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Copying A DVD To A CD?
Kreed wrote to us about an article on Tom's Hardware that details the process of compressing the content of DVDs down to CD length. Pretty cool compression.
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I could swear my clock says September 13th, not April first.
Reviewing something for the pure geek nature of it all, regardless of the wrath the RIAA will bring down ;)
:)
Yeah.. let's see them try to silence Tom
My idea is to scan a DVD into Photoshop, then resize it way the hell down and burn it onto a cd. Or even better, just photocopy the disc, cut out the circles, and glue or tape them onto some of your old AOL promo discs. Try it, it works!
Compression ratios like that make me very happy. Any guesses to what ogg video will look like? I'm anxiously awaiting ogg vorbis (audio format) myself. I hope this project catches on, because I would like to see a suite of fully-opena and free multimedia formats. Vorbis promises to be very flexible, and it would be nice if we could get the same kind of compression in MPEG-4 into a free package, and this looks like it could be the outlet for it, with the right modifications.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
[Let's assume this is a valid idea for a moment- I've seen posts claiming otherwise, but then again, I watched my roommate pull 530 megs from a zip disk with recovery tools, so anything is possible.]
I mean, if you could crunch a DVD onto a CD and retain any sort of quality, would the software driver used to read the CD with the information be the same as the DVD drivers? Not likely- it would have to deal with some pretty intense decompression, I should think... As such, what's to keep the Open Source Community from devising some sort of driver for this process? Since it's no longer DVD, it shouldn't be a serious problem....
If I remember, there's a federal law that stipulates you are allowed one [1] backup of any piece of software you own on the basis that it be used to restore/replace the original in the event of its destruction or loss, etceteras. I don't think it specified a change in media, or in the tools necessary to read that data- but it DOES mean that I'm legally allowed to back up any DVDs I might buy.
This isn't news, and it isn't something I want to hear about...
It *is* very cool, and arguably fair use, but unfortunately, if the media ever really gets wind of this, we'll see the entire stupid mp3 war over 'mp4', only ten times worse.
Ok, I suppose it's unavoidable, but if you thought all the mp3 stuff we've heard about for the past few years was stupid, well, this will be ten times stupider with the MPAA backing it.
Also, I suppose no one will mention Microsoft in this, even though everyone traffics in '.asf' files. (Just like everyone talks about Napster, even though many college students share their hard drives, and use Windows File Sharing as their mp3-pirating platform...) Of course, the entire format/medium issue is incredibly stupid; it's just a tool. But rational argument hasn't stopped these people so far...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
In a year's time, most if not all new PCs will be shipping with DVD drives. And most of those who have not upgraded will not be target customers for the pirate CDs this will presumably produce. Likewise, anyone who uses this technology for their own copying obviously already has a DVD drive.
So who would really use this?
Oh, who I am kidding? I didn't read the article. But where can I get more of those pictures of Carrie Ann Moss?
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sounds cool. However, wouldn't you first have to decrpyt the contents of the DVD? That means the DECSS is probably used. Hmmm, what are the implications of this for the MPAA vs 2600 case? This would allow people to pirate DVDs onto CDs, thus bypassing the CSS.
Hell, you didn't even read what Hemos said..
Wouldn't it be wise to keep a lid on this until the 2600 / DeCSS affair concludes? The last thing we want is the MPAA being able to easily shoot down one of our key arguments by simply pointing to an article on tomshardware.com. I'm all for cool new technology, but what ever happened to journalistic responsibility? You're either for free speech or you're against it, and Mr. Pabst unfortunately seems to be taking the latter position.
from the FlaskMPEG home page:
The authors of FlasKMPEG have come across a program called 'FlasKMPEG DeCSS'.
We want to express very clearly that such program or any other derived from the original is no way related with the official 'FlasKMPEG' project in any way. FlasKMPEG sources are available under the GPL license and it's totally out of our responsibility the legal implications caused by the modifications or variations from other developers performed over our code. The original FlasKMPEG can't and won't read files from encrypted DVDs, and even then, copyrighted material should not be processed with FlasKMPEG.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Things get real blurry in fast-moving scenes and pans, and while DivX is cool for pirating purposes, I certainly don't see why someone who owns the movie would want to do that.
If you care for my subjective evaluation (and are able to get the idea), compressing a DVD to DivX to fit on one CD is to video what compressing an audio CD to 96 kbps MP3. Certainly "acceptable" to enjoy the music, but there won't be a single second when you won't be able to tell that this is really DivX.
Who wants to bet that Tom's Hardware will be invaded by a legion of lawyers?
Anyone?
Oh, well, they can escape with this car and keep serving their site
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
It links to a site which explains how to and has links to tools to circumvent a technological protection measure. The tools and information on circumventing technological protection measures has been censored in the United States. You are hereby ordered to delete this story immediately and give us the names of the offenders.
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the right to profit outweigh your right to free speech.
Sincerely yours,
Jack Valenti
Am I being sucked back to late 1999? This is Slashdot. We're nerds. Who doesn't know about DIVX yet? Seriously, why is this news to anyone in our genre? This is like announcing that someone JUST found a way to emulate NES games...
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Let me give you the lowdown
Is the compression algorithm published?
If so,are there any patent issues concerning its use?
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I did not see what specs are needed to push the playing at speed.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Well its been coming for some time now. Tom's Hardware aint what it was when Voodoo;s and p2's came out. Now this is something new.. (NOT)
We all know that DivX rocks.. hell just go onto your fav. IRC server (not slashnet thank god) and check out moviez etc. Almost everything you can imagine is now popping up in the divX codec....
This article is nothing short of "So you wanna trade moviez ehh... rolling your own."
We are not impressed.
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
My laptop, which originally had Windows NT 4.0 on it, doesn't have a DVD drive, and to add one now that I've switched to an OS that supports DVD (Win2k), would be really expensive. If I could get movies from the DVD drive on my home PC onto CD, I could watch movies on my DVD-less laptop while travelling. I consider that to be a good (and fair) use for the technology.
This proves everything people been saying before you can not stop pirating people will find ways around it.
Now that PC owners have pirated everything under the sun, one thing is clear: Physical media is obsolete. Anything you put on a disc can and will be pirated ad nausem. To solve this, all media must be put on pay-per-usage streaming servers, and media makers must convince users to have fast internet connections and small hard drives while protecting their customers' privacy and convincing those customers that they are safe. There must also be a method by which children, inapplicable for credit cards, can pay money over the internet as fast as they can click a hyperlink, and it must be secure and documentable. Piracy will continue to blossom unfettered until all of these measures are enacted.
I assure you in real life, you can barely tell teh different from the original dvd, a still shot is kinda misleading. It looks 99% the same as the original, your not going to notice if you have a fast machine.
Jeff Knox
Now I may still be a novice but I thought that DVDs were already compressed in some manner that would allow for storage. So how would this be exactly new. I can take a text file that's 2-4Gb and compress it down to maybe 50M or so depending on the algorithm and the repetiveness of the text. Aren't DVDs compressed with mpeg2/3?
Respond to s
I think we should not that you can't play these discs in your DVD player. It requires the computer for playback. That's the part that sucks cause I want to be able to make copies of the movies I rent. Some movies are worth buying, but I'd like to have small collection of movies that I could watch if I'm bored, even if I don't get the menus and features. Here's to wishin'
WURD!!
Excuse me, no one traffices in .asf. Well, not no one, thats the comment format for modem users to traffic illegal movies, that or SMR navi stuff. DIVX is the common format for dvd rips, and Mpeg1 (VCD) is the common format for movies still in theatres.
It may be common at your school to do windows filesharing, but FTP is much more common. There is a large use of napster though, but not really to share, to get new stuff. Napster also is probably more prevalent also in people without a large knowledge base about computers, who doesnt know how to setup ftp or filesharing.
Jeff Knox
Then again I'm not satisfied with anything less than 192kbps in my mp3s, maybe some other people aren't as picky.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
the dmca is a respectable law? respectable by whom? if you happen to be a corporate pig, i imagine that you have a healthy respect for the fact that congressmen are far too easily bought and/or fooled into making ethically repugnant bills into laws. the spirit of the dmca is almost diametrically opposed to the spirit of the original copyright laws of the united states. they were intended to promote and foster the arts; the dmca is intended to promote and foster grotesquely exorbitant profits for corporate interests, as well as strip away consumer rights.
If you can watch DivX movies on a Mac, then plug your iBook into your TV.
The other use is what it will undoubtedly be used more for, and that's quite obviously to do what the MPAA said all along was going to be the use of DeCSS: to illegally copy movies. I sure can see going to blockbuster, renting a few movies, and making a copy of them, although it's still not as useful or as easy as just making a copy of a vhs tape.
1. Put DVD on color copier with sticky paper and press the copy button
2. Cut out around the circles with your scissors (ask an adult if you're not old enough yet, skript kiddie)
3. Pull off the paper backing and affix to your favorite label-less cd. Use one of those cd labelling spindles for extra 31337 lineup.
</sarcasm>
--Clay
Its a great codec, not open sources, but still provides excellent almost DVD quality.However, its not practical for regular use. It takes a good 10-15 hours on a fast machine, like Athlon 650, to do this. And a decent amount of work on your part. Its worth it for movie piraters to spend this time, but for the average person to spend all this effort to put his DVD on CD, I question the value. Just go download the pirated rip of your DVD, its legal cause ya own it, and you save your self the time.
