| Date |
News |
| 9/30 |
IfoUpdate 0.53 contains additional analysis code for creating CCE
and DVDMaestro chapter files for multi PGC movies.
Hakko504, jiggimi and manono from my forum have written a nice
article in IVTC, deinterlacing and the likes. It covers pretty
much every question you can ask on the subject...
|
| 9/29 |
BeSweet 1.4 is out. It allows you to
set a relative maximal gain, logfiles can be read during an encoding
session and of course all the new features introduced in the 1.4 betas
are still there. AviSynth 2.06 has a new resizing filter yielding
better quality than BicubicResize in many cases, there's a parameter
to force a certain decompression format, the letterbox command offers
optional left and right parameters, there's a command to avoid desynch
of VBR MP3 audio tracks, then we have an installer, example scripts,
a forward seeking fallback code for DirectShowSource files, optimizations
to YUV2 bicubic and bilinear resizing and last but not least we have
a couple of bugfixes. AC3Machine 0.41 fixes the runtime error-13.
IfoUpdate 0.52 has an option to offset all chapters, the chapter readout
for multiangle DVDs has been corrected, and the CCE chapter output
now works on a cell level. DVDDecrypter 3.1.3.0 has improved SPTI
and DVD+RW support, most of the key searching code has been rewritten,
extra sizes have been added to the max size in ISO mode, writing speed
in the DVD burning mode can now be selected, file naming in IFO mode
has been reverted to how it was in the old days, there are a few more
options in various places and a couple of bugs have been fixed. A
first alpha of Ogg
Theora, the Xiph
developed, VP3 based video codec, has been released as well. Last
but not least NEC has announced the ND-1100
DVD+-R/W burner which, as the model name already indicates, supports
both DVD-R and DVD+R formats. It can write DVD+R at 4x speed, DVD+RW
at 2.4x, DVD-R at 2x and DVD-RW at 1x. Furthermore it writes CD-Rs
at 16x, CD-RWs at 10x and it's a 40x/10x CD/DVD reader. |
| 9/28 |
Thanks to Kurt for pointing out the ffdshow
changelog. ZoomPlayer
2.90 beta1 is also out (but at the moment I'm writing this the
inmatrix forums seem to be down).
|
| 9/26 |
There's a new ffdshow release. It doesn't come with a
changelog and it's labeled alpha but stable. More
info can be found in the forums. |
| 9/25 |
CCE
SP 2.66 is out. It offers more filters, IVTC, setting chapters
by timecode and the functionality of the premiere plugin has been
extended. As usual the demo has some restrictions: There's a logo,
you can only use it for 30 days, the filtering is limited and there's
no ECL support. The Ogg DS Subtitle filter v1.3.0.0 contains some
bugfixes, has better support of operating systems other than WinXP,
the UI is available in several languages, support for font face,
size and color tags has been added and the filter works with video
post processing in WMP.
If you speak Japanese here are two pressreleases: Announcement
of the Pioneer
A05 DVD burner and high
speed DVD-R/W media.
|
| 9/24 |
IfoUpdate 0.51 fixes a bug in the chapter file generation process.
The French translation
project has been officially started now. Right now they're looking
for masses of volunteers to translate the guides as quickly as possible.
Creative Labs
has announced the Audigy2
soundcard series. They offer 24bit/96kHz multi-channel recording
and playback, DVD-Audio playback, support for Dolby Digital EX and
are THX certified.
|
| 9/23 |
IfoUpdate 0.50 has some preprocessing options that allow
you to get necessary information from the original IFO file before
the authoring process. This includes the creation of a chapter point
file for CCE, a special chapter output mode to support multiple PGCs
in Maestro, additionally the program can show information on the video,
audio and subtitle attributes. |
| 9/21 |
ScenChap 1.25 can no longer create
chapters beyond the end of the video stream. |
| 9/20 |
SimpleResize 0.3.2
fixes a horizontal chroma delay bug.
Mitsubishi
Electric has announced a new laser diode which should allow
to write DVDs at 8x speed. Samples should be out by December and
mass production should start in June 2003. For those not familiar
with DVD recording speeds 8x allows you to write a full DVD-R in
about 7 minutes.
|
| 9/19 |
VOBInput.dll
is a BeSweet plugin that allows you to actually use VOB input. The
latest release of Suiryc's
OGM tools can discard chapters and they also allow you to mux
additional streams into an OGM file. StatsReader 1.8 solves the first
pass > 2 GB issues, has an end credits size sanity check and doesn't
scale frames below minimum I/P framesize. |
| 9/18 |
Here's the missing changelog: Cosmetic fixes, support for VOB input,
support for external plugins, support for surround2 downmix and
priority selection.
Pioneer officially released new
firmware for their DVD-R/W drives. They prevent problems that
could occur when you try burning the upcoming 4x DVD-R and 2x DVD-RW
discs. Speaking of which, the DVD forum has officially released
the specs for these discs so we should soon see the official announcement
of a suitable DVD burner from Pioneer.
|
| 9/17 |
AC3Machine 0.4 comes without a changelog so you'll have to wait
till tomorrow to find out what's new.
