Graphedit 1021 adds the ability to scrub through some file like VirtualDub and I put all the required filters in the package. Furthermore I put a tool that allows for easy unregistering of existing DS filters in the package.

I've also brought all the CCE guides up to speed concerning the issues surrounding the 2.62 release and all the general audio problems with VBR encoding.

SmartRipper 2.34 fixes the wrong arguments bug and offers an option to completely disable ASPI.

I brought the SVCD Rippack and the mpeg2avi rippack up-to-date with the latest software. I've also been working a bit on some of the guides. The most interesting part is the new manual IVTC method though. It still requires some patience but it's no longer a trial & error procedure but a very methodic one. All that remains to be done now is finding where the pattern has to be changed. Remember, as usual you read it here first.

SmartRipper 2.33 got rid of the LPCM header creator and now creates raw PCM files.

DivXFix 1.05 fixes two I/O bugs, a bug which caused the AVI to be truncated, an error checking function was added and corrupt frames will now be shown. The Ogg Vorbis ACM allows you to use the Ogg format in your AVIs.

The latest DVD2SVCD fixes a lot of bugs that have been reported in my SVCD forum. As always you should not forget to read the readme file. And a friendly reminder: It's not very nice to send ripping related questions to the SUBMISSION email account when I clearly state that it's only for program submissions and feedback.

And before I forget.. been working on the Nandub guide some more. You wouldn't believe how many times I have updated that page since I created it.

And another Nandub release has landed. The DRF settings for keyframes have been reintroduced, anti-shit settings have been simplified, there's a new checkbox in the AVI tab of the preference box which ignores decompressor errors (but you better not turn it on.. if you get an error check your source as it's screwed) and last but not least there's a stay-on-top checkbox in the status window. Of course the guide has also been updated. The rippack hasn't been updated. I will not update any rippack more than once a week unless there's very pressing reasons (like the soft in the pack not working at all).. it's just too much hassle. Keeping the guide updated is work enough.

Then I've also added yet another DVD2SVCD release which again fixes some bugs reported in the SVCD forum. New versions will always be posted first to the DVD2SVCD homepage.

Resistance is futile: I see there's no way I'm ever getting away from my PC today. SmartRipper 2.32 has just been released and it comes with command line parameter support, the possibility to run without ASPI calls and max key search intensity of 5. TMPG 12h fixes a divided by 0 multiplex bug, and MPEG2 encoding quality has improved. As usual don't forget the VFP plugin.

The latest DVD2SVCD fixes an audio selection bug, fixes the priority selection of subs, supports all versions of pulldown.exe, supports 2 audio streams, support 48KHz audio, allows preview of the selected audiostreams and it should be more stable. Sasami2k b741 has built-in audio filters, is a lot faster and more stable and has multilanguage support so you won't have to switch your OS language to English.

And yet another DVD2SVCD version: fixes a bug where the muxed files would get deleted and adds an azid gain level offset. BTW: All DVD2SVCD links today go to the same file, but the latest version is 1.0.0.41.

Nandub b26 removes DRF for keyframes as there are a lot of unresolved bugs surrounding this feature, luma correction compensation should work properly now without side-effects, anti-shit now tries to re-encode a frame as delta-frame if possible and the current profile will be auto-saved upon exiting. The crash when dropped frames occurred has also been solved. The guide has also been brought up-to-date.

And another update: Nandub b26.1 fixes the KF triggered by Anti-shit problem (see my Nandub bugreport forum for the details). Somebody give me a break with new versions please?

After the hectic weekend we have a slow-news day. So I took the time to update the newbie guide a bit. It's most definitely required reading for every newbie out there.

Nandub b25 is out. It adds a check for dropped frames (they will be treated as shit), all the SBC options have been placed into a separate dialog, it includes some options of the alternate Nandub version by RH/Maras/Koepi, the default first pass profile has been replaced with an up-to-date version, shutdown now works in W2K (if you have administrator rights) and anti-shit is faster if you use it without min quality. I'm working hard on bringing the guide up to speed for the new version. Auth.dll is a completely working authentication dll. DVD2SVCD 1.0.0.35 contains a minor bugfix concerning azid.

Furthermore all forum users may have noticed already that I've completely changed the layout of the forums to correspond to the looks of this site. Furthermore we have restructured the SBC forums. Hope you like it.

You won't get this kind of service anywhere else: I've updated the SBCRippack to the latest Nandub version and the Nandub guide has been updated as well and contains information for all the new settings.

