These are the release notes for tovid versions 0.1 through 0.19, with the newest on top.
tovid 0.19[]
(2005-07-27)
GNU autotools now used for installation. The old tovid 'configure' script is retired; instead, run "./configure && make install" as root to install tovid.
tovid IMPORTANT CHANGES
- Input filename and output filename prefix must now be specified using the -in and -out command-line options.
- Configuration files must now contain 'tovid' alone on the first line. Please edit your configuration files accordingly.
- Heavy modifications are in progress with the aim of improving portability. tovid now uses /bin/sh instead of bash, but it's still experimental and you may experience new bugs.
OTHER CHANGES
- Output and logfile formatting improved for completeness and readability
- Bugfix for panavision encoding
- Interlacing encoding (hopefully) fixed
tovid 0.18[]
(2005-07-04)
tovid
- Able to handle input without an audio track; silence is generated instead.
- -safe option for defining a target TV safe area.
- -filters option to specify post-processing filters to be applied (or none)
- Auto aspect ratio detection and appropriate letterboxing. New -aspect option to override the autodetection
- Experimental -interlaced and -interlaced_bf options for creating interlaced output streams.
- -discsize option for breaking output files into chunks of any size. Default is 700 MB for (S)VCD, 4500 MB for DVD.
- Sanity check for missing audio stream.wav file.
- -subtitles option for encoding a given subtitle stream into the video. Currently only supports hard-encoding of subtitles; good for foreign films or anime, to have subs on-screen all the time.
- -update option, to print out progress reports only at specified intervals.
- Minor stream redirection, to prevent mplayer errors from showing up as tovid errors.
- Better stat reporting; accumulates total size of all outputs, instead of just the first output file.
- -fps and -twopass options removed.
- -version option
- Full URI may be used as the input file; input will be streamed over the net if necessary.
- -mplayeropts for passing arguments directly to mplayer
- -config option, with inclusion of a default config file. Config files contain valid tovid command-line options with any amount of whitespace or comments.
- Statistics log (~/.tovid/stats) now in comma-separated format for easy import, and now includes min/max GOP size
- Various bugfixes
tovidgui.py
- New supporting classes added for future use (HidablePanel, MiniEditorFrame)
- Bugfix to keep log window updated when GUI is not focused
- 3-step interface, instead of next/previous
- Reorganized interface classes into "task panels;" each task panel is responsible for completing a specific task, and will usually comprise several steps.
- Allowed disabling of tooltips (annoying with continued use)
- Various structural changes and bugfixes
idvid
- Identifies files that have no audio stream
- Infers aspect ratio from mplayer
makedvd, makevcd
- New scripts for imaging and burning discs. Incomplete.
tovid 0.18b[]
(2005-02-28)
tovidgui.py Fixed bugs:
- PyNoAppError that occurred because of premature font object creation
- Incorrect VCD video bitrate of 1500 changed to correct value 1150
- 'makemenu' command bug with text color, caused menu creation to fail
- Idle-event processing bug that prevented the next command from being run when the system was truly idle
- wxWidgets version bug that caused failure on GetFirstChild
- "Next: Encoding setup" was being enabled too soon. Fixed some cases where it wouldn't make sense to proceed with encoding.
- Refresh problem with menus; title list was only refreshed when menu was selected.
Features and touch-ups:
- Integrated help system to guide user from one step to the next, option to show/hide the help panel
- Default video title is now filename with underscores converted to spaces
- "Preview video" button on video options panel
- Command output window has larger font
- Removed unnecessary "Print command" buttons from options panels
- Disabled "Add slides" button (not working anyway)
- NTSC film (23.976fps) output support
tovid Fixed bugs:
- Bug causing normalization failure with newer version of 'normalize' (called 'normalize-audio')
- Bug manifesting in GUI when normalization was used
- Using 'tr' instead of 'sed' for CR/LF replacement, fixes potential problems under Cygwin
Features and touch-ups:
- KVCDx3, KVCDx3a and "KDVD" support added
- -type option added for specifying video type (live action, animation, or black and white). Not fully implemented yet.
- Added -ntscfilm for NTSC film (23.976fps) output
- Quick fix for already-compliant video: symbolic link from output file to input file is created (avoids extra complications in the GUI)
- Tidied up logic in encoding
tovid 0.18a[]
(2005-02-09)
tovidgui.py
- Completely revised version of the old GUI
dvrequant
- New component created by Jean-Francois Ouellette for requantizing (shrinking) and re-authoring DVD titles
tovid
- New -parallel option for more CPU- and space-efficient encoding
- Use -vc dummy during audio dump by default if functional
makemenu
- Support for different fonts. (See tovid webpage for instructions on maximizing your font choices.)
