's 48KHz). It's a .NET program so if you want to use it you'll have to download the 20+ MB .NET framework (you can also get it via Windowsupdate). Zoom Player 3.00 RC2 has also been released. If you're interesting in an advanced authoring tool that's also designer and budget friendly, DVDlab might interest you. The application is currently undergoing a public beta test and it has a feature that might interest people switching from SVCD to DVD±R: putting SVCDs on DVD±Rs without having to use patchers and other external tools. Last but not least, the latest GKnot alpha can now split files at predefined positions
4/13

DoCCE4U 1.0.0.9 beta allows you to set the field order of the output, chapter points are now stored in the registry, during the first pass no mpv is created which speeds up the process, logging capabilities have been added (post the logfile when you have problems) and some program version checks have been added, which will warn you if you use a CCE version different from 2.50 and AviSynth higher than 2.08 (those programs may currently not be used). DVDToolbox 0.13.0 allows substreams (audio and subtitles) to be chosen in the content picker.

I've written a DVD Shrink guide. It deals with full movie backups, main movie only backups and DVDs containing multiple episodes, so pretty much everything you can do using DVD Shrink. And while I was at it, I finally made use of my DVD2one key and wrote a guide for it, too. Last but not least I have gone over the DVD burning section and added instructions on how to use InstantCD/DVD to burn your DVD files.

4/12 ImgTool 0.90 build 4 makes the volume ID length warning optional. Robot4Rip 0.3 supports non AC3 soundtracks (activate it via edit - enable all audio tracks, be careful: you have to create your own audio profiles), a bug in the auto force-film detection has been fixed, VobSub now also works on Win9x/ME and there are some cosmetic improvements.
4/11

Owners of the TEAC DV-W50E rejoice: Your drive is a rebadged Pioneer 105 drive and here's the trick how to turn your drive into an original Pioneer drive and reap the benefits of the available firmwares for Pioneer drives.

And we have some more upcoming translations: Hungarian and Turkish. Please follow the appropriate link if this is something you could help out with. These projects have just been started and they can use a lot of volunteers.

4/10 DVD Shrink 1.03 has more compression levels, a more accurate filesize prediction, the not a system pack error has been fixed, the multiangle support has been removed from the reauthoring mode since it doesn't work well (will be back when fixed) and all buttons and button commands are stripped from the menus in reauthoring mode. DVD Decrypter 3.1.5.0 has better media detection, region patching code, DVD+R/W support, VOB ID splitting and CSS cracking. Furthermore it can now split by VOB ID in file mode, create MDS files for most image types, more image types are supported in writing mode and the volume label of an image to be burned can be changed, the maximum write speed of a disc has been added to the information mode in ISO mode and there are a lot more improvements. DVD2One 1.1.2 allows soundtrack selection for the main movie in full disc copy mode and region code, user prohibitions and the layer break bit are now removed from a full disc copy.
4/9

I have added DVD Shrink 1.02 to the software archive so you won't have to go hunting for mirrors anymore. The latest GKnot 0.28 alpha also has a very interesting feature: It now supports XviD.

On the hardware side we have some very exciting news as well. There's a Pioneer 105/A05 firmware that allows to read CSS encrypted DVDs at more than 2x and this finally proves what I've long suspected: Some DVD drives are forced to only read CSS encrypted DVDs at low speed. If this is to prevent stressing the drive and to keep noise levels down during DVD playback, or just to make your life harder when trying to rip DVD is still to be determined though.

4/8

DVD Shrink is yet another "make your DVD fit a DVD-R" tool, but with a devious twist: It's fast, it's well featured and it's free! I have only had a quick look so far but from what I've seen it's not surprising that the download at the official site is completely clogged. You will find alternative download locations in the forum where you can also find an ongoing discussion on the program.

Then we also have a new mirror: Simplified Chinese. If you're wondering about the domain name (and the one for Traditional Chinese as well) let me explain: GB and Big5 are two commonly used character sets for Simplified and Traditional Chinese respectively.