Jeff Knox
Ok, does the Motion Picture Experts Group have their version numbering scheme completely out of control or what?
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
Basically I already thought of the coaster idea and the frisby idea and then tried something new. I wanted a good mirror one day but was out away from one so I just used the CD. It works with less actual photonic energy (I measured it) than a mirror and it's extremely portable.
Respond to s
I think the real point of this is to show off MPEG-4. Hell, I'm sure impressed.
-Waldo
yep, my dual PIII 550 box probably won't cut it.
When is AMD supporting SMP?
I'm still waiting for AMD SMP before next upgrade.
.
Seriously...speaking of DivX encoding (or MPEG-4 or whatever you want to call it) will all you people out there stop leaving these files with the .AVI extension? Is it that hard to put use a new extension like .divx or .dvx? Are Windows users that lazy that they can't be bothered to register a new extension to Media Player? Maybe we need to get some of those DivX warez groups on IRC to change the name of the file before they release them. Just imagine the chaos that would ensue if people started releasing .WAV files encoded with using the MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3 codec instead of .MP3 versions.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
PS - I'm looking at you Microsoft. Quit naming a billion files ".DOC" when not single version is intercompatible.
Bleah! The one thing I miss from the Macintosh is the fact that every file had a four byte header that identified the type of file so that this whole extension mess was unnecessary.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
- Warning:
This is kinda like selling guns unrestricted and saying "please don't shoot anyone, cuz that would be against the law". Oh wait, you guys already do that.The author declines any responsability from the use of this program. This software can not be used with copyrighted material because doing so, would infringe many laws all around the world.
The author doesn't intend to promote piracy by any means, and the scope of the application is limited to video processing tasks with home made digital video material.
Joke, okay. Calm down and don't flame.
But seriously, I want the ability to back up my DVDs, and play them back on machines without DVD drives, in exactly the same way that I can backup audio CDs to tape, and play them in my car.
I don't see anything in the least bit illegal about FlaskMPEG, but I'm sure that the MPAA lawyers will be doing their best to take a different view on that.
I wonder whether this could have any impact on the DeCSS situation? Surely, it would be better to let people view DVDs unrestricted under Linux, rather than be a pain in our ass and encourage us to start backing our DVDs up on CD.
cheers,
G
Yup, DVDs are lower resolution than HDTV, yet another reason why they suck.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
Arguably, this may not be that big a contribution to piracy, because you need a fast processor and a lot of ram to decode the signal that well, shoot, it's cheaper to buy the dvds you want rather than assemble a Ghz box just to play them.
Think beyond the the storage media for a second: How about watching movies over a streaming broadband connection? The ability to archive film and video with unparalleled efficiency?It's time[jonkatz]to take the first tentative steps towards decommodifying video, just as mp3s have given us the chance to easily sample music we may never have otherwise heard.[/jonkatz] Yeah, a lot of people will get pissed off, and someone will get sued, but the possibilities are endless.
Back when DivX;-) first appeared, I took a DVD, a handful of programs, and a lot of spare time to see what I could come up with. Here are my results:
But it's not that easy, either. If you're a CS major, you should be able to do it in three or four hours. If you're an average Joe, good luck. You'll need it. MPAA, your day is coming, but it's not here yet. (See below.)
No kidding here, guys. On a PIII 350mghz, playback was choppy. Tom here used an 800mghz Thunderbird. You probably need around that to get decent playback.
It took, on my aforementioned PIII, about seven hours to encode half an hour of Wallace and Gromit. Even with a smokin' computer, you'll probably need to let it run for a while.
It's not perfect, guys. Especially in scenes with lots of movement of colours (like an explosion), you get some fuzzies. It's about the quality difference from mp3 from cd, though, I'd say. I certainly wouldn't mind watching a movie in DivX;-) format, but it's no home theatre.
DeCSS makes it easy to rip a movie quickly, but other programs exist that are just as simple. I've heard rumours of one that brute-forces the key to the DVD--anybody know about this one? At any rate, I don't think it can be argued that DeCSS's even main purpose is for this sort of thing. It's obvious that DeCSS is used more often for some easy-listening music and t-shirt wear than for piracy.
Conclusion:
MPAA, your day is coming. But take note that it's because of DivX;-), just like the RIAA's problems are mp3 (not RealJukebox). As for DeCSS? You're barking up the wrong tree with that one. Of course, if you're worried about people disabling region codes and/or watching their DVDs on their Linux machines, DeCSS is your man.
Dlugar, bearer of the spork
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
I'm reaaly surprised I don't see more links to sciam, they're usually more informed than most internet sites (for example they had a very good rundown of the whole cesium-gas-faster-than-light story.)
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
Really, we know how to do GOOD video compression, we just don't have the space/time to do it with modern computers.
I mean, if you do the following, you'll get great encoding, but it is EXPENSIVE.
step 1: drop the color space resolution in half, the eye can't see it. (this is the first step in JPEGs)
step 2: Resample the image in time to 30fps (this is ideal)
step 3: resample the image in space to a hexagonal, instead of a rectangular grid, this spreads the corner distance problem.
step 4: resample at half the luminance resolution, compress, but cycle the resampling offset in time. Persistance of vision reconstructs the proper luminance map.
step 5: search the (much reduced by this point) 3d matrix for domain/range mapings (this is the fractal step, it takes much processor power) You probably need to select smallish block sizes for this in time, or it gets much harder. Of course, the bigger the chunk you encode at a time, the better the encoding ratio.
and to view it, just reverse steps 5 and 3.
Its kind of like strong AI, its easy to say 'search for domain/range mappings', and it's easy to write code to do it. It just takes more memory and processor time than we have available to give useful results.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
i admit that i would use this, potentially quite a bit. of course it would be illegal (the way i would do it) but that's for me to decide, and it's no different from what i already do with cds. when my friends or i buy cds we often burn multiple copies of them and distribute (or at least rip mp3s and share those). the fact is, i bought 50 cds at compusa a couple weeks ago for 20 cents each. that's ridiculously cheap. there's no reason if a friend of mine bought a dvd that i wouldn't ask for a copy and i'd certainly be willing to drop 20 cents on it. the issue is not, IMO, making dvds available to those without dvd players. it is making copies of dvds very very cheaply.
About a year ago, I was visiting a friend at Caltech. After giving me a tour of the underground mazes and such, he was telling me about some projects he'd seen on campus. Apparently, some students had successfully copied a DVD to a CD-R using a CD-R drive. I never found out more about it, but I was pretty amazed.
Warning bells:
- 11 times better compression - this sounds too good to be true.
- NTSC DVDs are 640x480, PAL DVDs are 720x576 but those comparison pictures aren't even 640x480
- some of the "Resizing Quality Options" (which are interpolation algorithms) are said to "causes a relatively big data stream".
While I don't know the specifics of the mpeg4 format (and the article doesn't mention any technical detail, so don't flame me, correct me), I'm guessing mpeg4 uses wavelets.Wavelet compression is potentially(1) the best image compression I know of (ignoring fractal here for now). I was under the impression it offers about a 20% gain over DCT etc, not a 1000% gain.
Anyway, the thing with many forms of wavelet compression is that their result is resolution independent - you can decompress them to any resolution you like, and if the detail isn't there then it will just look a bit blurry. I believe this is what's happening here. While the video stream might be decoding to a NTSC res image, it probably has no more detail than a 320x240 image that has been scaled up in Photoshop.
I doubt the object compression mentioned in the article is any use for a video stream as the video compression program doesn't know what is an object and what isn't - it just sees pixels. Sure it can deduce that that bunch of pixels is moving in that direction, but so does mpeg2. Having objects in the scene is more useful for computer generated video where the encoder can be feed object information about the scene (or feed the scene in layers) and not just what the scene looks like.
In summary, looks cool and convenient, but won't have nearly the detail of a DVD. As to DeCSS, well you can probably pull the same stunt with a laserdisc player and a video-in, the image quality might end up slightly worse as noise from the composite video signal/format will throw the compression somewhat, but you still end up with a high quality, indefinitely reproduceable movie on a CD.
1) I said potentially because it's quite a loose term and DCT etc could be considered wavelet compression - whether it's any good depends on what waves you choose and how you implement it.
Has anyone used FlasK MPEG and found this to be true? Or false? Because software that can rip DVDs but can't rip the encrypted ones seems to have very limited utility to me...
--Cobey
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is"
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Not real MPEG 4 unless it use the file format for MPEG 4 which is also Quicktime's. Also the new standard was just approved in May for MPEG 4 and also the there was a new pdf for quicktime's file format.
PS: Quicktime has a file format and is also an API.
Quicktime is standard, and codec are not.
There is a rather significant difference between being able to read media and being able to create it. Yes, DVD drives are ubiquitous. But what percentage of users own a DVD burner? CD-RW/burners are cheap. DVD burners are not.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
The language of the article above compared to the actual images within the article and observed quality are strikingly different.
I would score the difference as a 10 on the "I never had sexual relations with that woman" scale.
The difference in the propaganda and the actual images/sound has been a feature at all the levels of the compression discussion. Most of these disconnects come back to some fundamental misunderstandings about a little thing called "playback fidelity".
