DIGITAL DIGEST - http://www.digital-digest.com
DIGITAL DIGEST | LIVE UPDATE Issue 25 Supplement 4
Your "whenever I have time to write one" newsletter
Friday, 27th July, 2001

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SUPPLEMENT :

1. DivX Codec version 4.0 Beta 2 released

2. Moderators wanted

3. Sircam Virus continues to spread

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1. DivX Codec version 4.0 Beta 2 released

The second major release of the DivX 4.x codec has been released,
just a week after the last Beta release.

The new version fixes many bugs, and adds some much needed features
(including the all important brightness/contrast controls).

The full list of changes include :

* DivX DirectShow filter did not work on Windows NT 4.0
* Encoding was broken at very high bitrates. You would receive
scrambled
picture if you tried to encode either in quality-based VBR at
quality
level >=95% or in two-pass VBR at bitrates roughly higher than
1500-2000 Kbps
* Decoder was crashing in some cases on Pentium II and Celeron
machines
(a few SSE instructions were accidentally put into MMX YUV->RGB
conversion routines)
* Decoder was crashing with post-processing level 6 or 7 and 16*N <
height <= 16*N+8
* Fixed on obscure DivX 3.x decoder incompatibility issue
* DivX decoder filter was crashing when used by BSPlayer
(http://bsplayer.cjb.net)
* There was a parameter in encoder settings, which was called
"crispness" in the configuration dialog and "frame dropping" in the
help file. It is now correctly called "frame dropping" in the
configuration dialog.
* In the help file, on the page about post-processing, there was a
duplicate paragraph, written in a slightly different way. This
duplicate paragraph has been removed.
* The "About" dialog box of the codec showed an unreadable character
after the word "DivX." On machines with installed Russin it is a
trademark symbol, but there are lots of machines out there which do
not have Russian fonts. :-) This has been fixed.
* Added brightness, contrast, and saturation sliders
* Encoder now stores its settings in the registry

You can download the codec here :

http://www.divx-digest.com/software/divxcodec4.html

You can also download the official DivX player, named The Playa,
which includes the latest DivX codec as part of the installation
package :

http://www.divx-digest.com/software/playa.html

Nicky Page has also written a guide for the new 4.x codec, detailing
what each of the new settings do, and how to set them for maximum
quality :

http://www.digital-digest.com/nickyguides/DivxBeta.htm

Enjoy =)


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2. Moderators wanted

We're looking for a few good men and women to moderate this
newsletter. Moderators will have the power to post their own
messages, and even share files with other subscribers.

All interested applicants please send email to :

admin@...

and please detail why you think you would make a good moderator.

Thank-you.

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3. Sircam Virus continues to spread

It seems that the Sircam virus I mentioned in the previous newsletter
is now spreading even faster :

http://worldnetdaily.com/frame/direct.asp?
SITE=www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,45476,00.html

Everyday, we're still getting more and more emails with the
W32.Sircam.Worm@mm worm attached. If you haven't done so already,
please install a active virus scanner for your computer. You can also
download a free Sircam removal tool here :

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.sircam.worm@mm.removal.
tool.html

Also, if you have added any of our email addresses to your Outlook
address book, please be extra careful, as many worms/viruses use the
addresses in your MS Outlook address book to spread. The safest thing
to do is to not have any entries in your Outlook address book. If you
are using Outlook for your emails, please also make sure you have all
the latest patches, since Outlook has a habit of opening certain
attachments (even those that are worms/viruses, and hence infecting
your system) without even asking you. If you haven't used Eudora, you
should definitely give it a try :

http://www.eudora.com


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