Just a small note before I leave for my Christmas holidays (but don't worry.. I'll have 2 notebooks at my disposal so I can update this site as usual): SmartRipper 2.01 still fails to authenticate on my pc but it just passed the "The man with the golden gun" test using keysearch on Cell level.

If there's nothing too interesting happenen within the next 36 hours I wish you a merry Christmas and happy holidays already now. I hope you can enjoy some time off as much as I do.

And last but not least yet another WM8 GUI that came in the lest second before my flight.

And still: I'm too busy to work on the WM8 article. But just one more day and all these exams will be history. Can't await it. It should be forbidden to launch a new codec during an exam period ;)

I've found some pretty nice software lying in my temp directory: DivX VKI: A DivX patch which will set keyframes at scene changes, WM8 GUI no., WM8 GUI no. (by PurpleMan), VirtualDub 1.4c with ASF support, as well as an English version of the VFAPI Converter 1.04. You can also check out VobSub 1.32 and CompressAvi 1.04b12. . Last but not least I added some interesting sources: DeCSS+ 2.0pre1 (that one will be really good once it's finished), IFO-Parser, and CSSMonitor. I hope all these program authors didn't hold a grudge against me when it sometimes takes a bit longer until I put their tools online. It's just that I'm really busy at the moment, busier than ever.

PX3 has done it again: Mpeg2avi 0.06b is a beta that contains small speed changes, removes AC3 output decoding preview and fixes the remaining time indicator.

I've added Windows Media Encoder v8 beta, a GUI to it and VFAPI 1.04beta so you can better test this new codec. I've finally managed to get enough clips to start testing but currently I'm very busy studying for my exams so don't expect any results before Friday. And a tool that I've quite forgotten about: Avisynth 1.0b3 with Plugin 0.28b32 adds WAV output (useful when multipass encoding in CCE). And last but not least: CropInfo, a tool which should make your life a lot easier when cropping in FlaskMpeg. The source to this util has also been released.

And I'm still encoding to WM8. Why do I suddenly feel abused as a beta tester? No other beta product of Microsoft (and believe me, I've had a handfull of these installed) ever performed that unstable as the new Windows Media Encoder. I don't think that any serious company would even consider using that encoder for commercial use. And let's not forget that this is the first command line tool Microsoft has released since quite a while. Can you imagine using command line utilities for your daily work if you're not a *nix administrator? I don't think so. In any case I hope to have my test clips ready soon, but I had to play around with the -time option a lot. Usually making the clips somewhat shorter helped, but that can't be the solution for the problem, can it?

SVCD freaks rejoice: SubRip 0.9b includes I-author compatible output format so you won't have to mess around with srt2ogt anymore. Furthermore it's now possible to split the subtitle files directly and there's a new output format with more options. For more news read the included readme.

This beta of VFAPI 1.04 fixes the problems with WM8. The program will still crash at the end of encoding but the file will be usable.

Finally 3ivx has been released. Sadly only the player is available for Windows. So far it's only possible to encode to 3ivx on a Mac, which I don't really understand since Macs are not really better suited for digital video than PCs. Just look at how many times Mac OS crashes during a normal day and compare that with W2K. You can download some demo clips from the 3ivx page but these are only 15fps so far, and quite frankly, unless we get an encoder which allows us to make our own clips for comparison reasons nobody should get too excited about 3ivx. Also.. it's not really a player, just a Quicktime plugin so you'll have to get Quicktime as well.

And as for WM8 I've been creating a lot of test clips but it turns out that half of them are not usable. When you'd play one it would take really long to pre-cache, then playback would start, go on all right for about 2 seconds and then the video would get stuck, coming back only in irregular intervals. Another major problem I had was that the length got screwed up. Many files were a couple of seconds long when they were supposed to be several minutes long. The encoder displays a warning that 2-pass VBR files would only play okay on the WMP7 so I installed it, and strangely the false-lenght problem went away but I lost the image completely, in every clip I made and also in the one I downloaded from Microsoft. While the quality of the clips that work were a bit better than the corresponding DivX clips and the size was smaller as well (we're indeed talking about 30% in case of a 2mbit/s clip) as long as these problems persist I can't make a good conclusion. And one major problem remains: How to encode? Right now only an intermediate format seems to help since the encoder doesn't accept .vdr, .avs and VFAPI AVI (in any colorspace it says unsupported pixel format).