4/7 ZoomPlayer 3.0 RC1 has been released. ZoomPlayer is now available in two flavors: Standard edition which is limited to file playback, and Professional edition which is a commercial DVD front-end.
4/6 And here it is: Thanks to BaronVlad, Killingspree and Donald Graft we now have an English TV capture guide for analogue sources.
4/5

VCDEasy 1.1.5 features project saving and loading, reusable MPEG analyze information, an anti flickering option has been added to the MPEG stills option, additional compliance tests have been added and most settings not directly related to a VCD project have been moved to a settings dialogue. DVD2SVCD 1.1.3 build 2 contains a small bugfix for a SimpleResize problem the initial 1.1.3 release was having. Media Player Classic 6.4.4.2 fixes crashing OGMs when Vorbis sound was used and removes the popup message dialogue from the AVI-AC3 handler filter.

If you're waiting for the TV capture guide I have some good news: I have the guide on my harddisk, it's just a matter of having a quick look and integrating it which should happen this weekend.

4/4 DVD2SVCD 1.1.3 build 1 supports Canopus ProCoder 1.25.15.0, fixes a couple of ProCoder related bugs, adds CCE 2.66 support (requires EclCCE if you're using the demo though) and CCE template support, there's some preliminary DVD output support (chapters in ECL files, Maestro Chapter files output), preliminary support for AviSynth 2.5 has also been added and external subtitles can be previewed now. There's a new ImgTool Classic package containing minor GUI changes and more importantly a new cygwin dll and a new version of mkisofs. DoCCE4U 1.0.0.8 increases the CCE time-out value, AviSynth scripts with "no-cce" appended and listed in CCEData.txt won't be encoded, an AviSynth existence check has been added, the log clipping has been improved, all buttons now look like buttons and an option that should help people using non English versions of Windows has been added. DVD2AVI2 1.83.5 is a DVD2AVI mod for HDTV users. It corrects occasional audio delay problems and improves handling for 2 character file extensions.
4/3 Media Player Classic 6.4.4.0 features improved QuickTime support and a save as function allowing you to rip VCD/SVCD/XCD/Audio CD/and VOBs (to a single VOB, without CSS descrambling), toolbars remembering their dock position and size, opening VIDEO_TS.IFO files switches into DVD mode and opening another IFO file starts playing the associated titleset, remote controls are supported via WinLIRC and uICE and there's a fix for better switching of AC3 streams when using AC3Filter. Gordian Knot 0.28 is already up to alpha 4. DivX3 support is back and the DivX5 bitrate is properly set in the codec according to GKnot's calculations.
4/2 Gordian Knot development continues. Gordian Knot is now developed as open source project on sourceforge and a first preview release of Gordian Knot 0.28 is already out. So far cropping is done by multiples of 2, LancosResize, Bob and FieldDeinterlace without blending have been added to the AviSynth dialogue and DivX5.03/5.04 is supported. And while TheWef's GordianKnot successor is currently on ice, he has now released the working parts of that successor in the form of Robot4Rip. Robot4Rip 0.2 beta is a fully automated DVD ripping and demuxing tool for DivX / XviD creation. It rips the selected PGC, encodes the desired audio tracks to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, extracts the desired subtitles via VobSub, creates a DVD2AVI project and a chapter file for OGM files. The process is fully configurable and you can disable or enable any step. After first time setup you will normally just have to enter a new DVD, start Robot4Rip and press the start button and then you can directly continue in GKnot (GKnot setup has also been simplified a bit by this and bitrate calculations are now finally accurate because you already know the exact size of the audio tracks). Of course, all the guides have already been adapted (hopefully, I had to change a large number of documents and hopefully there were no copy & paste errors). Oh, and if you just want to have a look at how Robot4Rip looks here's the direct link to the guide.
4/1

The guys over at the firmware page have compiled a nice FAQ about flashing the Pioneer A05 / 105 burner. It also contains a link to a hacked firmware allowing 2x burning using Ritek G03 disks. Keep in mind though that burning these discs at 2x dramatically increases the error rate. You may not notice it, but there's no telling if the disc won't suddenly fail at some later point.

Oh, and keep in mind what date it is today. If my competition claims I'm retiring then it's a joke ;)