The native Windows Media Audio/Video decoding/encoding support has been added, with the new Windows Media decoder source and Windows Media encoder backend. This will make MediaCoder possible to transcode any supported audio/video formats to the latest Windows Media Video 9/Windows Media Audio 9.1 and even Windows Media Lossless, which was having many limits before. Though I’m definitely not in any favor of M$’s A/V codec (fully closed), I must admit the fact that the support for it is needed by many users who has a Zune or a Pocket PC.

Read the rest of this entry »

What is aspect ratio?

The concept is simple enough: aspect ratio is the fractional relation of the width of a video image compared to its height. The two most common aspect ratios in home video are 4:3 (also known as 4×3, 1.33:1, or standard) and 16:9 (16×9, 1.78:1, or wide-screen). All the older TVs and computer monitors you grew up with had the squarish 4:3 shape–only 33 percent wider than it was high. On the other hand, 16:9 is the native aspect ratio of most HDTV programming; it is 78 percent wider than it is tall, or fully one-third wider than 4:3. Read the rest of this entry »

Dirac is a general-purpose video codec aimed at resolutions from QCIF (176×144) to HDTV (1920×1080), progressive or interlaced. It uses wavelets, motion compensation, and arithmetic coding, and aims to be competitive with other state-of-the-art codecs. The Open Source implementation provides a C++ library with an encoder and decoder.

MediaCoder 0.6.0.3690 has included Dirac video encoder 0.7.0.

Read the rest of this entry »

MediaCoder’s preferences window has been reworked with XUL which provides a more friendly browser-based user interface. This demonstrates the possibilities of XUL which will be used to implement the user interface of MediaCoder in the future.

We know that it’s a bit tired to compare every single new DAP that hits the market to one of Apple’s babies, but one look at the screenless, postage-stamp-sized Zen Stone is all it takes to discover where Creative got the design inspiration for its latest player. At 18.3 grams, the Stone is slightly heavier than the 2G shuffle — it seems Creative was more concerned with keeping prices low than weight down, as the 1GB, clip-equipped player will retail for just $40 when it hits shelves on the 14th. Different colors and skins allow for some degree of personalization, and the claimed 10-hour battery life should help you get through most of the 250 or so songs you’ll be able to store on the non-expandable memory. Doesn’t look like we’ve got an iPod-killer here, but with accessories such as the TravelSound Zen Stone dock going for only 40 bucks as well, Creative’s latest “me-too” will likely fall into a comfortable niche.