Better late than never: Microsoft released the Windows Media Encoder v8 Beta. Now before you all rush there to download consider the following: First of all the codec has not been tested. I'm currently running a series of tests comparable to what I did with that v7 WME and I'll report the results as soon as I have them. But the clips Microsoft has on their webpage did not really convince me so unless I find results that are significantly better than DivX you certainly don't have to scrap your DivX collection. The other thing is that the encoder is a command line utility and it has at least as many arguments as mpeg2avi, probably even more. So unless you are familiar with command line utils like mpeg2avi or m4c you better wait for a forthcoming guide (that is should I conclude that it's worthwhile to encode to the format).

And as for 3ivx there's sadly no update. Why does that remind me of loadvideo, which was supposed to be out in October but we never heard of again. Now loadvideo has changed names and is supposed to launch on the first of January.. we'll see about that. Quite frankly I'd like to see some results of all these "we're better than DivX" projects and not only hear the hype. At least Microsoft delivers even if they can't live up to their hype.

Sorry for the lack of updates but I was really busy working for school (and I still am).

Anyway, VobSub 1.28 adds 2x2 supersampled anti-aliasing, support for movies that span over more than one VOB ID and a fade in/out function. AviRevolution 2.1beta adds a special version of mpeg2avi which can encode two files at the same time (useful for MM4) and which also supports VKI (variable keyframe interval).

You may already have heard that 3ivx will launch their new MPEG-4 based codec in two days. The promise better quality at lower filesizes than DivX and true cross-platform availability. Only two more days and we'll know if this codec can live up to the hype. But keep in mind: Due to the cross-platform development the first release might not be so fast since right now the code doesn't contain any platform specific optimizations (and a lot of optimization could be made for our favorite ? platform). At the same day Microsoft will launch a beta of the next-gen Windows Media Encoder. They promise a 30% decrease in filesize and better quality, multipass encoding and true VBR. They also claim that the new generation of windows media audio will give you CD-like quality at only 64kbit/s. We'll soon see if they, too, can live up to the hype. The last release of of the windows media technology wasn't that great in my eyes. And most likely we'll have the same problems using these technology for DVD backup purposes as with the v7 release.

DVDDecrypter 2.2 is out. It fixes a couple of bugs (most notably the crashing on my machine), adds audio information, added DVD Drive region info, added the ability to reinitialize DVD Decrypter and a total time elapsed/remaining was added. Eugene's DVD player has also been updated.

I think I have located one problem with the downloads. Not all links referred to the PHP files for the main and software page on my servers that are PHP capable. That should now be fixed. But clearly I can't do anything if a router goes down.

PX3 has done it again: FlaskMpeg PX3 2nd strike v3 contains the subtitle fix (note: that only fixes subtitle problems with a very small part of movies.. and it doesn't fix disappearing subs or the likes, it's more of a color issue), the latest miha sources and a better ac3 decoding.

I almost forgot that one: cladDVD 1.66 fixes the bug concerning disappearing IFO/BUP files.

And about downloads again: I keep trying to dl from my site every time I go online and every time with success. I even got some mails from people who initially reported that they couldn't download and it now works for them again. But I have a lingering suspicion: Could these people who still can't download copy the link they get from their browser into a mail and send it to me? I'm wondering if they are using the right software and main page.

And we're complete again: The source code of FlaskMpeg multipass has been added so I believe that the source for every Flask version on this page (without the DeCSS version). Programmers enjoy.

I've also added a couple of new softwares: BSPPlayer 0.82, normalize 0.23, SubAdjust 1.5 and DivXAutolauncher 1.65. VKITol 0.12 is a tool that can be used to process keyframe list generated by the scene change plugin of AviUtl.

Another day without a new day format. How can life go on without that?

