Item grouping feature is added since build 4260. By selecting multiple items in the list and choosing Group from menu (right click an item to pop up), the items will be marked as the same group ID. During processing, they will be joined into one file. The grouping feature also prepares for the upcoming support for multi-track transcoding. The join mode is removed since then.

Item grouping in MediaCoder

Windows Media encoding is proved in the latest build 4224. Previously, when MediaCoder encoding Windows Media with Microsoft Windows Media Format component, audio and video data are encoded and muxed in one thread (despite the possibility that the component may have its multi-threading approach underlying). Now audio and video are encoded in separated threads, and the encoded streams are multiplexed after encoding process. This will eliminate some WMV encoding problem and bring in better encoding performance on dual-core processors as well as better container flexibility. If you experience problems with the new mechansim, please report.

A new task mode, benchmark mode, has been added since build 4210. In this mode, MediaCoder can be used to benchmark your hardware with media transcoding based on the your transcoding settings. During the process, the media content will be transcoded as in normal mode. The difference is there is no file created on hard drive and a benchmark result will be shown on the end of the procedure.

The steps to perform transcoding benchmark are as simple as following:

1. Add files used for benchmarking
2. Set up transcoding parameters
3. Set task mode to “Benchmark”
4. Click Start button to start benchmarking

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Wine is an open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix/Linux. MediaCoder, as a native Windows application, was able to run under Wine in many cases. Before a native Linux version of the software is developed, the Wine compatibility is improved in build 4180. Now MediaCoder can run more flawlessly on Linux platform. It is no longer necessary to install a Windows version of Firefox under Wine as MediaCoder will look for native Linux Firefox in the Linux system and invoke it to display the XUL-based user interfaces when needed.

The test environment is Gentoo Linux / Xorg / XFCE4 / Wine 1.1. There are known issues under Darwine / Mac OS which might be fixed later. If you still encounter problems under Wine, please report.

Dirac video encoding has been fixed in 0.6.1.4140. In the past, Dirac encoding was done by calling Dirac encoder DLL. Now it is done by FFmpeg, which allows the encoded bitstream to be muxed into a container format together with audio stream. Dirac decoding and playback is also supported by building Schrodinger into MPlayer and MEncoder.

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The x264 profile option changes to the encoder settings to let the encoded bit stream comforted to specified H.264 profile (baseline, main, high).