And the BadTrans bombardment goes on. It looks like the enemy is slowly running out of ammo as I have to sound the bomb alarm less frequently.. but still way too much ;)

In terms of software different from BadTrans there's SmartRipper 2.40 whichs adds chapter timecodes to info.txt.

I'm still under heavy BadTrans bombardment. When will people learn? :((

The Linux DivX ripping guide has been updated, including the necessary software. RadLight 3.03 R4 is a stripped down package, from now on you get additional modules (which you might not even need) at the official homepage.

Today I have some mandatory downloads for you: Due to the recent spread of the BadTrans and Aliz Internet worms which I have received at least 50 times within the last 24 hours. If you received an e-mail that had the topic: Re: and you opened it and let the attachment run you're already infected and your computer will send out the virus to all the people that are in your addressbook. Furthermore, it will install a keylogger which could be used to gain unauthorized access to your machine, so you should definitely be seriously concerned about this. Major anti virus manufacturers have brought their virus definitions up-to-date on 3 days ago already when the epidemic first started, so update your anti-virus definition. Also, many anti virus program can be tested for free for 30 days and there's even completely free anti-virus scanners like AVG Anti-Virus. And if we're talking about prevention, it's definitely time you install one of the free personal firewalls: ZoneAlarm or Tiny Personal Firewall. These prevent such worms to connect to the Internet, you'll be asked of program XY is allowed to connect to the Internet, and if you follow the golden rule of never allow any outside connection until you're sure that the program is safe you will have no problems. The worms, like Nimda before, use a well-known security problem in Microsoft Outlook Express. If you have Internet Explorer 5.5sp2 or IE6 installed you should be asked if you want to run the dangerous attachment once you try to look at the e-mail. NEVER EVER say yes to such a question under any circumstances. An e-mail is not supposed to execute anything. It also cannot hurt to use windowsupdate once in a while, there is a security patch for IE6 dated Nov 13. It can also not hurt to have a look at MS security bulletins ever once in a while or even read Securityfocus.

But, that sounds awfully complicated. In fact, all you have to do is 1) use your brain and never run what you don't know 2) install security fixes (windowsupdate is fair enough for that.. it does all the work for you), 3) run a personal firewall so that worms can't connect outside. A virus scanner will not always protect you as virus definitions can only be brought up-to-date after a virus or worm has spread. But, you can set Outlook Express to not allow external programs to use its mail engine (Tools - Options - Security - Warm me when other applications try to send mail as me) and the personal firewall will do the rest as long as you follow the abovementioned golden rule for firewalls.

And on another subject: The contact page clearly states that support is only given via the forum. Please stop abusing the submission e-mail address to ask for help, I will simply delete such e-mail.

Absolutely no new software today... but I talked to the dvd2mpg author and he's looking for people willing to take up the project as he has no time for it anymore. If you're good in C++, DirectShow/COM and have a lot of free time in your hand contact me.

Mp3wav 1.0 is a command line tool to add a WAV RIFF header to mp3 files.

I put a few additional lines into the dvd2avi page that should help solve the general confusion about force film a bit, and help PAL users fighting with interlaced content. Any guide that contains DVD2AVI will automatically link to the updated pages. I've also put 2 additional paragraphs into my article about Windows XP. I recently had to set up a multi-user environment so I put my experiences into that article along with a few words about UNIX-style features that WinXP offers.

Elecard has just released an audio decoder that supports mpeg and AC3 audio and seamless switching between the two. From the looks of it it's only a demo version but that's enough for quick audio-checks, isn't it?

Graphedit 011008 has some GUI changes, the graph resizing code handles all sizes correctly and you can use the +/- keys and the mousewheel to resize, you can disable the seek bar and the source and file writer filters will only show the filename, not the fully qualified path anymore (if I'm not mistaken that means we don't have absolute pathnames in graphs anymore). WavBooster 0.51 exports several functions to a dll and fixes the bug of always using the same format for input and output files. Maestro SBT 1.1.0.0 contains a major rewrite of the rendering and parsing code to fully support SSA inline style overrides, it has improved international support, an option to omit the bitmap generation, improved color collision resolution algorithm, a projectted sticky colors checkbox and a bugfix in the line balancing code.