Playback Fidelity Recap follows:
As anyone who has ever chased "great sound" will know, half-decent stereo systems start at around $3000 with $1500 of these dollars being spent on the speakers alone. Listening to MP3s on half -decent stereo systems is a painful experience - fortunately outlawed as "cruel and unusual punishment".
But there are (at least) two other forces at work in the world of sound. Firstly, the bald fact that very very few people listen to music on half-decent stereo systems. Secondly, the bald fact that for around 20 years, the people making the music have had access to technologies known collectively (of course) as "compression". This is the process whereby, in post-production, the "raw" recorded sound is "dumbed down" or "compressed" to fit the sound qualities of most people's playback equipment. It is lossy compression - as parts of the sound are "thrown away" to concentrate on the most "noticed" parts.
This 20(odd)year process has resulted in a number of things, including the incredible "bass" that people feel that they get from ghetto blaster sized and priced playback units and (standard) car stereos. Also, people have become accustomed to the "compressed" sound and have actually come to really like it. Try playing these same tracks on half decent stereos (actually, don't) the experience is very different. Examples of extreme compression would include most rap/dance music, Britany Spears et al, etc. etc. Or really any music made for people with limited access to high quality playback.
And so at the playback fidelity that most people experience (PC speakers - $100) MP3s of course sound great. Likewise, at the playback fidelity of television tubes that are tuned for VHS in PAL or NTSC, I bet that DVD video ripped to 750MB looks fine.
Get a monitor quality TV set (you'll probably be able to afford one in a few years) - and suddenly VHS is unwatchable, free-to-air has chunks missing, cable "rips" every half minute or so, and DVD is almost acceptable, but you'll secretly hunger for something more.
I feel that playback fidelity shouldn't be forgotten when claims like "Barely noticible quality loss" are made.
besides that id like to mention that people should be way more exsited about this. people don't seem to relize that in about 2 years the MPAA is going to totally freak out because napster-forvideo will have every freaking movie and video for download.
that and your 2.5ghz computer can record a whole movie to a tiny 700megs on your 2.5 terrabyte drive.
think about it!
-Jon
oh ya, Tom didn't mention that DiVX is the actually Microsoft MPEG v4, just cracked to remove the copyright stuff. how they got hold of it, i can't tell you. also Microsoft and Real seem to have slightly better codecs now, Microsoft Video V7 (why 7? ,marketing) and Real 8, both are REALLY freaking amazing. even better then standard MPEG4, which as someone pointed out is bassicly Quicktime, which uses the sorenson codec. Not that Quicktime isn't da shit, it is.
this is my sig.
is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological protection measure
has limited commercially significant purposes or uses other than circumvention
or is marketed for use in circumventing TPMs (Technological Protection Measures)
If you were to make a program that, lets say is a full featured media player, which plays just about every type of media format there is, and one of the small options in the program would to take a dvd and decrypt it, and save it to a file, would it then still be labeled as such a device? If DeCSS wasn't distributed until it was built into a linux player, would it have been ok at that point? I was reading up on the BETA Max case, something about camcorders, saying that they were legal because their main purpose was to film home videos, not make illegal copies of copyrighted movies. I realize that if you had a media player that could play all kinds of formats, you may as well make it able to play DVD's as well (lets assume this is on a linux box), so for those of you wanting to flame me for that, replace it with a full fledged backup program or whatever. Any thoughts?
Geist
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn't exist.
It's news that Tom posted it, but is it really news that this can be done? Wasn't this covered many moons ago? This has been going on for quite some time so far... a year almost?
It's great that Tom posted it.. but... The ripped-off-from-microsoft-NDA-code reverse-engineered non-open-source badly-named DivX codec is hardly news....
It is remarkable that consciousness of the importance of MPEG-4 has leaked out into the wider, technical (though not necessarily hacker) community. There was an interesting column in Scientific American last month with history and some analysis that complements this article.
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Look at the two images from the Matrix... yes, the mpeg4 one is quite respectable, but it's NOT nearly as good. I'd say this DOESN'T measure up to mp3, in compression vs. "seems-almost-as-good"-ness.
Look in particular at the tip of her nose, the color in her cheecks, the stalk of the phone cord, the hand; it looks like the image was scaled by 50% in both directions, and then blown back up, leaving blocky pixels (much like the photoshop joke in this thread).
Even at extremely high ppi, on a 1600x1200 display, I can see the loss of chroma detail and the blockiness of the pixels... it must be VERY noticeable when the same image is blown up to full screen. And I'm not even a home-theater geek!
Sure, sure, this is a still, and it would be less noticeable moving (or maybe it would be worse... humans can see "noise" pretty well around edges).
Don't get me wrong, this is very cool tech, and I'm glad it leaked into our hands... this tech has it's place, but it is NOT a drop-in replacement for DVD discs...
The quality is just not there.
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Mucous membranes are the part of your brain that, like, make you think about mucous. --Beavis
Hmm...can we say slashdoted?
anyone got a mirror of the page yet?
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Sig Return: 204 No Content
Given the amount of hassel setting up to burn a single copy of a DVD movie requires - so you can watch it on your computer - verses the cost of a DVD today - and the loss in quality of the resulting picture & sound is this really worth the effort?
I can see the use of the technology for burning Home Movies onto something that can be shared and might not deteriorate as quickly as MagTape.
Yes it is Way Cool that we can do this. But is seems like a lot of work to copy a damn movie. Just my $0.02
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss
The artifacts noticed in the still frame would not be noticed in motion.
Nobody will dispute that DVD is much higher quality than the mp4 version at 10x smaller size.
THe point is, the full-screen quality of movies converted this way to mp4 is more than tolerable. WAYY better than VCD, wayy better than VHS, just not quite DVD. The audio track is 128kbps mp3 (or something similar in wma), which is also not dolby digital, but quite adequate.
And if you don't like it.. nobody forces you to use it.
Yes they might already have a DVD drive, but they most likely don't have a DVD-R/ram, which is the point of the article: MPEG-4 allowing the possibility of compressing a DVD onto a CD-R.
The most likely outcome of this would be renting/borowing a DVD and copying it to a CD-R to watch as many times as your heart desires.
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is"
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, John Cage's 4'33" is sort of open source in the sense that it can be modified. The piece can be played by any number and type of musicians, and need not last 4'33" at all. On the other hand, it must be in three movements, and their length must be determined randomly if the "official" timings are not used.
More info here.
I suppose you really mean "released under the Open Content License" though.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
16:51: I'm still laughing as you read this. Or this.
(I will endeavour to keep you updated)
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
first you guys post links to DeCSS and now you give us links on what do to after that :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
DViX with its ability to get near-DVD quality movie down to small enough sizes to fit some movies of CD will become to the MPAA what MP3 is to the RIAA...
Also of note is that playback of ogg jumps on my P166, but fine a P200 (exact same setup).
Of course now on my 750 66Mhz either side doesn't really matter. Ogg, Ahhh....
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
I've been connecting my Dell laptop to my tv with excellent results.
;-) viewers available for the Mac.
And, yes, there are DivX
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Can't you just hear the lawyers sharpening
their pencils? They'll be on the case quicker
than you can say "DMCA".
Wow, that sounds almost Haiku!
Most file trading at the schools i've been in 1(not illegal) happens via MS Network Neighbourhood crud. There are a few FTP servers about but it's no where near as common.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Here are some sites to obtain Ogg Vorbis :
For softwares compatible with Ogg Vorbis -
http://www.vorbis.com/software.html
To download Ogg Vorbis encoder or plugins -
http://www.vorbis.com/download.html
Hope this helps.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
-Dead Lesbian Witches! Think about it!
The two images he shows for comparison (original MPEG-2 and MPEG-4) are at wildly different JPEG compression levels. The original is compressed at "7" and the MPEG-4 is compressed at "2." So of freaking course one's going to look shitty.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
--
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Do you know where I can get an mp3 of that?
;^)
Ò
Works like a ripper, but it isn't - because it actually derives the key from the encrypted VOB itself using a cryptographic attack. VobDec can even decrypt a VOB that has been copied encrypted to the hard drive
you can get it here
On to Home IMAX!
Quality can vary widely - there are good ones and not so good ones.
;-) codec (high motion or low motion) as well as the bitrate, as well as the audio format (usually mp3 but sometimes wma now) and bitrate (for mp3 at least - I've seen as low as 96kbps and high as 192kbps). Then there are decisions on how big it should be, one CD or two. Obviously when they decide to make it two CDs the quality can be cranked up, but conversely, soemtimes they decide to squeeze the quality a bit more than optimal to try to just get it on 1 CD. And the subject matter - South Park for example compresses very well while still looking quite sharp.
The person doing the encoding has some choices as to the exact flavor of DiVX
Also, I have noticed on my computer (300 mhz - towards the low end for mpeg4 video) that unless my fullscreen video resolution is an exact mutliple of the video size, there are lots of noticable artifacts from it having to resize the video. Checking the movie resolution before hand and setting screen res accordingly makes a big difference.
In the end, it's certainly not DVD, but it's much better than normal mpeg2 and even VHS (for a good one at least). When you're watching in motion (as opposed to a single frame) and sitting a foot or so away from the screen it looks quite sharp.
(yeah, windows format, flamethrowers on...)
I would be VERY interested in such a software that is able to compress uncompressed AVI files (like the ones most tv-cards make) to MPEG4. i read the FlaskMPEG features page and only MPEG1 and MPEG2 were mentioned in the decoding section.