DVD2SVCD 1.0.0.34 now has internal audio dowsampling (using the same routines as DVD2AVI), internal video demuxing, works with mpeg2dec & avisynth mmx, supports mpa audio streams and subtitles. I've been asked a number of times about a webpage or email of the author. There is none! The author has specifically asked to keep him anonymous. The same goes for other programs which don't include contact information. There's a reason why there's nothing like this for many programs. Imagine digging through hundreds of emails instead of concentrating on programming.

mpeg2avi GUI 0.20j adds support for the latest PX3 mpeg2avi. Then I have a gui for avisynth and lame which should help people who don't like writing avisynth scripts on their own. Although I can only stress that it certainly doesn't heart learning avisynth scripting. I've noticed many times that people who manage to handle tools like vStrip (CLI version) avisynth scripting and the likes usually don't have any problems at all with any of the tools required in the ripping process.

And BTW: BTTF = Back to the future, just in case you wondered.

If you haven't heard of it by now you've probably been living on mars but here we go anyway: On October 16th we'll finally get our DVD copy of Star Wars: Episode 1. The feature set is quite impressive. And despite being really upset about George Lucas holding out that long I'm sure I can't resist the urge to buy once I see that little gem in the stores. Here's the release plan for the rest of the world. This is pretty great news for our favorite format, with classics like Star Wars and the Godfather trilogy coming to DVD we can soon scrap our VHS collection completely. Now where's the rest of the Star Wars discs, the Indy and BTTF trilogies?

DVD Genie 4.01 adds better support for WinDVD 3.0 and the ability to switch this very player back to the internal region code setting mode (the latest releases would actually use the windows region code which is highly annoying and hard to change) plus support for some of the additional features of this player (Dolby Headphones and registration of the navigation filter).

Red card for Toshiba: Remember that I had these problems with my old Toshiba drive? Well.. I finally got a replacement. Originally I wanted the Pioneer 116 but apparently that's pretty hard to come by. No store had it so I got a Toshiba SD-M1502 instead. Note that it wasn't me who bought the drive, but the person who did wasn't aware of some of the rumors surrounding the drive. In any case, it turns out these rumors are in fact true and the drive can't rip faster than at 2x speed. While it works just fine as a CD-ROM its DVD capabilities are less than impressive. My old 6x DVD ripped 50% faster than this brand-new drive. I don't know how they get to 16x speed but let's face it: The only application where a fast DVD drive would be useful is ripping DVDs. There's virtually no DVD-ROM discs out there and to play a DVD you don't need more than 1x DVD speed. Therefore I suggest that each and everyone of you stay clear of this drive. It's a waste of your money. Red card for Toshiba, you're out! And just fyi: My DVD has firmware 1012 uncracked (RPC-2, straight out of the box), it's running as secondary master on a MSI K7T Turbo board under W2K SP2 with the 4in1 4.31 (final) busmaster drivers.

Now for some positive news: I have rewritten the "ripping the hard way" guide and brought the vStrip guide up to speed. These guides are now linked from all the main guides and contain the web's most detailed problem solving procedures and tips&tricks related to the actual ripping process.

And a note concerning the new avisynth guide: It's possible to do cropping and resizing in one step. Just add the parameters that the crop filter would use after the resizing parameters (in the same brackets, separated by commas as usual) and you're all set. I will update the guide when I had time to verify that this works properly. Currently I'm in the process of reinstalling again. I truly dig my new W2KSP2 CD. No longer do I have to install the service pack after the main windows install and at the same time I got rid of entering the S/N.

I just discovered the following: According to this site the latest SBLive drivers, in conjunction with SP2 & DX8 enable the card to output AC3 via SPDIF. The site also lists the AVI/AC3 AC3 pass-thru capabilities of many popular players. Definitely worth checking out if you're into this.

Nandub b24.1 fixes some of the bugs mentioned in the SBC forum and writes the modulation parameter to the configuration files.

And to conclude this rainy day I fixed a couple of inaccuracies concerning SVCD resizing in the guides. Furthermore TMPG 12g is out. It mainly fixes bugs I've never experienced before.

And nando strikes again: Nandub b24 is out. A lot of bugs introduced in b23 have been fixed, the end credits algorithm has been changed again, a new modulation parameter for both anti-shit and min quality has been introduced and last but not least there's a feature to cut 2 CD rips properly and easily. The link to Nandub in the guide will not work.. but I will adapt the guide to b24 later today.

The Nandub guide has been updated to the latest Nandub version, as has the SBCRippack. Furthermore I have changed the bitrate&resolution guide and put in some resolutions which follow the 16x rule. Unfortunately I had linked to these values without realizing that they were in violation of these rules. I apologize for any confusion this might have caused. Again, for max compatibility in every environment it's best that your DivX movies have a resolution which is divisible by 16.

