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Not that I know of. Divx;-) encoded versions are available on irc (I got mine on dalnet channel #x-files-central ) If you have a dvd player that will play vcds, you can use TmpEnc to convert them to mpeg format then use nero to burn a vcd. There are more detailed instructions and a list of vcd compatible players at http://www.vcdhelp.com

The blurb linking to the article makes a reference to DeCSS and how it didn't have to be cracked to copy the movies... says who?
There's nothing in the article about HOW the movies were ripped. If you visit a site like vcdHelp you can get all the information and software you need to blow past DeCSS and make VCDs, SVCDS, and DVDs at all kinds of quality levels. As long as you have the media to burn to, you can rip and convert those movies easily (but you're still breaking through DeCSS).

In fact by reading the article and seeing reference to movies that are stil in theatres or haven't been released, if we knew the source then it would be easier to divine the method of duplication.

If it leaks from the studio pre-copy-protection, I guess copying would be a cinch. If they taped it at a theatre, then you go back to vcdhelp, and with Vdub, TMPGEnc, and other tools you could custom create the dvd easily. Same with if it was post-copy-protection.
So unless they got it before protection was implemented, I think it would be safe to assume DeCSS bypass tools were used. But then again, assumption got us this story :) hehe.

VCD on the other hand doesn't work quite as well for me, mainly due to the constant bitrate (CBR) used in MPEG1 (SVCD uses variable bitrate (VBR) MPEG2). The CBR tends to make things extremely blocky/washed out with the poorly taped home videos (you know, we're not all human steadicams, jerky videos are a staple of modern living IMHO)...

About making an (S)VCD for free, it can be done. You use VirtualDub for video capture duties, TMPGEnc for MPEG1/MPEG2 encoding (as I think I said earlier, it also handles the sound duties, and has built-in templates for VCD, SVCD and DVD (in PAL and NTSC formats)) and GNU VCDImager for creating the BIN/CUE files to burn (advanced features include making semi-reasonable chapters and I think SVCD even supports using menus and stills). Two of the three tools suggested are even open-source/GPL'd (TMPGEnc is, unfortunately, closed-source, and the author(s) imply in some of the dialogues that they intend to charge $$$ for it in the future (they've been saying this for the past year, and they still do releases about once a month)). That leaves a video editting package (in the event you want to edit your videos or add titles, etc) and the actual CD burner hardware (which, with the prices of 16x/24x CD-RW drives hovering in the $100-170 range, is not an object generally). For video editting, the only viable option I've come across is Adobe Premiere.. if anyone has any suggestions on free/cheap video editting tools for Win32, I'm curious what other peoples experiences are. =) For more info on (S)VCD's, including compatibility with stand alone home DVD players, as well as tools and FAQ's on creation, I suggest the following--

VCDHelp.com

Doom9.org

There's other good sites, but those should be enough to get people going that are curious.

I took a look at the DVD-player compatibility chart [tech-report.com] in the Tech Report article mentioned yesterday

That list isn't very thorough. It lists about 20 players and only three kinds of media (DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW). If you want a much better (IMO) list, check out vcdhelp.com's DVD compatibility list. It has over 800 players and their compatibility with CDR, CDRW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, VCD, SVCD, XVCD, XSVCD, MP3s, miniDVD, and the bit rates that at which the players will play XVCDs, mp3s, etc.

DVD-RAM seems to be pretty much incompatible with anything else.

The others are a mix of "it might work, depending on your player or DVD-ROM drive".

Check out VCDHelp for a nice, concise summary. (Despite several typos and grammatical errors.) In particular they make the DVDForum vs. DVD+RW Alliance division clear.

For god's sake, all I want to do is backup my DVD's so that my I don't have to buy it again after my kid scratches it up.

If you haven't already, try this. Your kid won't notice the difference, and CD-Rs are dirt cheap. You also get to cut out the spam^H^H^H^Hpromos that Di$ney likes to put at the beginning of each DVD.

(Odds are you'd need the same techniques to rip the source DVD and reencode it to fit on a burnable DVD (assuming the original is >4.7GB...maybe stripping out extra languages and such would reduce the size enough for some movies).)