It would be quite good to be able to compress (to MPEG4) own video material grabbed with a tv-card. Has anyone tried or succeeded?
-Kooma
MPEG-2 is still the standard for high-bitrate video. DVDs never have a resolution higher than 720x576. However, HDTV also uses MPEG-2 datastreams, and they can scale all the way to 1920x1152. DVD will not take advantage of HDTV, you won't have any better resolution there than a high-quality NTSC TV with component video connections. Eventually (probably many years from now) you will see a DVD-2 which will feature HDTV-resolution MPEG-2 datastreams.
Download a fast DirectX Tetris Clone [276 k]
If you read what other people are saying, FlaskMPEG is for non-encrypted DVD's only. Other people have taken it (it's GPL) and added DeCSS, but that's not something that Tom's Hardware is talking about.
--
Ok, if DivX is a hacked Microsoft product, does that mean that Microsoft owns part of the DivX code? And who owns MPEG-4, which I guess DivX is based on?
Are there free (as in speech, although maybe not in the US anymore) DivX encoders/players that are totally legal and unencombered by any ownership? Like GPL'd players where no one can claim ownership of the code (or at least where it's public)? Is it a reverse engineering of Microsoft's players? Or is all this inherently illigal, a hacked version of a leaked, copywritten program?
Could someone explain this?
you haven't used it have you... I've actually used divX a fair bit and had very little trouble with artifacts I'm not going to say they arn't there, but if you use a decent data rate they are supprisingly rare...
As somebody else has already said, it is quite a bit better than LP videotape. However, I don't think that it is up to snuff to SP videotape. If you sit back a bit from the monitor there isn't really anything noticably bad with it. If you sit a bit closer though (as close as I usually sit from my monitor) you can pick out the compression artifacts. Some of them get pretty bad in action intensive sequences. However, the framerate holds up just fine regardless.
So far as compression ratio, I don't know exactly, but what I was watching was the Matrix ripped from the DVD onto a single CD-R. There was enough spare room on the CD-R to hold the CD-soundtrack as well, and a small bit of other stuff. I guess that would mean that "Saving Private Ryan" in under 350 Mb would look pretty bad compared to the original. Of course, I'm a little picky about a lack of compression artifacts (they jump out at me). So if I was a movie industry exec, I wouldn't get too worried about massive copying of movies using Div-X (although, I suppose if I was an industry exec, I'd be worried about 9th generation copies of somebody taking a camcorder into the theatre with them, so...)
In any case, the problem isn't going to be transmitting these over the internet (350 meg is a lot to transfer to see a crappy copy of a movie). The big problem is going to be on college campuses, where a profusion of burners and 100mB/sec ethernet makes swapping a couple of gigabytes of files fairly trivial. The copy of the Matrix I saw was legal (space shifting by the owner), but I know that a lot of other movies are available on campus ethernet. I know that at least the Matrix, American Pie, The Phantom Menace, and South Park were all available near the beginning of the semester last year. I have no clue how much stuff will be up next year, but I don't think most people will be heading out to blockbuster to get their favorite movies...
I've been downloading nAvi and DiVX for quite some time now and even lately have been hitting up the local Blockbuster for DVD's to rent and rip to DiVX ;-). I will say that I am suprised at how many people havent heard of the mpeg4 (divx) codec as of yet around here since the readers here at slashdot are supposed to be on top of this sort of thing, but anyway, i guess some of you guys have jobs lol. anyway, a few points...
- Tom's hardware exaggerates when they say the quality is almost unnoticable. In order to fit an entire movie onto one 700 MB CD you have to set the video bit rate at about 700kbits/sec. Even then, the DiVX codec will compensate for high motion scenes by raising the bitrate and will lower the bit rate for still scenes with only talking. However, the difference between a movie encoded at this bitrate and the DVD is still quite noticeable in scenes where there is a high amount of movement, and even in low motion scenes the background begins to look blocky since the compression algorithm somehow determines that the background data isnt as important as the foreground.
- another good thing about the DiVX codec is that you can use the new WMA 2.0 audio codecs for extremely high quality audio compression which crunches down 2 hours of audio in to approx 60 MB. the difference in the audio quality is negligible to me, but then again, i dont have a 5.1 surround system (you can only encode to WMA at stereo or mono).
- you STILL have to decrypt the movies using either DeCSS or a program similar to this. I've started to use CladDVD 1.6 over the past couple of weeks or so since it parses the VOB files as it decrypts them to check for multi-angle scenes and the sort (which can REALLY screw you up when ripping a DVD by desynching the audio and video). my method has been to decrypt using cladDVD, encode to DiVX using FlaskMPEG with PCM audio, opening the audio in sound forge and normalizing it (flaskmpeg has a bug in the latest version which causes the volume to be quite low), and then multiplexing the divx audio with the new normalized sound file with Virtual Dub (which will also compress the audio at the same time to your format of choice).
- this process takes TIME!!! an hour to decrypt the VOB's...10 hours or so for a 2 hour movie to encode in flask (my p3-550 averages about 4.71 frames per second)...an hour to normalize the audio, and another 20 minutes to create the final avi with the normalized audio track.
- everyone saying that you need an 800Mhz machine to playback DiVX is misinformed. My p3-550 plays them back just fine. i also have a friend with a k6-2 500 that is able to play them back without dropping frames.
- TV out on your video card is a MUST, unless you want to watch movies on your monitor. there's been rumors of a DiVX player for the Playstation 2 (oh, goh, i will have died and gone to heaven if that ever comes to light). until then, there are NO standalone divx players : (
here's some links for more info...
DiVX: http://divx.ctw.cc http://www.gdivx.com
FlaskMPEG: http://go.to/FlaskMPEG
VirtualDub: http://www.geocities.com/virtualdub
Divx-digest: http://www.divx-digest.net/
RACK ME!!!!
But nothing else can stop piracy. Pay-per-click prevents piracy by putting in the users hands the smallest piece of the program possible that is still capable of running. In order to pirate pay-per-click software, an end user must capture the program as thousands of separate pieces, must re-assemble and re-compile them just right, and then create a server that uses them, and then find the serving software, which has he has never seen and exists thousands of miles away. In contrast, traditional software is sold as a self-contained lump that end-users can pirate easily onto CD-Rs. With a fast internet connection, the end user needs only click a mouse button to instantly pirate lumpware everywhere in the world. Until someone invents a practical pay-per-click system, copyrights can no longer exist.
Whether or not this is good is up to debate. While broadband piracy could make possible plenty of selfless, open-source projects, it would also stop artists who need money to work. But with a pay-per-click system, both amateurs and professionals could thrive. Open-sorcerers could put their works on an ad-based server, while closed-sorcerers who want money for their work could distribute it by pay-per-click. Even better, media creators could distribute their works under the following four methods simultaneously: large number of general ads, small number of customized ads, pay-per-click, and pay-once-use-forever.
Also, please be aware that today's media companies know that, no matter how much information they acquire about their customers, they must not abuse their customers privacy nor give them the feeling that they are abusing their customers privacy. However they implement pay-per-click will guarantee that each and every customer's private info remains private. If the media companies can't promise this, they'll go bankrupt, lose their reputation, and get sued at the Supreme Court, all at once. Knowing that, rest assured that when Big Brother starts watching you 24/7, He'll be sure to do it in the nicest way possible.
I think some people are missing the real importance of MPEG-4.
Using an additional compression factor of only 2-3 over DVD and MPEG-2, you will be able to get a complete DVD onto a DVD-RAM or DVD-RW disk using MPEG-4. And the quality difference will not be noticeable.
Compressing an MPEG-2 DVD using MPEG-4 down to CD size requires a factor of at least 11 and results in no better than VHS quality.
I won't watch VHS movies anymore. I wait until they come out on DVD. Why would I want to watch MPEG-4 movies at VHS quality off of a CD?
Just for the ones that did make through the whole article:
The successor of MPEG-4 is already on the horizon and is called MPEG-7. This video standard is supposedly going to be introduced in July 2001 and principally integrates an object search routine. MPEG-2 will also be extended; MPEG-21 is the succeeding standard.
Just point out that MPEG-7 does not stand for the succesor of MPEG-4 as it tries to address a completely different field. While MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 focuss on video/audio compression, MPEG-7 moves into video and audio indexing basically for search and retrieval of multimedia databases so don't expect to compress your 2002 videos on MPEG-7 format but to help you search for it on the web using MPEG-7 technology.
MPEG-21, on the other hand, is still on its infancy so we'll see where it goes to.
javi.
Well, put simply, the type of compression used is based on the vector-compression rather than the character-replacement algorithm. In other words, instead of taking characters and compressing them by grouping them and replacing them with tokens, the type of compression used here takes vetors, or areas, of the data, and replaces it with a token to be used to recall that data during the decompression process.
no sig
I think tkhe perfect culmination of all of this would be a MPEG4 copy of Valenti shooting an eggroll out of his arse when he finds out about this program. I'd pay quite a pretty penny to witness that, firsthand... Ten bucks says he keels over on the spot. Preferably after the eggroll, tho.
.02
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
Does this technique involve using DeCSS to decode the DVD data? If so, great; finally a practical use for it. If not, even better; this needs to be publicized because this is a much greater threat* to the MPAA than what they're trying to make illegal.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Both the decoding and encoding software have been written for Linux already . See the reply of links above or head straight on over to the website .
