The Blog of st373n

Just to keep you all in up to date  progress of the next release is still ongoing – the rewrite into ASObjC is taking a little longer than I had hoped.

Please keep the suggestions and feedback coming.

The code for exporting to a ISO and also for exporting and burning the ISO has now been redone, in addition I have added the code to export to just a Video_TS folder and a plain .VOB file.

DVD importing has now been added to the features, with auto detection of the main title from the DVD, you will need to have  an unencrypted source so use mactheripper or dvdbackup to extract the necessary before converting – a drop down panel has been added to let you override the audio language when converting from a dvd source with multiple audio tracks and it will also let you choose a different video track if you dont want the main title from the dvd.

The development environment has now been setup in a subversion repository to enable better tracking of code changes and the version numbering will reflect this in the about panel – still a few more things to polish before pushing out an update.

Well the next build is nearly ready for release – and I have re-installed 10.5 on an old mac to try and clear up some of the issues people are having with it, namely the Apple Script Error…Illegal comparison or logical, and the System Events …Illegal comparison or logical. So far the 10.5 testing is about half way there, with just one remaining Illegal or Logical error to track down, those user on 10.6 won’t have seen these error messages anyway – hopefully, but there is still quite a large base of 10.5 user so I decided to re-evaluate my position on 10.5 testing.

In other features, more files now convert as another floating point bug was tracked down and resolved, Some UI elements have been reorganised,  extra tags can be manually added to support multiple audio tracks and subtitles in the advanced info box, but  I may even get time to add some drop down lists for language selection of multiple audio tracks or multi channel to make it easier to do….

This update contains a bug fix for the floating point exception bug when converting 1080 mkv files. Also the stitching order has been corrected when making ISO files from more than 1 video file.

(UPDATE) I have found an issue with stitching that needs fixing :0  unfortunately the files are stitched in reverse order.. doh.. i’ll get that revised asap..

This update now correctly (see post above) stitches M4V, Mp4 and AVI files, The DVD imaging code has been rewritten and will now make dvd’s if more than 1 file is in the queue, The stitching tmp error has been fixed, Chaptering now writes its own tmp logs so the MP4open bug should be fixed.

There is still plenty of work to be done yet but this update is now ready and I hope this release will fix the issues reported.

AVI Stitching is now coded, and the MP4open bug is fixed when chaptering MP4 and M4v. Tidying up the dvd code now, hope I have corrected all the issues posted – testing so far has not revealed anything else. Then will push out an update to 1.2.5 later in the week.

An update in now live for ReduxEncoder 1.2.4 this release add the stitching feature to combine files into one large file and works for Apple Device formats and MP4.

Stitching for AVI files will follow shortly.

Chapter Markers can now be encoded into m4v  files at intervals of 5, 10 or 15 minutes and are compatible for navigation within Quicktime, iTunes, and VLC.

Encoding to MP4, AVI and WMV is now possible but take note that not all feature are yet enabled for those formats.

He is a screen grab of some conversions completed today on Snow Leopard with ReduxEncoder.

To clarify why I used m4v file extensions in ReduxEncoder for its file extension for apple devices – i quote here from the elgato  forum – hope that finally clears up the matter for those who wanted to know or queried my sanity

“The difference between mp4 and m4v is the extension, the contents are identical. Unfortunately Apple’s software (both QT and AppleTV) enables certain features only if they are presented with a m4v extension, so depending on the features used we change from mp4 to m4v. An example of this is that Apple TV doesn’t play files with mixed AC-3/AAC audio unless they are in a .m4v container.”

“You can safely rename mp4 files to m4v. There is no difference between the two formats. Default association for m4v is iTunes, mp4 is QuickTime. There is a difference in what the Apple TV supports with the two formats as mentioned.”

“I think it’s more accurate to say they’re two different extensions for the same format, And the extension doesn’t necessarily imply the format, which is what a lot of people assume and has become particularly confusing with audio/video formats.”

link to original article can be found here