I've found that http://www.vcdhelp.com is a great site for anything dvd related. They also have a searchable matrix that includes heaps of useful information on players and recorders.

I've found that http://www.vcdhelp.com is a great site for anything dvd related. They also have a searchable matrix that includes heaps of useful information on players and recorders.

Actually, even Pioneer DV-535 plays VCD and SVCD. Except for multiple audio tracks and soft subs on SVCD - a shame. I think it should play X(S)VCD, too, but haven't checked. If it handled XSVCD with soft subs, I might be more interested.

And for more information about players and their capabilities, check out VCD Help DVD Player comparison chart.

Note that the program only lets you rip into Windows Media Format...

It would be a much more interesting product if it would let you rip to a more open format, perhaps letting you burn VCDs.

I haven't tried this yet as my TiVo spits out MPEG-2, but this page at VCDHelp says TMPGEnc will accept Windows Media as input. This page describes transcoding to MPEG-2 for burning to SVCD; if for some strange reason you want to use VCD (which uses MPEG-1) instead of SVCD, try this page.

Note that the program only lets you rip into Windows Media Format...

It would be a much more interesting product if it would let you rip to a more open format, perhaps letting you burn VCDs.

I haven't tried this yet as my TiVo spits out MPEG-2, but this page at VCDHelp says TMPGEnc will accept Windows Media as input. This page describes transcoding to MPEG-2 for burning to SVCD; if for some strange reason you want to use VCD (which uses MPEG-1) instead of SVCD, try this page.

Likewise, I expect that there will be very few WMA or WMF DVDs. And if there are, we'll just refuse to buy them... or buy them and return them to demonstrate our dissatisfaction more clearly. Much like the copy-protected CDs.

Really, there's a large installed base of standard DVD players, and very little incentive to get a WM* compatible one. I expect there will be very few such disks.

Judebert

We're out of dynamite. What we need is a plan!

The site vcdhelp.com is a good site that lists just about every dvd player with it's ability to play stuff from different regions. Just about every player has a "region hack" that allows a different region to be selected.

I know everyone knows this (just thought I'd mention for the newbie)

SCSI (and I think IEEE 1394) can interleave their request/responses. Hence if you're getting a wodge from an IDE/ATA100 drive, you effectively jam it up (and this is also the only way to achieve the burst transfer). I am guessing that most OS's and drivers chunk up requests so that IDE appears to interleave things. Because of this, SCSI is faster on day-to-day useage even ignoring it's faster transfer rate. The same qualification goes for IEEE 1394 if I'm right.

Also, you should be aware that there isn't an ATA100 drive around that can actually put through 100MB/s, that's just the bus-speed, the 7200 drives get closest. However, you normally get 2HD's on one channel, i.e. sharing the 100MB/s bandwidth.. it all gets complex + messy.. similar problems to good old-fashioned networking.

That was all off topic, but my 2d is that IEEE 1394 is great.. watching my Sony camera stream video to an iMac in realtime was quite funky when you realise the implications :) (I don't think there are scsi ports on many cameras ;)

Some links:

As someone mentioned earlier, all important drivers: http://linux1394.sourceforge.net/

Grab your vids: http://www.schirmacher.de/arne/dvgrab/index_e.html

more stuff, lots of links: http://www.coastweb.de/dv/

Also, DVD-RW isn't the only option, many DVDplayers will play VCDs too (use only a CD-RW)
http://www.vcdhelp.com/

hey ho.. moderate me for off topic :)

Occasionally I hear talk about creating a Linux-based/GPL/Open Source/whatever TIVO equivilent. For all you programmers who are working on this, I've got an idea for you:

1. Create a database of all known TV Station watermark logos.
   
2. Create a routine to *detect* those logos during playback.
   
3. Enable an option to only show video frames which contain those logos, thus filtering out commercials with uncanny precision.
   
4. Blur the crap out of those logos with colors from the surrounding pixels, so we don't have to look at 'em.
   
5. Instead of having a subscription model that keeps your TV Guide up to date and sends back information on what the viewer is watching, use instead a subscription model that, every so often, updates the database of TV Station icons. This way, if the networks catch on, we got 'em stumped.

