¶VirtualDub 1.6.13 released
Time to flush the pipeline. :)
Besides the usual slew of bug fixes, there are two fairly major changes in this version. One is the addition of code to properly read files that have variable bit-rate (VBR) audio. You still can't write such files, for various reasons, but they should preview and decode now, and more importantly, you can convert them to non-VBR. (Contrary to popular opinion, making this work isn't just a matter of not rewriting the header. The method of doing sample-to-byte and byte-to-sample conversion is different.) The other change is that, in addition to putting in a workaround for the quirk in the Creative MP3 codec, VirtualDub now also stores the name of the audio codec as well as the selected compressed wave format in order to ensure that the selected codec is used, and not another codec that also supports that format. I still don't recommend having more than one MP3 codec installed — crossfading in Windows Media Player seems to be a rather common liability — but it should work a bit better now for the unsuspecting.
A tertiary side change is that the help file has been converted from a zipped collection of files to a standard Windows HTML Help file (.chm). It took a bit of hacky batch file code to get this to work — some dork made the HTML Help Compiler return 0 on failure and 1 on success — but it turned out to be fairly painless once I found out how to generate the project files and to launch hh.exe, and now full-text search is available.
Hit (Read More...) for the changelog. Barring major problems, I'll re-release 1.6.13+$ANY_MINOR_FIXES to 1.6.14/stable.
Changelog:
Build 24390 (1.6.13, experimental): [February 26, 2006]
[features added]
* Added support for pass-through of PCM audio that has more than 2
channels.
* Added limited support for correct seeking when reading AVI files with VBR
audio. The VBR audio still cannot be written as such in Direct mode,
however.
* Added /hexedit command-line switch.
* Converted help file to HTML Help (.chm) format.
* Hex editor: Open dialog now persists its "open as read-only" setting.
* Hex editor: Added keyboard shortcuts for open and save.
* Hex editor: Stopping a RIFF scan still shows partial info.
* Capture: Increased speed of audio resampler.
* Capture: Added ability to fine-tune channel tuning.
* Capture: The command-line /capstart option can now trigger a capture for
shorter than one minute using an "s" prefix, i.e. 10s.
* Capture: The "hide on capture" setting is now auto-saved.
[bugs fixed]
* JPEG files lacking a JFIF or Exim header were not recognized.
* Error dialogs from Windows on disk or DLL load errors are now suppressed
for command-line invocations.
* TARGA files with a width of 1 were not written correctly.
* Previewing an advanced audio filter graph using a format that the sound
card could not play led to a deadlock.
* Attempting to use audio conversion or resampling with an input PCM format
that was not mono/stereo 8/16-bit led to a crash. For now, attempting to
do this now throws an error.
* Fixed redraw problems when adjusting the cropping settings of a video
filter that is already being cropped on input.
* Added workaround for broken AVI files that have MP3 audio streams with
nBlockAlign=0.
* Fixed audio stream sometimes being truncated when the audio stream's
nBlockAlign doesn't match its dwSampleSize value.
* Tabbing now works within the border fields of the cropping dialogs.
* 16-bit (565) format was using a bogus bit mask for the green channel.
* Added workaround for livelock when using Creative MP3 codec caused by
strange PostThreadMessage() call within that codec.
* When a video filter failed with an error during filter preview, the error
was not displayed.
* Fixed clicking in DV type-1 audio decoding when switches in audio
sampling rate are encountered.
* Added code to prevent confusion when multiple MP3 audio codecs are
installed.
* Capture: Video timing adjustment now defaults to enabled.
* Capture: Cropping dialog did not always display live video properly if
preview acceleration wasn't enabled.
* Capture: Fixed intermittent crash when disabling filtering with a
DirectShow driver.
* Capture: An error is now displayed when DirectShow filter graph
construction fails when starting capture.
* Capture: The default display mode for DirectShow drivers couldn't be set
to None.
* Capture: BT8x8 Tweaker could cause U and V to swap on some cards.
[regressions fixed]
* Filter cropping dialog crashed when no video file was loaded.
* Redraw requests could cause the output frame to be updated even if the
output frame was disabled.
* Capture: Frame rate went crazy when using Set Custom Format with
DirectShow drivers.
* Capture: Video codecs received a frame rate that was 1/10th that of the
correct value (messed up bitrate values accordingly).