And, after reading some posts in my DivX4 forum I had a look at the DivX4.11 codec. And indeed, I now get framerates above 30fps encoding at 640x272 where I got 25-27fps before. Reminds me of the P4 optimized Flask where AMD users also had some benefit. Also, this means that DivX4.11 encoding is now definitely faster than DivX3.11 encoding on my box.

SmartRipper 2.39 fixes the problems in the decryption routine of the two previous released.

DivX4.11 has been optimized for the P4 processor. You can expect up to 78% speed increase when you capture or use a raw YUV file (Huffyuv and similar), and up to 30% in applications like DVD2AVI or Flask (these apps use a lot of computing time for MPEG-2 decoding.. and codec optimization has nothing to do with that part of the encoding process). It also decodes high resolution content fluently. Now, before you all go buy a P4, 3DNow optimizations are already in the pipeline...

If you ever wondered how fast an Athlon XP can really be.. check the THG test on an overclocked Athlon XP. Some sweet numbers there for MPEG2/4 encoding apps. If you've been following the Comdex converage a little, one of the most interesting trends I saw there was legacy free hardware. As I mentioned previously in my article on Windows XP, it's about time we dumped legacy hardware and moved on. And on a last note on hardware, I recently installed the latest NVIDIA beta drivers (v22.80) which finally solved the slow shutdown problem for me, and Radeon 8500 owners may want to go over to the ATI site and get the latest released drivers which provide better performance than the default drivers.

And if you're now wondering if I'm slowly becoming a hardware site and dump DVD ripping, don't worry, but I just couldn't resist the temptation to post this stuff, and after all, we all need PC hardware to rip, don't we?

RadLight 3.03 is a WMP replacement that has AC3 audio support, ASF and M1V support, dynamic loading of DirectShow Filters, command line support, skinable video window, jump to time/frame option, subtitle delay feature and it's XP ready ;)

Thanks for the feedback regarding the hosting thing. Now we have a nice 5.1 channel mp2 multichannel file available via the link in this thread. Download it, add a video track, mux&burn, and test it. Then report your results back to this thread. If we find a couple players that are capable of playing it (remember we're looking for 5.1 output.. most players will give you 2 channels only.. make sure you got this right, most receivers do NOT support mpeg2 multichannel as the format never really took off) there will be a guide in the future...

SmartRipper 2.37 finds title keys without brute force, but only in ASPI mode, it adds fast error skip and a couple of bugs regarding ASPI and unencrypted DVDs have been fixed. VobSplit 2.5 adds a GUI, supports files larger than 2GB and several small bugfixes. Zone Selector 4b11 adds a driver version check, autoclose when DVD station is closed, several new languages and macrovision disable fixes for several titles.

Is there anybody willing to host a 10MB mpeg2 multichannel testfile so we can launch a big player compatibility test? Traffic might be pretty intense so I don't dare to put it on my own servers but as it's only one file maybe you got a hosting for it. Keep in mind that most free sites shut you down when traffic exceeds a certain limit.. mostly that limit is 1GB or lower, and it only takes a 100 downloads to reach it.

Okay, back to normal.

VCDEasy 1.0.3 comes with a German translation and fixes a big related to the tree view refresh. SubWizard 1.3.6 is a srt to Subtitle Creator / StreamWeaver / DVD Fusion subtitle converter. PowerDivX NG 3.11 adds some languages, a cool popup menu and fixes some bugs.

Is there anybody willing to take over the newletter? N24 will be away for quite a while.

On the hardware site I also have good news. Switching the PSU and going to an Enermax PSU didn't get rid of the high pitched noise but crashes got less frequent. Putting in a 1.8 Athlon XP and an Alpha 6035fan didn't solve the problem either but suddenly I had more and more trouble making a cold boot (GFX card wouldn't be activated). I also got a Shuttle AV31 rev3.1 board (KT266a chipset) and that didn't help, in the end the computer simply wouldn't start and after many hours of working with essentially 2 barebone systems (Connect MB to a PSU and plug in a GFX card, then power up) I finally found the guilty party: My brand new Enermax PSU simply won't boot anymore. Now, with the old Maxtron 300W PSU and the rest of the new hardware everything works, and the old CPU also works just fine in another system. Unfortunately for me, AMD has been busy during my absence and my shiny new CPU isn't the fastest there is anymore :(

And a personal message to ElFarto: Please contact me or reply to one of the countless mails I sent you..

