Project news archive        


   10.12.2000

    New version ( 0.51 ) is available. It adds support for hardware acceleration on systems that allow it and fixes many bugs. To make use of it, you'll need to have SDL library compiled with support of Xvideo extension; it happens automatically when you compile it on the machine with XFree86 4.0 or higher. NOTE: you don't need to upgrade your binaries!
   I found out that pressing play/pause/stop buttons in player caused it to crash if it was compiled with egcs 2.91.66. This problem existed since 0.49, and I should have paid more attention to bug reports about it. This horrible bug is also fixed.

   17.10.2000

    Version 0.50 is a bugfix release - it does not add new features. RPMs for it will be available shortly.

   3.10.2000

    New version ( 0.49 ) now should compile and run on RedHat 7.0. I've added RPMs for RH6 and RH7. However, i do not recommend you upgrading to RH7 - it's too buggy.

   21.9.2000

    Version 0.48 is available. Changes:

  • Added dynamic scaling option to player ( original patch by Karl Trygve Kalleberg ).
  • Fixed bug with Intel 263 video codec.
  • Added first version of AVI recompressor utility.
    Added a mirror of this site: http://www.toon.eu.org/divx ( Thanks Koyot! ).

       18.9.2000

        Version 0.47.3 is available. Changes:

  • Fixed some serious bugs in AVI writing module.
  • Fixed problems with 11 KHz MPEG layer-3 audio.
  • Added support of Morgan Multimedia Motion JPEG codec ( shareware ).
    Added a small F.A.Q. page.

       10.9.2000

        Version 0.47 is available. Most important changes:

  • Added alpha version of Video4Linux-compatible capture program.
  • Added Motion JPEG codec plug-in, based on libjpeg. Unfortunately it is very slow, but it's temporary.
  • Fixed some bugs in player.

       1.9.2000

        Sorry, I cannot reply to all e-mails because I'm currently very busy with lots of other work :(( ( I hope that's temporary ). In my spare time I work on capturing and encoding. Next version will fix most known bugs in player and include video capturing program. It'll be released when it's done.
       Keep sending your bug-reports to the mailing list. If you informed me about some problem in earlier version of avifile that persists in 0.46.1, feel free to resend your bug report.

       20.8.2000

        I've uploaded new version ( 0.46 ) of library. Changes mostly affect player:

  • Fullscreen support. Just press 'Esc' in movie window to toggle fullscreen/windowed mode. It'll try to set best available video mode, so you may want to add modes such as 400x300 and 640x480 to your XF86Config. It requires SDL, but non-SDL ( 0.45 ) code is available as a fallback.
  • Basic configuration dialog. Shown by double-clicking in player window while paused or stopped. Qt Designer rocks! :^) It can adjust audio/video synch, subtitle font and subtitle/picture synch.
  • Qt 1.x is no longer supported. You'll need 2.1.0 or higher ( tested with 2.1.0 and 2.2.0 beta2 ).

       15.8.2000

        XMPS ver. 0.1.3 (bugfix version) is released. New version includes AVI plug-in based on avifile 0.45.1.

       12.8.2000

        Avifile has grown to version 0.45. Now it performs audio output with SDL ( should fix some problems with sound ).

       7.8.2000

        Problem with segfaults, mentioned in news three days ago, seems to be successfully resolved.

       6.8.2000

        Martin Vogt has informed me that DivX ;-) plug-in for his mpeglib is on the way. This could mean an 'official' DivX ;-) support in KDE2 ( mpeglib is a part of KDE2 multimedia system ). Let's wish him luck.

       4.8.2000

        I had several reports about strange crashes of aviplay 0.4x. Problem appears only on some Linux distributions, such as Mandrake 7.1, and on FreeBSD. If you experience segfaults after a few seconds of playing an AVI file with 0.43 and you've got time, please make a detailed backtrace in the moment of crash and send it to divx@euro.ru.

       24.7.2000

        Version 0.4 is released.
         List of changes:

  • Significantly changed API, especially in AVI reading/writing area.
  • AVI reading module rewritten using VirtualDub source code.
  • More 'user-friendly' player.
  • Added tool for measuring video performance of library.
  • (again) FreeBSD support.

       So far it is much less stable than 0.33.3.

       13.7.2000

        To everyone who downloaded 0.33: I've made a patch that fixes several serious bugs in it.
       Please note that I've changed some installation paths. Remove all old files ( especially /usr/lib/libaviplay.so ) to avoid problems.

       1.7.2000

        Last version is known to have problems with gcc 2.95.2. If you used it and experience strange segfaults, you'd better wait for next release.

       27.6.2000

       Does anyone know what is the legal status of WMA ( Windows Media Audio ) compression format? Is it patented? Is it legal to create an open-source WMA (compressor/)decompressor? Has it been done already? If you can answer any of these questions, please mail me.

       23.6.2000

       I've created a patch that allows kwintv to perform video/audio capture into Intel Indeo 5 compressed AVI file. It is available at download page.

       20.6.2000

       Today I've noticed that XMPS ( X MPEG Player System ) uses my sources for playing AVIs. That's nice! Of course, I considered the library to have an alpha quality ( i.e. to be of any interest only for other developers, with almost no practical applications, and not for public testing ). This effect was completely unexpectable for me.

       9.6.2000

       AVIFile library v. 0.2 alpha is there. Important changes:

  • Windows registry emulation ( to allow setting default parameters for codecs )
  • Video encoder class.
  • AVI writing support. Our files are even recognizable by Windows Media Player! :^)
  • Aviplay became relatively interactive. It supports 'seek' and 'pause' features, tries to synchronize video & audio streams. I recommend to use it in 16-bit ( weight 565 ) video mode, its performance is already acceptable in it, even for large files.

       6.6.2000

        Version 0.1 of AVI file library is available for download. You can spend a couple of hours trying to compile and run it on your system. However, I do not guarantee success. ;-)
    Main features:

  • AVI format parsing
  • Video decompression: Intel Indeo® 5.0 & DivX formats.
  • Audio decompression: GSM 6.1, MPEG-1 all layers, PCM.
  • Output: video using XMITSHM extension, audio directly through /dev/dsp.
       I am relatively satisfied with how most of these modules work. The only exception is video output. Maximum system<->framebuffer transfer rate achievable using XMITSHM on my HW is ~10 Mb/s ( Celeron 550, Savage 4 ). That's WAY too low - 15-20 ms for 384*288*16 picture is still bearable, but for 640x480x32 video output time gets over 60 ms, resulting in completely unplayable frame rates. XVideo extension for XFree86 4.0 should _theoretically_ help, so I'm going to add Xv* support when my X server supports it.
      Also some caching algorithm for AVI parser is needed. Currently it reads files simply using lseek() and read(). That's OK for local files, but results in huge delays when playing AVIs over the network.

       3.6.2000

     This page is created.