PX3 strikes back with a new FlaskMpeg version. It includes miha's optimized iDCT and all the AMD speed optimizations. As you may know from yesterday's news miha's iDCT is actually faster than the default MMX iDCT, and that also applies to the PX3 version. So if you select non-MMX iDCT you'll get a slightly higher performance than with every previous FlaskMpeg release. The quality is theoretically also a lot better but only theoretically since a visual inspection of the reference codec (which is better than miha's in mathematical terms, if only slightly) resulted in no visible gain compared to the default MMX. This new release also contains the much awaited sourcecode. Now the only FlaskMpeg version w/o source is the multipass variant. I've contacted the author but so far I haven't got any answer on the issue.

No new date format today ;)

Hrm has informed me that the framedrop fix is already included in the latest FlaskMpeg h release (FlaskMpeg options - General tab) so that makes -1 Flask version. But to bring it up to 10 again I now have the AMD optimized FlaskMpeg version and it's sourcecode. And miha has released a new version of his special iDCT FlaskMpeg which now is faster than the default MMX of the original Flask (tough it's still slower than the PX3 version).

I've also a new version of Graphedit, currently the package comes without filters but as soon as I'm done with my exams I'll make a new Graphedit pack which contains the latest filters.

Some people still seem to be having problems with the software on excelland. I have tried 3 different ISPs as well as in school and it works perfectly for me and some of my friends I asked to test downloads. But I keep getting reports about not working downloads and I simply have no clue why some people have problems. Clearly.. I can't solve what I can't properly assess. There's 3 ways I can have the software archive: One is to have a server with 100mb space, ftp-upload, no banners (or an easy ability to get rid of banners) and unlimited traffic (we're talking 90-100GB/month here). The second is to do it the way it's being done now, that is have the html pages and graphics on a server and run a php script which dynamically redirects all links. That requires 2 hostings, one with about 10-20mb, ftp-upload, no banners, php support and it should support about 15-20GB traffic/month and another that has 60+MB, ftp-upload, 80+GB traffic/month and no complaints about "external downloads" (in other words downloads that are coming directly from another site), and the 3rd is to setup a D-Base for the software so that the files can be placed wherever necessary. The 3rd option would require that somebody does all the work for me and that I only upload the most recent files and make links on the frontpage whereas the software page uses the d-base (which of course should also be updated daily). So you can see... it's a really complicated situation. I don't have time nor money (connection fees) to run the d-base thing so the solution with the php scripts is as far as I can go. This offers quite some kind of flexibility and if you think you have a better host for software than the current you can simply pull all software off the software page, upload it to another server (of course you have to use the exact same filenames, respecting cases, and directory names), give me l/p for the server and I can change the scripts to point to this other site.

Thanks to Infernix the hosting problem should be more or less solved now. The site is now on another server than the download archive which means that even in case the server with the software is down the site should be still accessible. The same will be done with doom9.org soon, for which I also have a more reliable software place (hopefully).

However, it also means that if you can't download a certain file you should first check if the problem persists with others, and if yes that simply means that the server on which the downloads run is down and you don't have to report it to me. Only if certain single files are inaccessible then I need to know about it.

It looks like I accidentally introduced a new month. I know most of you would like to have another month in the year of which your employers have never heard but unfortunately it was just a mistake on my part :(

I've removed some direct links in the guides to software but should I have missed something please let me know. As for not working links in the old news there's a small note on top of each of these pages saying that these pages will not be changed and that they might contain bad links. I don't have time to remove invalid links in old news. If you want some software you should always refer to the software page which is usually updated along with the news page and which contains pretty much all software you can download from my site.

By now I hope all my URLs are working for everyone. Strangely I never had any problems connecting to the primary sites on Saturday, Sunday and Monday so I think the problem some of you might have is also at least partially due to their internet provider. In any case: DOWNLOADS FROM THE FRONTPAGE OF http://go.to/doom9 ARE STILL DOWN!

I received a shitload of mails complaining about not working links even tough I wrote that downloads were down. I know you only mean to help but after a couple of mails it gets really frustrating. What else can I do than to write it on the frontpage? Make a Javascript popup window? Since I hate popups I wouldn't wanna inconvenience you with such things. But sometimes I really wonder if there are people who blindly click on every link they see on my frontpage instead of actually reading the news items first. I bet many downloaded the latest TMPG only to find out later that MPEG-2 encoding had been disabled. You could've saved you the download if you read the news first. You don't always have to have the latest version of a software, you should first check if it's worth downloading.