- Configurable text, selection, and activation colors
makexml
- Support for chapter breaks at whole-minute intervals
- Grouping capability, for combining several videos into a single title
- Forced separate-titleset flag to author differing resolutions to the same disc (DVD, Half-DVD, DVD-VCD)
tovid 0.17[]
(2004-12-12)
tovid-batch
- New component for processing multiple videos with tovid
tovid
- New -priority option for controlling run-time priority of the important components
- New -deinterlace option for fixing interlaced input video
- Fixed bug that caused invalid VCD output
- Put CPU speed back into stats output; added version number to stats output
- Increased intra-DC precision, modified GOP size/selection
- Included luminance stretching in postprocessing to maximize luminance range, make darks darker, lights lighter
- Fixed some bugs affecting progress reporting and mplex commands
- Fixed some bugs affecting the use of filenames with spaces
- Audio encoding done first to minimize overall disk space usage during encoding
idvid
- More accurate duration reporting
- More complete identification of (S)VCD- and DVD-compliant files, identification of multiply-compliant video
makemenu
- Merged with old 'makempg' component and expanded; this component now does all the necessary steps in creating an MPEG menu for (S)VCD/DVD
makexml
- Added output for "back" button from submenus
- Added support for (S)VCD still-image MPEG slides
- Fixed many bugs with (S)VCD XML output
postproc
- Added -debug option to save logs
- Added stats output
tovid 0.16[]
(2004-11-22)
tovid
- Faster encoding time and better CPU usage on some machines by using mplayer -benchmark, and removing 'nice -n 16' from mpeg2enc
- Much higher quality output (lower quantization) at high bitrates, as well as more intelligent quantization settings at all bitrates
- Fixed bug that caused problems for locales using a comma ',' for the decimal separator
- Fixed zero-length bugs in duration, width, height, and FPS reporting
- Helpful message printed at end of encoding
- -lowquality option now affects other encoding options in addition to denoising
- Required-space messages printed in megabytes instead of kilobytes
- CPU model instead of CPU speed reported in ~/.tovid/stats; other useful stats included, better stats output formatting
makexml
- Support for (S)VCD XML output
- Checks for existence of video files
- Fixed bug that caused titlesets to begin at 2
- Message at end tells user how to use the XML file
makempg
- Improved interface and usage output
- Support for (S)VCD and PAL
- Better standards-compliance (AC3 audio for NTSC DVD)
- Automatic image rescaling
idvid
- Fixed bug that caused error on filenames with spaces
postproc
- Shrink percentage reported
tovid 0.15[]
(2004-11-15)
tovid-interactive
- New tovid interface for interactive video encoding
postproc
- New component for shrinking video or adjusting A/V sync in finished mpeg videos
tovid
- Corrected default bitrates to conform to (S)VCD and DVD standards
- Added mplex options for variable bitrate and better buffer sizes
- Switched all scaling routines to mplayer instead of yuvscaler
- AC3 audio encoding for NTSC DVD, to conform to standard. Requires ffmpeg.
- New options for controlling video and audio bitrate
- Sanity checks for needed utilities; graceful failure if they aren't available
- Extended command-line options moved to "advanced", visible by using the -help flag
- Added -lowquality option to turn off denoising
idvid
- Identifies mpeg1 and mpeg2 video by name instead of hex code
tovid 0.14[]
(2004-11-03)
New installer, 'configure'
tovid
- Multiprocessor support is now enabled. mpeg2enc will use multiprocessing if more than 1 CPU is available
- Progress indicator and encoding-time estimate during encoding. Most other output suppressed and redirected to a log file
- Statistics printed out on exit, and saved to ~/.tovid/stats
- Denoising now applied to all videos
- Slightly better error-checking
idvid
- More output, ffmpeg used if available for determining running length
makempg
- Quick-and-dirty script for converting a still image plus background music into an MPEG video. Useful in making menus.
tovid 0.13[]
(2004-10-25)
tovid
- All options now require a dash '-' prefix. See usage notes.
- Added -twopass option to fix some videos with variable frame rates
- Code cleanup
tovidgui.py
- Changed options to include dash '-' when calling tovid.
idvid
- Initial release. Prints some useful identifying information, makes attempts to recognize valid VCD/SVCD/DVD video. Not fully reliable.
makemenu
- Initial release. Can create a basic menu image. Only one font at the moment.
makexml
- Initial release. Creates a basic XML file for dvdauthor, defining navigation structure.
tovid 0.12[]
(2004-10-20)
tovid
- Added support for PAL output
- Included '%d' field in output prefix for VCD/SVCD, allowing mplex to split output into CD-sized chunks for large videos
- Changed '-H' mpeg2enc option to '--keep-hf' to eliminate possible problem with differing mpeg2enc versions
- Fixed some of the frame rate problems. Most videos should encode correctly now (with the exception of ASF and some MOV).
- Added (hopefully temporary) "fps" option to force a specific frame rate. For information on using this, please see the project website.
tovid 0.11[]
(2004-09-09)
tovid
- Switched to mplex (of mjpegtools) instead of tcmplex (of transcode), thus removing dependency on transcode
- Fixed bug when scaling to 2.35:1 aspect without denoising or normalizing
- Removed "-vc dummy" from audio encoding command (segfault reported)
- Prettied up output a little bit
tovid 0.1[]
(2004-05-30)
- Initial release on LinuxQuestions.org