ChapterXtractor 0.95 allows you to customize and save the output format, adds auto selection of the longest subtitle, adds command line support and the ability to associate the program with .ifo files. MaestroSBT 1.0.1.6 corrects the parsing of font-size overrides and adds exporting to the srt format. TMPG 2.01 is yet another bugfix release, it fixes bugs where .tpr file couldn't be opened thru VFAPI, audio wasn't being encoded properly when l3x.exe was used as external audio encoder, and if 1 was set as the quantize matrix for a non-intrablock you'd get block noise during fast motion scenes. As usual, don't forget the VFP plugin.

Now, in a few hours I will have to leave for a course in the army. I put in a request for dispensation since it's in the middle of the semester but apparently that didn't get thru so I will have to spend at least 2 days there until they let me go (the office handling dispensation courses isn't even open on Monday.. lazy sobs). In the worst case I will be gone for 2 weeks. Thanks to DDogg you won't have to live without news though. You'll find daily news in the Site announcement forum. I'd like to remind all program authors to please use the submission email as only this gets forwarded to the right guy. As for all your ripping questions, please post them in the appropriate forum after having read the FAQs.

And now again: Until further notice you'll find news in the Site announcement forum, so go there.

I've added guides on how to use DVDx with external encoding programs. However, since nobody ever mentioned that I forgot to place a link in step 1 and 2 in the main DVDx guide I'm wondering if nodoby is using the program and I'm just wasting my time. There also is a Linux DivX ripping guide now, though I didn't write it.

On the software side there's an azid developer kit that helps you use azid.dll and VobSub 2.03 which has adjustable text placement in dvobsub, a system tray icon for changing languages or accessing property pages of filters and some fixes in the memory allocation code.

Good news: A court in California has overruled the preliminary injunction against DeCSS (or rather, people distributing it). But I'm sure the DVD CCA will appeal and the matter will eventually go all the way to the supreme court.

Gordian Knot 0.19b adds easy 2 pass DivX3 (using Nandub) and DivX4 support. It works like this: set up your encoding session as usual, select the start point for the end credits, in the save avs dialogue you select trim -> both, then save and encode, go to the encoding panel and select the codec, queue as many jobs as you like and watch the log output. Basically it writes Virtualdub job files, queues them and starts encoding so you have to make sure that there's no encoding sessions in the queue (press f4 in VDub/Nandub). The encoding mode is fast recompress so for DivX3 that means anti-shit is off. Then there's a neutral bicubic filter settings, the DivX3 motion correction has changed a little (less reduction in low luma sequences), there's a bugfix in the curve treatment, an add button to add sizes into the calculator, all settings are saved in the registry and it's possible to save and load settings. GreedyHMA is an avisynth filter that does IVTC and deinterlacing and according to Blight it's better than the old Avisynth IVTC plugin.

Avisynth 1.05 is a bugfix release though nobody told me which bugs have been fixed. There's also an updated Avisynth scripting reference (Avisynth Doc). TSCV 0.8b1 supports the latest VCDImager, multiple languages, the menu generator has been completely reworked and optimized, there's multi intro support, on chapter timeout to extro and MPG to WAV/MPA conversion. Micro DVD Autolauncher 1.85 adds a routine to configure MDVDP to use the secondary CD-ROM when the movie is over 2 discs, a benchmarking routine, a possibility to translate the program, a changed quality setting routine (based on the built-in benchmarking) and sample lines in autorin.inf to detect and set the quality settings for the DivX4 codec.

And a somewhat related subject, there's a UK based campaign against TV logos. I'm not exactly into capturing but I sure wouldn't mind getting rid of these annoying logos when I watch TV.