Some mail I got also pretty much accused me of being responsible for the downtime. In my country we have a saying that goes something like this: Don't look into the mouth of a horse you got for free. I'm running a completely free service here. If you're not happy with it you can go somewhere else. If you're not happy with the hosting you can set up another for me. If I were a millionaire I could pay for a decent hosting that supports 90-100GB traffic a month but since I'm not I rely on free hostings. A reader of mine is working on a better download way which allows the page to go on even tough the downloads are down but downtime will still happen from time to time. Even major websites sometimes go down, and they have multi million hostings with tons of backup servers and engineers standing by to fix something.

On the same account I still receive too many mails where people are not properly explaining their problems and do not provide the info I request on the contact page. This page is not there to annoy you but to help you. Without that info it'll take significantly longer to solve a problem and often I have to mail back and ask for further information. If you just took these 5-10 minutes to provide the info requested in the end we both save a lot of time since usually when somebody really bothers to compile the requested info after reading the mail I know the exact answer to the problem.

I'm truly sorry but the hosting situation is so bad that I've decided to move my page to this mirror where I don't have direct downloads. You can try doom9.org but if you can't get anything there you'll just have to be patient till the problem has been sorted out.

I've found out some more about the TMPG situation. The following comes directly from the official website: "To distribute MPEG-2 related software / hardware(either free or charged), distributor needs to have license from MPEG LA. Pro-G have made license agreement with MPEG LA LLC for the purpose of distributing TMPGEnc.
TMPGEnc does not include MPEG-2 encode function since distribution of MPEG-2 software causes license fee. On the other hand, we are preparing "TMPGEncSDK"(charged) for software developer who wish to introduce MPEG-2 encodes function of TMPGEnc."

Whether the change in MPEG-2 support resulted by legal threats or if Pro-G simply looked for a way to make money (because I doubt that the MPEG-2 version will only cost the amount of the licensing fee) will probably never be truly known but I think that the situation is a major blow for both free software in general and SVCD encoding specifically. I wonder how long it takes till I get the first C&D letters and have to take my SVCD packs off-line. At least I am now fully decided if software patents are concerned...

One thing tough: the new binary file is about 300KB larger than the old one. One would suppose that since a lot of functions have been removed the binary would be smaller than the old version. So maybe they just locked all MPEG-2 related functions and there will be some sort of unlock software - much like the unlocker for WinDVD - which allows the full use of the program. Do you get the point?

VobSub 1.24 is now on the server. Rename vobsub.dll to vobsub.vdr for VirtualDub or to vobsub.auf for AviUtl. Then there's Avisynth 1.0b3 & Premiere Plugin 0.28 which finally allows to use the 1.0beta and it should work with CCE even in multipass encoding. It also allows you to split. Make sure to read the readme file before you start multipass encoding. And last but not least the new AviUtl pack has been available for a day now, it includes English bicubic resize and scene change detection filters along with translated readme files.

And to all these people who like to have the MPAA after them they can now add "copyright" info and such to an AVI thanks to AviUtl. Read the DivX FAQ, general playback problems section for more info.

I hope the server trouble is now resolved. I tried to connect to my site in the morning and afternoon today and it succeeded both times. It's just that since this site generates an immense amount of traffic it's kinda hard to find a replacement so you'll have to live with some downtime. To make things worse the backup server was also (and still is as I'm writing this) down. Maybe you can bookmark the alternative URL: http://doom9.org points to another server.

DVD Decrypter 2.1 is out. It adds customizable default directory, adds "Decrypt using DVD Decrypter" to Explorer context menus, adds auto detect AC3 streams during ripping, enhanced AC3 info, full support of network shares and fixes numerous little bugs.