Has anyone actually tried to watch VHS on a monitor. I did once I got my ATi All-in-Wonder, damn was it crappy. TV is better resolution than VHS. DivX is far better than VHS, it doesn't stand up to DVD, but I think it is perfect for recording television. A 1 hour TV show usually is about 150-200 MB. Plus the encoding time isn't too bad, and it plays smoother than Quicktime with the Soreson codec. Actually the only DivX that I wasn't able to play on my K6-2 450 was the Matrix trailer from the DivX site.
-
people will want to make perfect copies of DVDs. To do that you need to decode the DVD (using DeCSS, for example)
Switch brain on. By definition, if you are making a perfect copy, then there is no need to decode the DVD first. You just do a bit by bit copy.-
Since you're re-encoding the video you don't need DeCSS - any DVD player will do because you can capture the data after the MPEG2 decoding (e.g. with a hacked video driver).
No, not true. To quote the FlaskMPEG website, "The original FlasKMPEG can't and won't read files from encrypted DVDs". You do need DeCSS.-
This really highlights a flaw in the CSS system - it only protects the MPEG2 signal. If you don't need a bit perfect MPEG2 copy it's worthless as a protection scheme.
The closing sentence makes sense if you switch do for don't.Moderators, please: (Score:-1, Troll), not (Score:2, Informative).
I just want to point out that MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 is not about video encoding but about "Multimedia Content Description Interface" and "Multimedia Framework" respectively.
Regardring the amount of bytes used by MPEG-2, one must also remember that a DVD holds much more information than an VCR, multiple audio and video tracks, extra information, subtitling and so on. This means that if you just count the bytes for one audio stream and one video stream the count never is as high as 9 gigs!
For more information se http://www.cselt.it/mpeg/
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles - scream and shout.
The bad news is, that when certain 4 letters companys find out about it. Then we know there won't be support for DVDs on Linux.
But, on the other hand, if they are tring to prevent copying of DVDs and don't want the DeCCS code out there, this just rains on the parade. This is will out priracy, its better to download 600 megs then 1200+. Yet, its even easier to go by the DVD and play it on Linux.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
This is somewhat old news... I'm surprised it's taken so long to be mentioned on Slashdot. In fact, it was mentioned months ago in the Wall Street Journal!
Here's some sites:
http://divx.ctw.cc/
http://divx.vcdguide.com/
http://www.divx-digest.com/
A Google search on DivX ;-) will also prove fruitful. Don't forget the smiley, lest it be confused with Circuit City's failed format!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
--
--
Misspellings and grammatical errors in this document are intellectual property of the author.
first a Dopple, then a Tripple, then Quadrupel - when will it stop?
When you get a decent spellchecker I suppose. That should be double, triple and quadruple. Jeez what do they teach kids in school these days.
What a load of reconstituted bulls***. Journalistic integrity does not begin and end where you agree with someone. Journalistic integrity is reporting the truth - whatever that truth might be - and letting the outcome be determined by the facts. What you're suggesting is partisanship, an introduction of a bias or personal agenda, to shape a social issue. This is the height of arrogance.
I'll leave your technical errors for someone else to bludgeon...
.02
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
[Note to moderators - this is already marked off-topic, it doesn't need to be marked that way again.]
ou may ask how I know these things, and I can tell you, it is because this is very parallel to the beginnings of the War on Drugs. If the people who used drugs in the 60s weren't subcultured into the title "hippy", we might not see the kinds of senseless wastes of taxpayer money we see putting away pot smokers who havn't committed a real crime.
I agree with your post, except for this part - the War on Drugs didn't start because hippies liked to smoke it - it started because of racism - Chinese immigrants smoked opium, and because of this they could work ungodly hours and would work for cheaper than American workers. The government didn't like this, and made opium illegal (I think this was the first drug law passed.) Then in the 1930's many Mexican immigrants moved to this country, and many of them liked to smoke pot. So in 1937 the US Government passed the first law making marijuana illegal ONLY because the Mexicans liked to smoke it (and against the advice of the American Medical Association, who, even then, saw its remarkable medical properties.)
Even today the War on Drugs is used as an excuse to keep minorities down. Blacks and Hispanics make up less than 10% of the drug using population, but more than 60% of drug users who are put in jail for their drug use. It's fucked up.
--
Here's a letter I fired off to the article's writer concerning the errors I noticed and what I consider to be the irresponsibility of the whole article. [starts here] Still on the first page of your article and I've already stumbled across some errors and innacuracies. First off, Video CD was wildy successful (mostly because it was cheap to pirate, I'm sure) in asia. Outside of Japan Sony's Playstation was released with built in VCD capabilities. Second off, you say "NO noticeable loss in quality" which should quite obviously read either "negligible loss when displayed on a low res regular TV" or "surprisingly little loss" when viewed on a PC monitor. Anyone who says or perceives otherwise is either hopelessly delusional, wants to sell something, or needs to visit their optometrist. Third, you show one picture in a low-compression format, and the second quite clearly has compression artifacts of its own. Look at the playback controls of the two screen grabs. This was either a feeble attempt to imitate MPG4 or it is someone not paying the kind of attention due this article. now to read the 2nd page... "TREATED AS A SPRITE?" This implies the encoder somehow magically cuts out the moving part and overlays it on the background. While concise, its hardly accurate. A better way to say it would have been "Updates only the parts of the picture that change, like the vehicle and its immediate surroundings" You list "small buffer" under advantages of MPG4. Personally I hate this small buffer - as MS' windows mplayer and their ASF implementation of MPG4 shows, it just slows things down when you're scanning scenes - in my opinion I'd rather suffer once in a while when the CD chokes when I'm skipping around a movie than wait 4 seconds every time. A neutral point, IMO. last notes: I'm surprised you didn't make any mention of the rampant piracy this allows. Broadband connections make dumping and compressing DVDs onto cheap and easy-to-burn CDs as easy as duping a music CD (a little more time consuming perhaps). Are you really helping the DeCSS situation here? What about the big picture? Isn't this exactly what the music industry bigwigs said we'd be doing with this info?? If it were MY site, I'd have taken this article down - it's not doing any of us any favours IMO. And aren't you a little late? I've been trading DiVX movies since about January. Lawrence Wright http://www.gamesx.com is the internets largest compilation of console game tech.
ACK! PREVIEW, NOT POST! (where's the delete comment button, dammit?) My apologies for the crappily formatted previous version.
Here's a letter I fired off to the article's writer concerning the errors I noticed and what I consider to be the irresponsibility of the whole article.
[starts here]
Still on the first page of your article and I've already stumbled across some errors and innacuracies.
First off, Video CD was wildy successful (mostly because it was cheap to pirate, I'm sure) in asia. Outside of Japan Sony's Playstation was released with built in VCD capabilities.
Second off, you say "NO noticeable loss in quality" which should quite obviously read either "negligible loss when displayed on a low res regular TV" or "surprisingly little loss" when viewed on a PC monitor. Anyone who says or perceives otherwise is either hopelessly delusional, wants to sell something, or needs to visit their optometrist.
Third, you show one picture in a low-compression format, and the second quite clearly has compression artifacts of its own. Look at the playback controls of the two screen grabs. This was either a feeble attempt to imitate MPG4 or it is someone not paying the kind of attention due this article.
now to read the 2nd page...
"TREATED AS A SPRITE?" This implies the encoder somehow magically cuts out the moving part and overlays it on the background. While concise, its hardly accurate. A better way to say it would have been "Updates only the parts of the picture that change, like the vehicle and its immediate surroundings"
You list "small buffer" under advantages of MPG4. Personally I hate this small buffer - as MS' windows mplayer and their ASF implementation of MPG4 shows, it just slows things down when you're scanning scenes - in my opinion I'd rather suffer once in a while when the CD chokes when I'm skipping around a movie than wait 4 seconds every time. A neutral point, IMO.
last notes: I'm surprised you didn't make any mention of the rampant piracy this allows. Broadband connections make dumping and compressing DVDs onto cheap and easy-to-burn CDs as easy as duping a music CD (a little more time consuming perhaps). Are you really helping the DeCSS situation here? What about the big picture? Isn't this exactly what the music industry bigwigs said we'd be doing with this info?? If it were MY site, I'd have taken this article down - it's not doing any of us any favours IMO.
And aren't you a little late? I've been trading DiVX movies since about January.
Lawrence Wright
http://www.gamesx.com is the internets largest compilation of console game tech.
Out of all the video compression formats I've encountered, DivX definately rocks by all acounts. First of all, the codec has been ported to a majority of platforms (Win9x (no suprise), BeOS (yeah!!), Linux (yay!) and MacOS (all right!)). The ratio of image quality / file size is the best in the world at the moment - you can compress a full movie (110min) at almost DVD quality to fit onto a standard CDR. Heck, all my holiday videos are now encoded in DivX, and I'm burning souveniers to my family / friends who can also watch my videos on their PC's. As far as software based compression is concerned, the DivX codec is one of the fastest encoders I've encountered. I have a legit copy of Adobe Premiere, which has a large number of codecs (Indeo, Sorenson, Cinepak, M2V, M1V and now DivX), and the DivX codec is the fastest to compress. Coupled with its file size and image quality, I do not want to use any other codec again. DivX is to video what MP3 (Mpeg audio, layer 3) is to audio. It will become the defacto unofficial standard for distribution of videos. The biggest issue is that DivX uses proprietry Micros~1 DLL files, which the DivX; team somehow managed to include in the BeOS and Linux codecs - kudos to them. There is a new project by the DivX team called 3ivX - which will eliminate M$ DLL files with there own GPL libraries. Once thats done, no one, I repeat, NO ONE can take MPEG-4 away from us.