Lots of software these days: The latest DVD2SVCD adds I-author support, supports for the CCE quality slider and anti-noise filter and a major bug. SmartRipper 2.31 fixes a W9x related bug, even though here I have to say that if 2.30 didn't work on your system you should rather upgrade the OS than SmartRipper. Remember: W9x is crap. I wonder when MS starts paying me for making free W2K advertisement but I'm just following my heart here. Last but not least PX3 has fixed the exit bug of Mpeg2avi. The mpeg2avi PX3 0.15a version should finish properly on all machines now.

I've updated the DirectVobSub guide with some information on splitting subtitle files. Furthermore I've added mpeg2dec 1.0 along with the latest DVD2AVI and Avisynth MMX which are required for the brand-new DVD2AVI frameserving method which helps to speed up the frameserving process quite a bit. In my tests I got 4fps more than the traditional VFAPI method. Unfortunately it's even more complicated as the regular VFAPI way but let's look at it from this angle: if you manage to handle avisynth you definitely deserve the speed surplus.

Last but not least I've made several adjustments to the Nandub guide. It includes even more suggested values and a small screenshot error has been fixed.

SVCDCorder has reappeared. Let's hope it lasts a bit longer this time.

And yet another update: vStrip 0.8a now comes with a CLI version as well. We still haven't had much feedback on either vStrip and SmartRipper concerning 1.00 GB VOBs. I've also brought the vStrip source up to speed again.

And just a word to these who feel that I don't take news seriously. Take a look around.. on which site do you find new programs first? Program releases dictate news. When there's no new progs, encoding tricks, etc I can't report anything.

The latest DVD2SVCD features a couple of bugfixes and support for NTSC titles.

And another nice piece of software has just made its way here: SmartRipper 2.30 supports 1.00GB VOBs and Auto Select for streams. More info about the 2nd feature can be found in the changelog file. All I need now is some feedback on the 1.00GB issue.. please report to the decryption forum as usual. And once I have a new DVD drive and the 2 DVDs I ordered yesterday (T2-UE & Sneakers) make it here I will make another update to the ripper comparison.

vStrip 0.8a_css comes with the updated GUI (but without a CLI version.. that one will be delivered at a later date, and the author is aware of the bug in 0.8). So could the people who have DVD discs with a 1.00GB VOB please give this release a shot and report the results to the decryption forum? ZoomPlayer 1.51 adds a relative stretch mode, option to start the player automatically in either windowed or full screen mode, more codec property settings and a couple other things. AviAC3split has been updated and it's now possible to specify at which point in time to split. DVD2SVCD is a one-in-all SVCD creation program which uses a large number of the most common tools and CCE as encoder. Keep in mind that it's in early beta stage. Since I found the source AviRevolution 2.2.10 is now als available here. mpgXmps 0.131b fixes a problem where the audio track would be recognized as mono.

Since April my hitrate has remained constant, which has given me quite some cause to worry. I don't think that the "market" has been satisfied, but apparently people rather go someplace else. And whetever I kept doing, be it new guides, reorganizing the guides page to make it more easily accessible (hopefully..), new rippacks, nothing would stop this trend. So I'd like to know from all of you.. what am I doing wrong? Why would you rather go to another place? What can I make better? Recently I had somebody write me that he prefered the Nandub guide from divx-digest over mine and I asked him to state specifically what he thought was easier to understand there. After listening to his comments for a while I started expanding my own Nandub guide which a lot of small, but apparently important info. And despite my own feelings about the issue I've created a Nandub rippack now. Furthermore the guide is completely up-to-date now (latest version and everything). Hope somebody likes the effort I put into this. If I feel this is being appreciated I will try to add additional info to other guides.

A word about mpeg2dec: It requires that you have the latest avisynth properly installed (get it from the software page and make sure that you read the readme file), then it requires that you use DVD2AVI 1.76 (yes, the beta version) and last but not least you should really read the help file that comes with the plugin. Many people try to only use the first two lines from the given sample script, which results in the following error: Avisynth open failure:
The script's return value was not a video clip. The problem is that you redirect the d2v file into a variable but the script has no return value. So if you don't do audio modify the 2nd line of the script so that the output will not be redirected to a variable: mpeg2source("d:\matrix\matrix-latest.d2v"). However, I didn't notice any speed increase encoding 1000 frames in VirtualDub despite using YUV2 as output format.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I was attending a VON conference and haven't gotten much sleep lately.

