Project news


   21.08.2001

    CVS version now contains AC3-passthrough support for SBLive card - if there is any user who could test it - that would be great

   17.08.2001

    New prerelease version for today (see in download section) - contains fixed async setting in configuration dialog - so check if you were not affected with this bug and set a-v async in config/sync dialog to 0. As always - enjoy. If you found the bug - send us bugreport - it really helps!

   15.08.2001

    More code updates in CVS version as usual. We are now playing WindowsMedia8 format. Video renderer could be switched in runtime.

   03.08.2001

    Free hosting server that hosted http://divx.euro.ru/ was almost unreachable for the last couple of months, so the primary web site was moved to sourceforge.net.

   Current development version of avifile is able to use two new codecs for decoding of DivX content.
   First, it is a newly released DivX 4 codec ( to large extent written by yours, truly ). Unfortunately, it is only available as a binaries for Linux, compiled with glibc 2. Its advantage is significantly improved decoding performance ( with turned off postprocessing it is up to 30% faster than Windows 3.11 DLL ). If you have a SSE processor, you may need 2.4.x kernel to use it. Older ones ( like 2.2.19 ) might work and might not.
   Second codec is taken from ffmpeg project. It also supports both DivX 3 and 4 formats, and though it's slower, it is completely open-source, and thus possible to port to non-Intel platforms.
   Those interested in testing new codecs should do the following steps:
1. For DivX 4 codec you have to download divx4linux package. You can take it here, and it'll appear on http://www.projectmayo.com web site in a few days. Unpack it and run included install script 'install.sh'.
2. For FFMPEG codec you'll need to have 'nasm' assembler installed.
3. Grab latest sources from CVS or take the snapshot from download page. During configuration step it will try to autodetect presence of nasm and divx4linux. In the very end you'll see if they were found.
4. Temporarily we don't have methods to select among different codecs that support the same format. To force player to use divx4, remove /usr/lib/win32/divxc32*.dll, /usr/lib/win32/divx_c32.ax and /usr/local/lib/avifile/libffmpeg.*. Analogously, to use ffmpeg, leave only /usr/local/lib/avifile/libdivx4.*.

   26.04.2001

    Although there weren't any updates on the site for some time, the project is still alive. Zdenek Kabelac has done much work on improving quality of development version. It is available in CVS on sourceforge.net .
   During last few weeks two major Linux distribution producers - Mandrake and RedHat - have released new versions of their distributions. Unfortunately, for reasons only known to their marketing strategists, these distributions include unstable development versions of C++ compiler - gcc 2.96. We do what we can to support all known snapshots of C++ compilers out there in our current development version, but we don't guarantee backward compatibility of older releases with unstable versions of compilers.
   If you are intending to compile version 0.53.5 on one of these systems, you've got three options.

  • Manually edit the source code and remove all instances of keyword 'inline' from lib/audiodecoder/mpeg/filter.cpp and filter_2.cpp.
  • Downgrade C++ compiler to last stable version of gcc - 2.95.3.
  • Install either of our 'official' distributions - Debian or Slackware.

       11.02.2001

        Since last release many people complained about receiving error 'undefined reference to __strcpy_small' while compiling. If you receive this error as well, remove switch --enable-release from 'configure' options, ensure that CFLAGS environment variable does not contain any optimization flags ( -O2, -O3, etc ) and repeat compilation.

       26.01.2001

        Resolved problem with encoding in Motion-JPEG format. Now both latest 0.5x and 0.6.0 are able to decode & encode MJPEG using Morgan Multimedia MJPEG codec, which is included in current binaries archive. It is time-limited and will work until March 1st.

       22.01.2001

        Released first beta of next version - avifile 0.6. It includes many changes, such as significantly rearranged and cleaned architecture, completely rewritten AVI and ASF code. New version will be able to play many of those ASF files which caused problems before. It is also able to play some ASF files over the network, though HTTP streaming wasn't tested enough well. It adds support of two new audio formats ( Voxware Metasound - ID 117 and ACELP.net - ID 286 ).
       0.6.0-beta1 restores proper support for decoding Motion JPEG, which was broken for a while ( older version of Morgan Multimedia codec expired on November 1st, and proper support for their new release wasn't available ). Unfortunately, encoding into MJPEG is not yet available because of technical problems. You can take a look at http://emulinks.de/divx if you do need it.
       WARNING: Because of such major changes, this version is much less reliable than last stable release. It is source-incompatible with 0.5x, which means that it won't work with any existing software ( xmms-avi plugin, XTheater, etc. ). It won't work on glibc 2.1.9x systems ( RedHat 7.0 ). I don't recommend you to download it if you aren't sure that you can provide detailed technical bug reports.
       Since every single Linux movie player author has already introduced his own version of OpenDivX plugin for his software, I'd like to keep up with the trend and do it too. The plugin is available on the download page. It has almost no other purpose except demonstrating to the world that it exists, because it is ( yet ) very slow.

       20.01.2001

        Version 0.53.3 is a maintenance version. It resolves serious performance problem with new DirectShow video codecs ( including DivX ;-) ), hopefully fixes problems with compilation of player with SDL 1.1.7 and includes a few cleanups in qtvidcap and qtrecompress.

       10.01.2001

        Version 0.53.2 fixes a few reported compilation problems. You do not need to upgrade if 0.53.1 compiled well for you.

       07.01.2001

        Added two technical documents covering ASF format to 'Documentation' page.

       23.12.2000

        I'll be offline for some time since Sunday, most probably at least for a couple of weeks. Do not expect replies on your e-mail messages from divx@euro.ru during this period. Merry Christmas and Happy New Millennium to everyone!
       And yes, I've once again increased version number. Changes in 0.53:

  • Added decoding-only support of Windows Media 7 video format ( fourcc WMV1 ). This format is frequently found in ASF files in the 'Net. You'll need to update once again your set of binaries, or, if you did so during last few days, you can just take this file, gunzip it and put it into directory with all other DLLs.
  • Restored functionality of 'qtrecompress' utility.

       19.12.2000

        Most important changes in version 0.52 :
    Fixed some of the problems with player on RedHat Linux 7.0.
    Fixed several serious bugs.
    Added ability to adjust picture properties - brightness, saturation and contrast - for movies in DivX ;-) and Indeo Video 5.0 formats.
    Added Quality/CPU slider for DivX ;-) movies. This feature may be needed only on high-performance machines: by default codec operates ( and operated ) on lowest CPU usage setting.
    Added support for IMC ( Intel Music Coder ) audio format ( ID 1025 ).
    Archive with Win32 binaries is updated. You'll have to upgrade if you want picture adjustment functions for DivX ;-) or IMC.

    Old news

    Member of the VA Linux Affiliate Underground