Revolution = Evolution
-Legion
Myself
DivX Releasing Rules
www.isonews.com
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www.divxnews.com
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Team DivX (TDX) Presents: The DivX Releasing Standards (c) 2000
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ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
Requirements: Notepad with terminal font or other ascii viewer
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ÀÄÄÄ[ INTRO ]ÄÄÄÙ
There was quite a bit of controversy over the release of the first set of
rules so we have taken the users suggestions and compiled a modified list
of releasing standards that everyone feels more suiting. With the launch
of DivXNEWS, we can now mark the compliant and non-compliant releases
and are in a much better position to enforce the rules. We hope these
modifications will help stabalize a rather out-of-control scene and bring
it the organization a 'scene' needs.
This group was formed because we thought the new DivX scene was a bit
unmoderated, sloppy and pretty much a free-for-all. Leaders of the top
DivX releasing groups, topsite siteops as well as rippers and encoders
have put their competitive edge against each other aside to work together
for the betterment of the DivX scene. iSONEWS.COM and DiVXNEWS.COM are
proud to bring you the results of Team DivX (TDX)'s meetings and debates.
We realize that not EVERY group was included in these decisions, please
do NOT take offense to this decision - We felt we selected enough people
from different groups to represent all aspects of the discussion. All
opinions were accepted and negotiated and then voted on for final approval.
The original rules went through 5 beta stages and this second round of
meetings lasted 3 days long and have now been finally completed.
We recognize that we are not perfect and these rules may be changed and/or
modified at any time and the group will stay in contact for new developing
technologies or conflicts with the current rule system. We would like to
request that ALL groups and top sites accept these rules as standards
and enforce them strictly. Our goal is to have an organized, acceptable
and competitive scene so everyones co-operation is greatly appreciated.
If ANYONE has any suggestions/comments/complaints please feel free to
email us: tdx@divxnews.com (futher contact info at the bottom) or feel
free to discuss any of the rule issues in the public forum on divxnews.com.
We want to work with all of you, not against you. Thanks in advance for
the positive input and support.
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
ÀÄÄÄ[ RELEASE RULES ]ÄÄÄÙ
Movie MUST fit the following rules (applies to XXX as well):
MUST BE:
- Released to DVD in the past 31 days (NO CLASSICS, NO EXCEPTIONS
unless it is a siteop request and then it should not travel further
than specified site - the classic title must also be released by a
subdivision of a group and clearly marked as a classic. (eg. cDVL
as the acronym for 'classic DVL', etc))
- ANIME is the ONLY exception to this rule and should be established
as 'site specific'
NOT ALLOWED:
- VCD (includes vcd screeners, telesyncs, cams, workprints) -> DivX
will NOT be allowed (see Notes section)
- VHS -> DivX will NOT be allowed (Anime ONLY - NO EXCEPTIONS)
- MULTI-LANGUAGE - (see Notes section)
TV Movies / Straight to Video (not in theater) Movies: (see Notes section)
- ONLY allowed if they make it to DVD and fit the date rules (released
within 31 days)
Movie Length:
- Movies with runtimes LESS than or EQUAL to 120 minutes must be one CD,
under 700 MB.
- Movies with runtimes OVER 120 minutes can be two CDs
Bitrates:
- Low-Motion AND Fast-Motion Codec are allowed ONLY on 1 CD releases.
- If runtime is less then 100min Low-Motion is possible.
- Low-Motion MUST be used on 2 CD releases.
VIDEO:
- Low-Motion video shall be NO LESS than 750 Kbs and NO GREATER than
1000 Kbs
- Fast-Motion video shall be NO GREATER than 2500 Kbs
- NOTE: ANIME can be greater than 1000 kbs low motion if needed
AUDIO:
- MUST be MP3 and MUST be STEREO
- Audio shall be a minimum of:
1 CD release MUST be 128kbs, 44.1kHz
2 CD release MUST be 128kbs or 160kbs, 44.1kHz
- Audio should NOT be 48kHz, quality degrades on standard sound cards.
- (WMA IS NOT ALLOWED / MP3 ONLY (see Notes Section))
Keyframe:
- MUST be 2 seconds
Resolution:
- Width: 512 - 640 pixels and MUST be a multiple of 16
- Height: Must be a multiple of 16
- Cropping is allowed
Subs, Interactive Menus, Trailers:
- OPTIONAL (if and ONLY if all other requirements have been met
Packaging:
- All releases must be
- Must be packed with RAR. NO compression is needed (proven worthless)
and broken into 15MB or 20MB volumes
- Must have SFV.
- Must have NFO.
- NFO MUST INCLUDE:
group name
title
actual divx release date
US theater release date
DVD release date
audio bitrate
video bitrate
movie runtime/length
IMDB/adultdvdempire link
number of rars per cd (eg. 44x15MB)
widescreen indication in the nfo only - NOT in the directory name
Credits:
- Movie credits are allowed but MUST be cut in order to fit within 1 CD
(700 MB) if the movie length would exceed 120 minutes.
- NOT required in the
- NOT required in the
characters as IMDB lists them
Samples:
- REQUIRED
- 1 (one) full minute in length (approx 10MB) and in separate folder
marked 'SAMPLE'
- MUST be taken from the movie - NOT encoded separately
Directory Naming:
- Directory names shall NOT exceed 64 characters
- DO NOT indicate WS (widescreen), DATE, GENRE or anything else in the
directory name. (ONLY within the nfo)
- Acceptable characters in naming a directory include: (NO spaces or
double dots - single dots or underscores ONLY)
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 . -_
- Movie.Title.DVDrip.Divx-GROUP
- Movie.Title.ANIME.Divx-GROUP
- Movie.Title.XXX.Divx-GROUP (assuming ALL xxx releases are dvdrips,
we do not need to say so in the directory name)
- Releases that are more than 1 (one) CD will follow these specs:
- MUST be named CD1, CD2, CD3 and so on. ('disc1', etc will NOT be
allowed)
- There MUST be an sfv included for each CD
- rars MUST be broken into 2 or more CD volumes. (78 rars of a 2
disc title will NOT be tolerated)
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
ÀÄÄÄ[ NOTES TO THE RULES ]ÄÄÄÙ
A few notes:
- Movies should be ripped in their most widescreen format available.
- Watermarks WILL NOT BE ALLOWED IN ANY CASE
- vcd -> divx is NOT ALLOWED:
- lose ability to be played in dvd player
- waaaay too many releases
- no quality upgrade, just smaller packaging
- flood of crap groups (no skill involved, just a race to leech,
convert and re-release)
- PRVHS = Pre Release VHS which is also equivalent to Original Screener
tape but this naming system will avoid confusion for nukers when it
comes to nuking vcd -> divx because 'screener' is typically
associated with vcd
- NO TV Movies or Straight To Video:
- UNLESS it makes it to dvd - then the 31day rule is applied
- quality, commercials, too many tv movies
- only the good ones make it to dvd
- AVI and not BIN/CUE:
- Some ppl burn to archive and play on a computer at a later time
BUT since there is no outside purpose other than playing on the
computer, there is NO need to be packaged as bin/cue
- NO Multi-Language (keep in mind the goal of preserving the highest
quality in the smallest package):
- Not enough demand
- DEGRADES the quality
- Adds unnecessary space
- WMA audio is NOT ALLOWED:
- Tremendous amount of synching problems
- Not compatible with all sound cards
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
ÀÄÄÄ[ GROUPS & MEMBERS ]ÄÄÄÙ
TDX was organized and coordinated by:
- krazy8 - RipKord - Wuman -
TDX is comprised of the following top DivX groups:
- FM4 - FAiTH - PRiVCD - DHQ - DVL -
- HAZARD - TDR - ViRA - MCW - DOMINION - ADX -
- DivX R US - DiVESTX
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄ
ÀÄÄÄ[ CONTACT ]ÄÄÄÙ
EMAIL: tdx@divxnews.com
WWW : www.divxnews.com
IRC : #divxnews / #isonews (efnet)
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
ÜÜß
ÜÜÜÜÜÛÛÝ ßÜÜÜ www.isonews.com ßÜÜ Ü
ÜÜÜÛÛÛÛß ÜÛÛÝ ÛÜÜÜ ßÛÛÛÛÜÜÜÜÜ ÛÛÛÜ ÜÜÜÜÜÜÛÝ
ÝÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÝ ÛÛÝ ÜÜÛÛßÛÛÜÜ ÛÛÛÛÜ ÛÛ ÛÛÛÛßßßßßßßßßßßß ß ÛÛÛÛÜÜÛÛÛßß ÛÛÛ
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ß s8!CRO^Sr
it's in my head
A celery 300a@450 can handle images upto 640x480@25Hz. 720x576 needs something faster, but I'm using BeOS so I already have less overhead to start with.