Avisynth users might like this MPEG-2 plugin, which, based on DVD2AVI's decoding engine delivers superior speed to VFAPI. Please do not send me any question regarding that plugin.. I haven't had to test it yet - once I will I will add it to the software archive provided it's really useful. Subadjust 1.56 fixes some bugs in the auto-adjust routines introduced in v 1.55. I've been getting a lot of requests for SVCDCorder. As it is the page has been removed and there's no new one for the moment and neither do I have the binary. Nandub b23 adds "complete" support for MS MPEG-4 v2 - but keep in mind that it's useless - inferior - to DivX, it's just legal - some cosmetic changes, luminance correction parameter has been replaced by a more intuitive parameter, better end-credit algorithm, a bitrate calculator has been added, once the size deviation goes over 10MB the engine will start compensating, the DRF for keyframes can now be set, the anti-shit has been completely reworked, and there's a couple of other gadgets. For the full specs please check the readme file that comes with the program. A new version of avirevolution has also been released, it now supports better VBR encoding. But as long as the source isn't out I can't add it.

A question for all my readers who happen to have the R1 Sneakers or R1 Scream (not the special edition) DVD. Could you try out the latest vStrip in command line mode and report to the decryption forum if it works out? Both the author and myself would much appreciate it. Please do not use email.. post to the forum.

On another note.. I'll be on a short vacation for the next 3 days. When I come back I have a nice surprise in store for you. Stay tuned..

I've made some small updates to the advanced guides.. mainly installation related stuff and a few reminders not to close the frameserving programs before the encoding process is finished. Hope that clears up some things.

DVD2CD 2.0 is a complete Mpeg2avi based rippack. It comes with a new mpeg2avi version which includes a deinterlacer and sharpening filter. I've also added the latest mpgXmps program.

I've also written a guide on toolame.

Wave Length Adjust 0.2 can adjust the length of WAV files for synch reasons. It's also useful for PAL->NTSC and NTSC->PAL conversions where the video part is usually no problem as you just adjust the framerate.. but the audio tracks still have to be adjusted.

I've opened my DVD-ROM, cleaned the lens as some of you have suggested but it was to no avail. I will have to replace this drive. So keep in mind: DO NOT ENCODE DIRECTLY FROM DVD DISCS!

Another thing.. emails: The email addresses on the contact page are the only ones to be used.. help mail that gets into the general Doom9 folder in my Outlook will get deleted, as well as questions sent to the submission email.

To prevent any more email on the issue: Opening the news page, then saving it to another directory (File - Save as) fixes the wrong links issue - all links going FROM the page are being updated this way.

As I promised I've added a guide on the use of the LSX plugin. Furthermore I've added instructions on how to use VCDImager to create VCDs and SVCDs. When we initially restructured the S/VCD guides we discarded this program since Nero is much easier to use but due to the increasing number of people having fast forward problems when using Nero to burn a SVCD it's now part of the guides. Of course I've also added VCDImager and VCDImagerGUI.

Last but not least I've updated the vStrip and the Ripping the hard way guide. Don't miss out on them. It's required reading for each and everybody who has decryption problems.

Thanks for all the suggestions to handle the old news.. I now have a method that works within Dreamweaver.

I've added bbTools 1.9 and Zoomplayer 1.50. The new Zoomplayer adds a lot of tweaks a and some new features.

A new month and a new news page. By now it should be June at every place on the earth so the contest has officially ended. Many thanks for your contributions. We'll start digging through all the logos soon and we'll let you know as soon as we have decided on a winner.

As usual, the links of last month are all not working anymore. If somebody knows how I can create a new page, then move it from the root of the web to another directory while all the links get updated please let me know. BTW: I'm using DreamWeaver just in case.

Last but not least I've added a Premiere Registry fix which will help you install Premiere plugins even if you don't have premiere installed. Make sure the read the readme. I've also added a small addendum to the page about VFAPI and to the readme in the VFAPI package. So many people forget to switch off the AVI proxy again that it's now an part of the readme. In the future expect a major sarcastic comment coming your way if you commit this mistake. There's no excuse for not reading guides and readme files! And while we're at it: just a reminder that email concerning ripping problems sent to the submission email address will be deleted immediately. But it seems that most people have realized that by now. And the software page is split into two parts.. try reading the bold parts.. they eventually lead you to the more comprehensive software page.

I've completely rewritten the Mpeg2Avi guide. I hope there's still people out there who can use it. Since the new guide uses new Software I've also updated the mpeg2avi pack. And I've added splitting to the rest of the DivX guides (why did nobody tell me I forgot that?).

Next stop: LSX plugin for VCD & SVCD.. stay tuned.