TMPGEnc 12b and it's VFP plugin are out. Now before you download please read the changelog. The first line is a big one: "Disabled MPEG2 related function." Now why the heck they removed what I consider TMPG's most important feature is not there anymore and I have no clue whatsoever why they removed it and there was nothing on the just opened tmpegenc.com website. Even stranger is that when you select the streamtype it appears as all options related to MPEG-2 encoding are still there but I was unable to actually encode. I can only guess that it's due to licensing issues since the page mentions something about licensing agreements with the MPEG LA.

Last but not least VobSub 1.24 now supports both VirtualDub and AviUtl, simply rename the file to *.vdr for VirtualDub or *.auf for AviUtl. I've also again updated the AviUtl pack which now contains two translated filters plus a readme to the scene detection change filter. I'll update the screenshots soon.

DVD2AVI 12/2 sources are out. FlaskMpeg 0.594h2pre3 is mostly bugfixes and uses a better audio decoder now. There's still no DRC (which spares you from finding the right normalizing values) but that should be in the next official FlaskMpeg version. cladDVD 1.65 incorporates DeCSS+ keysearch, completely rewritten keysearch routines and a better authentication.

And just when I wanted to go off-line I found another new tool: AviUtl 0.96g which now has a larger maximum framesize and is finally PAL compatible. However, the maximum framenumber limit still is there and it'll take a while to fix it so at the moment you'll have to limit the range of your DVD2AVI projects using the [ and ] buttons in DVD2AVI. Of course, AviUtl comes as usual with the m4c plugin and the English language patch and 2 interesting filters. I'm looking for people who are capable of translating the AviUtl filters and their instructions (readmes). If you're interested contact me immediately. And if somebody could translate the instructions to the AviUtl filter plugin kit that might also not be a bad idea since then we might have the chance to get some subtitle filters in AviUtl directly and won't have to invoke yet another program.

Last but not least PurpleMan managed to crack X-Men: You have to split the movie into VOB IDs using vStrip (vStrip @stream.lst -voout.vob), then encode VOB IDs 1-8 as normal at 23.976fps (even field first - as by default), then IVTC VOB ID9 (odd field first) in either TMPG or AviUtl and finally encode VOB IDs 10-23 as usual (even field first) in 23.976fps.

Yet another guide has been finished: The AviUtl guide is now online and it features some previously unexplored issues: Keyframes at scene changes are explained in detail as well as a properly working IVTC, which works even with movies where TMPGs auto IVTC fails.

There's just one catch: Currently the guide is written for DivX encoding but it can of course be used for everything: DVD2AVI -> AviUtl -> IVTC & resizing -> save project -> VFAPI -> VirtualDub (add subs) -> frameserving -> whatever MPEG encoder you like. That would add a lot of additional links to the currently very smooth guide which contains about all info needed. However, you may get to see the disadvantage of having only one guide when I update a guide that uses DVD2AVI.. under some circumstances you get strange looking screenshots. It's a bitch to have several guides that use the exact same program, either you link them all with each other as done in the basic DVD2AVI guide or you copy and past stuff together as done in the new AviUtl guide (where I took information of both the m4c and DVD2AVI guide).

And for those who've missed it: The special Intel FlaskMpeg version Tom's hardware guide tested is now available, along with the source code. Along with that I have yet another FlaskMpeg version (it's getting really hard to keep track of all these FlaskMpeg versions) by Miha which has an x78 optimized iDCT which output quality is really close to the reference iDCT quality wise while being much faster than the one in the original FlaskMpeg. The source is also available.

And to Dreamweaver: I want my anchors back. They suddenly disappeared and once again I had to take Frontpage since there's no way to make them appear again even though I changed the preferences. Maybe the update to v4.0 will fix that but I have to admit that after hearing almost everybody talk highly of Dreamweaver I'm more than a bit disappointed. Without Frontpage I wouldn't have been able to convert this site to the new layout (which was designed in Dreamweaver), it simply screwed up a whole bunch of pages.

Last but not least I've added the latest CD Autolauncher v1.4 and AVIFrate 1.10 which adds a digit more. The AviUtl pack and the AviUtl filter pack have also been updated with a bunch of filters. The new AviUtl pack is required if you want to encode according to the new AviUtl guide.