Philips has announced the DVDRW416K DVD+RW burner which can write
DVD+R discs at 4x speed whereas DVD+RW discs can still be recorded
at the usual 2.4x speed. If you have time you should read up on
the International
Broadcasting Convention IBC which will end today. There's some
interesting development in video compression technology, most notably
the first sightings of H.264 codecs.
|
| 9/16 |
Wbias
0.81 supports AAC and comes packed with BeSplit
0.82 (which supports PCM streams) so you'll only have to download
one package. BeSweet 1.4RC8 supports MPA and LPCM streams inside VOBs
and AACMachine 0.5 supports MPx/WAV and VOB input. |
| 9/15 |
I've interrupted my sick leave to bring
you this: IfoUpdate 0.48 has a special Maestro mode which discards
the first PGC maestro creates when working with playlists (to re-create
multiple PGC titles) and a standard mode which resets this special
setting. The OGG DS Filters v0.9.9.3 are based on Vorbis 1.0, most
problems with WMP9 have been solved, there's a new taskbar icon to
make the language selection available even if the player doesn't support
it, support for Vorbis postgain has been added (enabling lightning
fast one pass Vorbis creation using BeSweet without intermediary files),
the channel order in the encoder has been adjusted and the whole thing
has been compiled for optimal performance. |
| 9/13 |
VFAPIConv
1.05 is out and I already got an English version for you :) It
fixes a memory access violation that happened occasionally. |
| 9/12 |
DVDSynth
is an open platform for developing virtual devices. It allows you
to apply filters to physical devices in the system which can change
the content of discs being read on the fly. For instance you can add
an additional subtitle track to a DVD you're watching on the fly,
you can remove usage restrictions like region codes, prohibited menu
access, menu calls, disabled fast-forward etc. etc. |
| 9/11 |
Yesterday, Sony announced their latest DVD burner, the
DRU-500A.
What's so special about it that it makes the news here? It's the first
burner to be able to handle the competing DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W formats.
And not only that, besides the usual DVD+R/W write speed of 2.4x it
writes DVD-Rs at 4x and DVD-RWs at 2x which also makes it the fastest
DVD burner out there (until Pioneer releases the A05 which will also
feature 4x/2x burning). And if you still use CD-Rs the new burner
is interesting as well as it writes CD-Rs at 24x speed and CD-RWs
at 10x speed which is a major improvement considering that today's
most popular DVD-R/W burner writes CD-Rs at only 8x speed. If you
can't wait to see the drive here's a picture.
And in other DVD related news a campaign to get
one HD DVD format only has been started. |
| 9/10 |
I don't really have anything ripping
related for you today but I found the final download links for WinXP
Service Pack 1. Nothing really new except for a large list of
fixes but if you're using WinXP or have been waiting for the first
SP before upgrading this might be useful. And while we're at the subject
there's a service
pack for IE6 as well. |
| 9/9 |
Sub2stl
converts MDVDP and SubRip subtitle files to the STL format (DVDMaestro).
Pioneer has released new
firmware for their DVD burners. Using the new firmware the drives
are supposed to write CMC and Ritek media at 2x speed which is pretty
interesting since at least Ritek blanks seem to be quite good but
also rather cheap. You can find more info about this upgrade in the
forum. |
| 9/8 |
AACMachine 0.47 uses BeSplit to join the AAC files, has an encoding
properties info box and better bitrate prediction in 5.1 mode. ZoomPlayer
2.80 has also been released and it follows the traditional "changelog
is too long to post" scheme.
In the guide department I've updated the CCE guide to make use
of the templates (comes in really handy if you encode multiple files),
and both Scenarist and Maestro
guide to use the direct .sst/.son output that SubRip offers.
|
| 9/7 |
VobEdit 0.51 saves changes you make
in the menu button department. GDiVX Player 1.9.9 fixes a couple of
bugs and it can import winamp skins. TMPG
2.58 can create both audio and video separately at the same time
now and there's a couple of bugfixes, too. |
| 9/6 |
ScenChap 1.24 support multiangle DVDs. VCDEasy 1.1.2 can play sounds
based on events, has improved interactivity pages, the CD size calculation
has been improved as has MPEG still creation, and there's a lot
more of bugfixes
and small improvements. Then there's a commandline
OGM muxing tool and an OGM demuxer and last but not least some
tools to help you create
menus for DVDs.
Microsoft
has also launched Windowsmedia v9 yesterday and now the beta
version of both player and encoder are available
for download.
|
| 9/5 |
SubRip 1.06 can output to 5 new formats,
contains optional punctuation and orthography correction and it can
read MicroDVD files. ZoomPlayer
2.80 RC2 has also been released. Microsoft's Windowsmedia
V9 was scheduled to be released yesterday but so far nothing has
happened. But while they are late in the media department you can
already download
Windows XP SP1. |
| 9/4 |
Finally some guide updates even if it's only minor ones. I've updated
the DVD-9 -> 2x DVD-5 guide
to correspond to the latest IfoEdit release and I've added .cue/.bin
burning to the DVD2SVCD guide.
Then we have BeSliced 0.1 which is a GUI for BeSplit specifically
designed to create dummy files. It works for AAC/AC3/WAV and MPx
files.
|
| 9/3 |
StatsReader 1.4 is even more accurate. If you use it
with end credits you must use Koepi's
XviD build in order to achieve accurate results. |
| 9/1 |
StatsReader 1.1 allows you to set the desired size in KB to get
even more accurate results.
And as a special goodie for the new month OxP has written a seamless
branching guide for Scenarist explaining in great detail how
to handle seamless branching titles when applying the well-known
IfoEdit-CCE method for DVD-R creation. The methods described in
the guide should also be applicable for multiangle DVDs which means
that by now we can transcode and re-create pretty much every DVD
there is. By reading the guide you'll soon notice the only catch
there is: It's not exactly an easy way :/
|