Another poster brought up the notion of archiving TV shows to CD. Personally, I see this as time-shifting for my children, so that when they're old enough to understand decent TV (I'm thinking Samurai Jack and West Wing), it will be available. I'm also not counting on the quality of our shows getting better from a writing and aesthetic viewpoint just because HDTV is around the corner, or that the shows I like will be released on DVD.

Anyway. For those of us who like to burn our own VCDs, publicly-available authoring tools like VCDImagerGUI and TMPGEnc have downloadable filters that can blot out those pesky station ID logos from captured footage, or replace them with interpolated video data that doesn't totally suck to look at. Check out VCDHelp.com for lots of useful information on capturing, converting, and authoring VCDs, and where to get the tools to do it.

Tatsujin

a good site is:

vcdhelp.com

which is generally for VCD's, which will only play on "compatible" dvd players.

However, they have lots of background information, including a huge section on DVD players with compatibility information - showing which will play DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. Also sections on all kinds of other issues. I believe they have the domain dvdhelp.com, but there's not much to it.

They also have a huge, well documented and well organized Links section to other information.

a good site is:

vcdhelp.com

which is generally for VCD's, which will only play on "compatible" dvd players.

However, they have lots of background information, including a huge section on DVD players with compatibility information - showing which will play DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. Also sections on all kinds of other issues. I believe they have the domain dvdhelp.com, but there's not much to it.

They also have a huge, well documented and well organized Links section to other information.

a good site is:

vcdhelp.com

which is generally for VCD's, which will only play on "compatible" dvd players.

However, they have lots of background information, including a huge section on DVD players with compatibility information - showing which will play DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. Also sections on all kinds of other issues. I believe they have the domain dvdhelp.com, but there's not much to it.

They also have a huge, well documented and well organized Links section to other information.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/
This site will help you to make your own VideoCDs, SVCDs or
DVDs from sources like DVD, Video, TV, Cam or downloaded
movie clips like DivX, MOV, RM and ASF.

http://zor.org/svcrunderground
StreamBox VCR is a Download Manager for Microsoft Windows.
It is specifically made to facilitate the recording of streaming audio and video media.

http://www.projectmayo.com/
DivX ;-) Galore

Of course, maybe it won't matter.

Maybe new dvd players will just add the new formats to their list of compatible formats. Current DVD players support lots of data formats: dvd, cd, vcd. Better ones support mp3 and svcd/xvcd/xsvcd. Lots of current inexpensive players have more than one laser to support most of the different physical formats: dvd, cd, cd-r, cd-rw, and even the newer dvd-r, dvd-rw, dvd+rw.

Check out http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php

I predict if you can fit a whole movie in 500mb, then we'll soon be seeing a way of decoding these movies and putting them on a CDR. Then people will be motivated to take advantage of this - and keep them forever.

There's a lot of people out there creating VCDs. It's getting pretty easy to put video on a VCD, and many dvd players will play it (even though some don't even mention that they will). Some dvd players will only play VCDs encoded on CDRW's since they're closer to the laser frequency of DVD's than CDR's.

The original format is VCD, which is 352x240 at 1150kbits/sec and will play on most dvd players. Then there's svcd, xvcd and xsvcd with higher bit rates and faster drive spin speeds.

a good info site is: http://www.vcdhelp.com

It's mostly PC-oriented. I'd like to hear about people who've created VCDs under linux. (most win98 users can't create video files greater than 2g)

This is not news at all, it's well known you shouldn't buy a multiregion player but a "region selectable" player. Before i'd buy a new player i'd make sure there're hacks available for that player.

Stop complaining and check this out: http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayershack.php

There is - it is called VCD.

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

OK, a little information:

Pioneer is releasing a consumer-level DVD-R this month. You can get it for about $800 once it's out.