Revolution = Evolution
Just off the top of my head, a short list:
-RickHunter
And we know full well how futile it is to stand in the way of progress. History is full of people who tried to stand in the way of progress only to find out that progress is a steamroller that will squash you flat. History will not be kind to the MPAA or the RIAA. They'll probably be noted as a bunch of idiots who tried to stand in the way of progress. Hopefully they won't do too much damage before they go the way of the dodo.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You are linking to a story that links to Flask which has imbedded DeCSS code. You are thus declared to be a BAD BOY and the MPAA will now take legal measures to punish you. Ye Gods, when will the MPAA understand that the genie is out of the bottle and that no amount of legal horse dung will put him back in.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but dopple, tripple and quadrupel are beer styles. The spelling is correct.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
> My idea is to scan a DVD into Photoshop, then resize it way the hell down and burn it onto a cd.
That's kind of like not bothering to inflate your inflatable doll, 'cause it takes up too much space when you do.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
i think trying to fit a DVD on CD requies too much compression: you could see the pixelisation too much on the mpeg4
Ooh, that sounds familiar. Remember when everyone on Slashdot was saying that MP3 was virtually the same as CD?
Thank god we're over that.
I use MP4, I like MP4, but if anyone thinks that it's the same quality as MPEG2 at 1/11 the bandwith, take another look at Trinity's nose.
Does anybody know why Tom "blured" the filename in the snapshot? Movie 1 & 2 from the second page seems to have the same filename! It's probably because he doesn't want us to look through gnutella for the Matrix movie. Or maybe it's because it's the same mpeg afterall? (talk about not "significant difference") :)
For Christ's sake, if you all you whining bunch of losers were really nerds then it should pretty much be given that whenever you have to compress audio or video you'll lose some quality.
For most people the loss in quality ISN'T THAT IMPORTANT and to be honest MOST PEOPLE DON'T CARE.
Ah hell, even in the movies the quality isn't much better than VHS (ever notice all that garbage that on the film??)
yes its not perfect.. but if you want perfect then go buy the f*cking DVDs and shut up already.
God, what the hell has happened to this site....
strange...
________
I don't want to get into a flamewar with anybody, but I've wanted to discuss Mac filetyping with people here for a while. Fact is, I hate it. I worked as a classroom assistant in a Mac lab one summer, and those types caused me nothing but trouble. It's great within the Mac world, exchanging files with other Macs, but when you get into downloading from other sites running Windows and Unix, you're fscked. I remember downloading GIFs from web-based email servers and bending over backwards to get the Mac OS to believe me that yes, it was a fscking GIF, so all the damn Mac image programs would let me open it. .TXT, and the program actually EXAMINED the file to determine the type rather than rejecting it out of hand.
That's one thing that makes me nostalgic for DOS. In Compushow, you could rename a BMP to have the extension
grep -ri 'should work'
fyi, when i first started watching these movies at school, i was running an amd k62 350 with an 8mb ati all-in-wonder pro. the playback was very good, not much different than on my roommates p3 750 with 32 mb geforce2 card. not sure why tom had such poor results on a k62 450...
Now, this may just be a result of how his images were screengrabbed. But it sure doesn't look like a suitable replacement for DVD quality to me -- especially if I have to have a computer monitor instead of a 36-inch (or larger) television set to watch the movie.
Ok, I'll bite.
Region coding is a pain, it sucks, and I hate it, but illegal? Got some case law, statute, or something to back that up?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Actually, its not.
The founding fathers wrote the Constitution on two fundamental principles:
1) All citizens must be treated as responsible until proven otherwise.
2) Any form of government will act irresponsibly if given the opportunity. So don't give them that opportunity. (see Checks & Balances)
So really, it isn't double speak. Unfortunately, a lot of people(in the US) today tend to forget these paradigms.
-Vel
Why would it be illegal to compress or change formats of copyrighted material? It is illegal to distribute copyrighted material without consent of the authors but compressing isn't illegal. Does anyone know an example where I am wrong?
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
recompress dvds, that is... :-)
:-) files is considerably (and very noticeably) below DVDs if you're squeezing the movie into a CDROM-sized disk. Many folks who do this scale the frame size down, which greatly improves image quality. If you don't, almost anyone would notice the extremely-obvious compression artifacts. I've found that using the "low motion" codec with bitrates of 1900-2100 kb/s works very well, and is very acceptable. You'll notice artifacts in scenes where the codec is having to make tough choices about where to spend its bits (like scrolling credits with live action behind them), but the result is otherwise *very* good. This gets you movies around 1.5GB (depends on length, etc...) that are too big for a CD, but fine for a HD.
.IFO files to rip just the files needed for the main video stream, Macrovision removal, etc...).
:-) distribution is also "illegal", in that I think it includes pirated codecs (ie, the Fraunhofer "professional" quality MP3 encoder).
I travel for work a lot, but my laptop doesn't support an internal DVD drive. So rather than lug DVD's and a clunky external drive around with me, I recompress and put them on the HD. Decompress speed is just fine on the laptop's 500MHz PIII once it gets going, but it is jerky for about 20 seconds until everything gets buffered and cached correctly. I know the MPAA disagrees with me, but I see this as fair use...
Anyway, a couple of points to add:
1. Video quality of DiVX
2. As you mention, DeCSS is not the best way to rip DVDs anymore. I much prefer "cladDVD". Other than the short delay to brute-force the encryption key (which is often almost instant) it's just as fast as DeCSS, is considerably easier to use, and has more features (like interpreting the
3. Besides DeCSS, the DiVX
4. How hard or easy doing this is depends on the movie. Fancy releases like the Matrix and T2 are hard because of all of the extra crap thrown in, especially multi-angle stuff. Subtitles are a real pain in the neck too. A few movies have poor telecining (the process of taking a 24fps movie and converting it to NTSC) that can't be removed. I won't go into the details, but the result is a crappy-looking conversion because every few frames is the interleaved result of the two two frames immediately before and after it. This is really annoying on a non-interleaved display like a computer monitor.
I fully agree. Besides, if you take a look at this list of AVI codecs, you'll have to agree that it's nonsense to give a new file extension to each of them. It would confuse the user much more than the fact that AVI might encapsulate different quality video material...
I don't even use DeCSS anymore.. that's so 1999. :)
.VOB (I think -- don't flame me if I'm wrong).
Seriously, There are alot of DVD's that DeCSS won't work on (At least the win32 version -- don't know about the *nix side as I don't have a dvd drive in my linux machine) due to it's deriving the key for the ENTIRE DVD, when some dvd's have individual encrytion key's for each
Instead, I use CladDVD under win32 and it works like a somkeing gun -- If you have a win machine you should try it -- or any of it's cousin proggies (DeMPAA, etc)
http://www.digital-digest.com/ for all your DVD rippin' needs.
I wonder. Coming so far before the OSS movement and being invitation-only, The Scoop may not be a good example of an Open Source story, but it comes pretty close.
For those who don't know about it, The Scoop was written by a group of mystery writers, including Agatha Christie and dorothy L. Sayers and, due to it's writing-by-group nature, may well be considered something close to Open Source. Certainly the methodology is well known...
But ogg vorbis is here, you don't have to wait for it anymore. Support for ogg will be included in Linux Mandrake 7.2, which is currently in beta-testing phase, and I am quite sure other distros will suport it soon if they don't already.
It works very nicely - i have a HD full of ogg-s...
I'm afraid I don't know where to find the treaty texts, but OpenLaw DVD/DeCSS Forum FAQ list has more info. according to this, its uncertant whether or not the various international treaties that prevent regional divisions and so on apply to a technological measure like region coding. However, I can't see why it wouldn't, as technological measures are even harder to bypass...
Of course, many countries have shown a willingness to violate treaties when it benefits them. (The USA's recent anti-missile work is a prime example) But in this case, New Zealand has already outlawed region coding, and players that don't support it are (IIRC) the most popular.
Some of the info on this page seems somewhat out of date or contradicted by slightly more recent sources, but its generally pretty good. The only thing I caught that they ignore is that DeCSS was original written for Windows because Linux and FreeBSD did not yet support the filesystems used on DVDs.
-RickHunter
I think the drug laws cause more problems than they solve but bringing in this racism canard is wrong.
$25 for DVD media > $1.50 for CD-R media.
If you want to protect your movies, put them somewhere safe AFTER you back them up.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
put up a picture and show it off!
The technique described by Tom's Hardware isn't really new or advanced, there are better ways of creating a good DivX movie. They didn't even write anything about the possibility to mix fast- and low-motion codec (using MakeFilm), and they didn't say that the "appropriate tool" for copying .VOB-files to hrddisk was deCSS... I actually think that article was really lame for coming from Tom's Hardware. That page used to be my God, now it's my daily laughter. Sad. Anyway, if any of you guys want to get to know some real techniques of copying DVD's to CD, check out http://www.divxnews.com and http://www.vcdhelp.com
>CDs to tape, and play them in my car. I don't
>see anything in the least bit illegal about
>FlaskMPEG, but I'm sure that the MPAA lawyers
Yeah, the MPAA/RIAA/metallica (I honestly don't see any significant difference anymore) ALREADY sees it as illegal, even just making a copy for your car, and they've argued this before congress!!!
Remember the flap about a month or so ago, during the congressional hearings? Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, asked jack valenti/hillary rosen/lars ulrich (once again, I don't remember which, but it doesn't matter, they're all basiclly interchangable drones) if it would be legal or not for him to make a copy of an album to listen to in his wife's car. After considerable hemming and hawwing, the jack/hillary/larsbot tried to claim that it was illegal. Hatch then gave jackhillarylarsbot a viscious verbal beatdown, saying that it *IS*, in fact legal.