The fact is, DVD-RAM is not taking off because, simply, it requires a ~$500 drive and is not compatible with DVD, and the average person does not need 5GB of removable storage.

miniDVD is a great idea -- DVD-quality MPEG2 video on a CD-R, but few DVD players are compatible. So even if you make that awesome miniDVD, chances are good that whomever you send it to can't play it in their DVD player (although any computer fast enough to decode the MPEG2 can).

VCD is a cool format (basically a special format of disc with MPEG1 video), and probably 2/3 of DVD players support it, but they are a pain to author, take a long time to encode, and quality is poor (VHS-quality at best).

SVCD is nice quality (not as good as DVD, but definitely better than VHS), but has far less compatibility than VCD in consumer DVD players. Then there's XVCD and XSVCD, a couple of esoteric formats that hardly work on any DVD players.

The final analysis: DVD-R is going to be big, not because it is necessarily the "best", but because it crosses over from computers to consumer electronics, has a large installed base of compatible hardware, and is suitable for a wide variety of tasks, which it will perform very well (data storage, video, etc). Just wait until the DVD-R MP3 players are out...
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I just love it when someone of "superior intelligence" has to insult someone who they think they're correcting, when in fact they're the ones who usually don't know wtf they're talking about. Stand-alone DVD support for CDRW disks is far above 50%, and I'd even venture to guess it's close to 80-90%. CDR, on the other hand, is supported by far fewer standalone players. The laser in a standalone DVD player is very compatible with the type of dye used in CDRW disks, but very few have a laser that can read the dye used in CDR disks. A quick search of the list of CDRW-compatible players at VCDHelp.com reveals 387 players that can read a CDRW.

The article here is talking about putting DVD MPEG-2 video on CD-R

Which is called SVCD, or Super Video Compact Disc. It holds 40 to 80 minutes of MPEG level 2 video at 480x480 and MP2 audio on a CD-R disc. A few DVD players and most recent x86 PCs can play SVCD.

This is no big deal, they're basically talking about VCD (Video CD) burning. Roxio and Nero can do that, too. A really good reference site is www.vcdhelp.com that tries to explain the ins and outs of the various media. The problem is that not all home DVD players can read these disks. I've been trying to create VCDs from my miniDV input for a few days now, without any success. *sigh*
-----------------

I used to use DivX;-) for backups also but I prefer to use VCD or SVCD format instead. The benefit... if your standalone DVD player supports VCD AND takes CDRs then you can watch your backups in a standalone DVD player. So far, DivX;-) encoded movies can only be viewed on a computer.

I like being able to take home movies (I have a digital camcorder that transfers the film over firwire), convert them to VCD, burn them onto a CD, then watch them on my DVD player. IMO, a much better way to view and preserve home movies.

VCD info

BTW, it's possible to convert DivX;-) into VCD but it takes HOURS. You can get info on how to do it at the above link.

If you want a list of players and what they're capable of, check out here.

Here is a large listing of success rates dealing with CD-R/RW/VCDs on various DVD players. It was posted earlier, but never got modded up so I decided to post it again. ;) http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.htm

Check to see if your player is on this list:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.htm

I had this issue when trying to cut VCD of digital pictures to view on my DVD player. I had to buy a specific brand that had been proven to work, and to also use CDRW media which has better reflectivity.

Here ya go, this is a very helpful list for anyone considering purchasing a DVD player and is a fan of VCDs and SVCDs or playing CD-Rs for whatever reason:

Searchable database
Or
Complete List

disc-chord

Here ya go, this is a very helpful list for anyone considering purchasing a DVD player and is a fan of VCDs and SVCDs or playing CD-Rs for whatever reason:

Searchable database
Or
Complete List

disc-chord

I used this site when I bought my player

Great resource to check.

There is too a way to convert AVI/DivX/MPG to VCD and SVCD!

However, I see little need for VCD anymore. If you really, really, really need to see your illegal bootleg screeners on your TV, why not just get a video out card? If you must balk at the cost of a video out card, then why do you have a computer? a burner? a DVD player? VCD will die whenever they start releasing DivX--or better yet, MicroDVD--capable hardware players.

In any event, for all this time and effort we spend on this, we could just go buy a hardware DVD player and buy the titles legally.

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