Orrin Hatch should know. HE HELPED WRITE THE LAW THAT MAKES IT LEGAL!!!
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
That must be mighty big rock you lot have been hidding under.
... ... /.!
This stuff has been going on for over a year now!
Someone forget to tell /. ???
mpeg4 has been out for ages! None of you use Gnutella? Or Scour? Or even IRC?
Just search for Divx on your favorite file sharing app (sans napster or other mp3 exclusive ones) and you'll see every-movie-ever-made has already been ripped to divx.
You seen that quest commercial where the guy walks into the motel:
chick says "We have every movie, ever made, anytime, day or night"
and the dude mummbles "H-Ho-H-How is that Possible?"
welcome to cyberspace
Let me clue you in on some other "news"...
We landed on the moon!!! disc-chord
This may be the technology that will bring TiVo's down enough in price to be an integral part of every TV set.
I've got a 55GB TiVo (thanks to info I found on slashdot!) that's only good for about 50+ hours of basic-quality video. If the compression were, even 2-3 times better, I'd be a lot happier.
--- Speaking only for myself,
By the time you can afford a high-definition TV and a high-fidelity sound system, your sight and hearing will have degraded to the point where everything sounds like an MP3 and looks like an MP4.
All we can do is hope that the courts will guide us in the right direction. Either they side with the media corps and the government, and decide to declare a "war on copyright", which will be a failure, of course, just like the war on drugs. Of course there is tremendous commercial interest that would benefit, not only those still able to make some money by being the sole distributer of their information, but also the money that will go to prisons to hold all the "pirates", the information criminals.
... the rest are too busy being r33t leeching the latest DVDRip on IRC.
Unfortuantly we are not a powerful lobbying force and the only voices heard in congress are those of the MPAA, RIAA, blah blah blah... and their lawyers who have the time and resources available to wage a political war. How many DeCSS "supporters" do you think have even written a letter to their congressman?
I'll bet no more than 5%
They will continue to criminalize and demonize, and we will blindly fall vicitim to them. Most folks that really 'get it' are young adults... most of whome don't even know who their congressman is! What we need is a strong lobby to win the politik's game, and there just isn't enough advocacy in our "sub-culture" reguarding how we can fight the good fight on their turf.
It's a lose-lose situation for us. There is no way for us to really tell all the DeCSS supporters and would-be supporters that they need to take an active roll in defending their civil liberties. The only way to get our attention now is to buy a friggen 30 second spot on "Who Wants to Be a Millionair". And... interestingly enough, we don't have that kind of money or we wouldn't be stealing DVDs!
disc-chord
"Though we say, 'all information should be free'... it is not. Information is power and currency in the virtual world we inhabit" - Billy Idol (1994)
Take a closer look at the first set of screen shots (matrix, telephone booth.) It is supposed to show how the MPEG4 version of the MPEG2 frame is only slightly degraded. Does anyone else find it odd that the Media Player dialog frame in the "second" screen shot is also degraded?
I think this is evidence of goof or a mis-representation that the second screenshot is from MPEG4 when in reality it is the same graphic file with reduced resolution to simulate what the MPEG4 version would look like.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
You're confusing the compression (CODEC) format and the file format. Quicktime is a file format that contains media streams compressed with the CODEC of your choice (e.g. Sorenson, DivX, Cinepac). MPEG-2 is a file format AND a CODEC, although one could choose to store MPEG-2 compressed video in an AVI or Quicktime file rather than an MPEG-2 file (although I don't think anyone actually does this). MPEG-4 is also both a file format and a CODEC, but the file format is - AFAIK - basically Quicktime. People also store MPEG-4 compressed video in AVI files using the DivX MPEG-4 CODEC as disussed in Tom's article. The DivX CODEC is just a hacked version of Microsoft's MPEG-4 CODEC that allows use in AVIs as well as Microsoft's Active Streaming Format (ASF) which is what they wanted to restrict it to. DivX AVI's typically encode the audio to MPEG 1 audio layer III (MP3) format.
No it doesn't reduce the importance of DeCSS. When you are trying to reencode video, you want the best source possible. One of my roommates is into this scene on IRC. Almost all DivX encoded material is coming off of DVDs. This only helps the MPAA's case since they are holding that without the protection of the DMCA, piracy technology will advance faster than they can. The MPAA is worried about movie distribution over the Net. Technologies like this only make it easier by reducing the file size to something manageable and reducing a movie size to the pirate's holy grail size -- a CD-R.
People still trade movies about in MPEG-1 format. Usually these are movies that are in theatres now that are ripped off by the projectionist, outside the US. Once the movies hit DVD, however, many go over to the higher quality DivX format. This is exactly what the MPAA is worried about. To be honest, I don't know how the MPAA missed this kind of piracy going on. I've only been aware of it for over 3 months.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
-- flameproof --
I don't imagine that you'll be reading this in the American press real soon
--deflameproof--
No! .AVI *IS* a very specific Microsoft standard file format, not a generic reference to Audio Video files. .MOV are Quicktime file format, and .MPG are MPEG 1/2 file format. These are all very specific and different.
.dll via entries in the registry put there when you install a new CODEC.
.avi because that's exactly what they are - AVI format files using the DivX CODEC ("DIV3"/"DIV4" FourCC).
An AVI file identifies the video CODEC (compression format) by referring to it's standard FourCC (four character code) identifier (e.g. "CVID" for Cinepac, "MJPG" for motion JPEG, or "DIV3"/"DIV4" for the fast/slow motion DivX MPEG4 CODECs). Windows associates the FourCC to an installed CODEC
DivX files are
This really ticks me off. When showing the comparison in quality at the beginning of the article, they show the first Matrix shot in MPEG-2, in an uncompressed JPEG. Then they show the MPEG-4 shot in a very compressed, horrible quality JPEG. They also do the same thing with the James Bond shot later in the article. How am I supposed to tell what kind of quality MPEG-4 provides when I'm looking at it through a lossy screenshot. That's sad. I'd expect better out of Tom's Hardware. - Brent 'Goose' Towsley -
Half the color /resolution/, not the space.
What you do, is you sepearate the luminace chanel from the 2 color chanels, and you reduce the resolution of the color chanels to half that of the luminance. You keep them at the same depth, but there is 1/4 as much information there. And your eye can barely tell, as it distinguishes luminance resolution much easier than it distinguishes color resolution.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Me
Catch me on AIM: SigningiS
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
They are, where I work they have very stringent QA checks on these discs (even more so than gdroms). :P (dvd's /used/ to be so strict that we /used/ to check every disc for even the tiniest thing)
:P
All we make (of dvd's) is old stuff like some b&w movies that some yahoo place (who still owns the copyrights and stuff on this old material) decided it would be a good idea to bring their 50 year old movies into the 21st century.. so I can't proudly say that we produce matrix discs
No, I won't say where I work either, I'll narrow it down for ya tho, I work and live in the US
-since when did 'MTV' stand for Real World Television instead of MUSIC television?
Back in 1996, I was asked at work by a co-worker if I knew of a way to copy DVDs "for cheap", unquote.
The gentleman in question came from a country in which copyright is an amusing idea, why you buy something if you get it for free?
I don't think he was intending on backing up his pristine copies of the Matrix, I do know he was offering me money to figure out how to do this. Apparently he was tasked by "friends" to ask around tech people because his "friends" were interested in this idea.
I think he did want to make quite a few copies of DVDs... couldn't for the life of me figure out why...
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
This DVD recompression business has been going on for months. There are a host of tools that have been developed to help copy one part or another of a vob stream. If you feel like it, take a look at go.to/dvdsoft. Here, new versions of many tools are posted every few days. Personally, I prefer FlaskMpeg coupled with DODSpeedRipper. Normally Slashdot is at the front, bringing us news (almost) as soon as it's available. Albeit this is the first time it's been on a commercial / famous site, this is still old news.
I assure you that there are no trojans in the exe referenced.
Download a fast DirectX Tetris Clone [276 k]
That reminds me of something that actually happened while I worked in IT in a UK hospital.
A secretary was asked by the manager to copy a floppy disc. I almost fell off my chair when she returned with a perfectly photocopied image of the disc on paper.
Needless to say I had to 'redo' the copy - and just for a bit of fun pinned the photocopy on the office noticeboard with the message 'System Backup' printed on it.
-- Soruk
My apologies. Just an ignorant limey with an attitude problem here. Nothing to see, move along.
You gotta be off your tits mate, for sure.
--Neil Armstrong tripped, the ruskies flipped.--
Jon writes:
> btw: MP3 is MPEG 2 (or MPEG 2.5) audio layer III, not MPEG 1, i have no clue what audio compression MPEG 1 uses,
> i imagine it's just RLE PCM or something else as gay.
Actually, if you check the website of the company who invented MP3, it is indeed MPEG 1, Layer 3 audio. MPEG 2 and 4 have their own codecs.
As far as what compression MPEG1 uses in movies, it of course uses MPEG1 Layer 1 and 2 audio, because the MPEG1 standard was created before MP3 came into existance.
AFAIK the above is a simplified version of what is correct, but I would be happy if anyone would like to deal more with specifics. I'm not trying to spread my understanding of MPEG as the "whole truth", which is apparently what Jon does. Check your facts before posting please.
-- sudo.ca