YouTube Account CirqueDuSoleilGuru Suspended

 

Obituary Note for YouTube’s “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” Born: July 2008, Died: December 18, 2009 200+ Videos, Total video views: 3,244,071, Total ratings 5,240, Total comments posted to videos by users: 3,152, Almost 2,000 subscribers and hundreds of friends. CirqueDuSoleilGuru (aka YouTube.com/CirqueDuSoleilGuru) was a well respected and loved member of the YouTube community, not only because of the valuable content that he provided, but also because of his support and engagement beyond YouTube and the videos in the cause to support and promote the works of Cirque du Soleil. But the content was one important factor also. The average rating of all the videos uploaded to the account was a whopping “4.46” out of “5”. The sudden death was not only tragic, but also unexpected.  What’s now lost also with the death of CirqueDuSoleilGuru, represents hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work by me and other YouTube community members. All of which was destroyed and killed in cold blooded murder because of corporate greed, ignorance and disrespect of the average people, like me and you.

The YouTube Publisher Account (Type: Guru) “CirqueDuSoleilGuru” was suspended on December 18, 2009 by Google without notice or stating any reasons for taking such dramatic actions.

Two users and former subscribers to my channel already contacted me via other communication channels, like another YouTube account of mine or via private email and asked me what happened and how unhappy they are about this happening.

I honestly don't know what happened and why they suspended my YouTube account. I can only make wild speculations, but that is beyond the point.

What makes me mad is the fact that the account was in good standing, no warnings, had almost 2000 subscribers, 3.2 Mio video views, over 3,000 video comments and close to 300 videos and gets suspended without giving any reason or anything. No email, nothing. Support generally does ignore things like that. I know that from past experience, which made me a lot more careful, without success obviously.

It could be something that happened recently or something that happened months or longer ago. You simply don't know. Considering the status and activity (content) of the account, you would expect that they would at least tell you what the problem is that you get at least a chance to do something about it. Nope, hundreds of hours of my time and time of YouTube's users who commented on my videos gone. Not even worth a single email to them to let me know. The last email that I got was about a new subscriber to the channel.

The last Email that I sent to YouTube just a few days before my account was suspended was an alert to make them aware of a scam that was abusing their system to trick users into installing some malware on their computers. This was happening on December 14, 2009. I also blogged about that at my personal blog. Well, you can  see how grateful they are and how much they appreciate their users and how much they value the time that their users spend on producing and publishing videos on their web site.

Moving Forward

I have 3 other YouTube accounts, one has even more videos that my Cirque du Soleil channel had (but much less viewers and subscribers). I don't know if I will start a new Cirque related channel on YouTube. The videos are still up on my File-share for download. Many are also available on other Video sharing sites. I have not yet decided what to do. I am also thinking about not to do much with video sharing sites directly anymore, but host the videos myself on Amazon S3 and put them on a new web site that I would have to create for this stuff. Video sharing sites would then only be used to promote that new site (teasers etc.) and not depend on them for the actual content distribution that much anymore.

It would take a lot of time and eventually money as well. Things I don't have plenty of at the moment. To take the time, I would need to monetize it early on to cover my expenses and pay at least for some of my time. I know quite a bit about this kind of stuff and thus know that it is not so easy in this particular niche.

Regardless of this blog post, I have little hope that it will be resolved in a positive way, because YouTube/Google simply gives a crap about you. The traditional media outlet dinosaurs care even less about anything but how they can milk the consumer cow for hard cash as much as possible. With them is any discussion about the value of content and alternative options to come to terms with them a waste of time for everybody involved. For them is content, media and art nothing more (or less) than a bag of wheat, a commodity with a price label attached to it.

Appealing to their responsibilities in society falls on dumb ears, because they are not in business to do anything good for society, but to maximize profits for their share holders and for themselves.

I just watched yesterday a video about the history of YouTube (on YouTube) and had to laugh when they talked about the value and importance of "community" and the users who are active in it. Well, the video was not created by YouTube themselves, but some students. They obviously did not know better.

The thing that pisses me off the most is the fact that I finished 10 or so videos, branded with "YouTube's CirqueDuSoleilGuru" that I wanted to upload when I learned that my account was suspended. A "nice" Christmas present.

You could try to help and contact YouTube to ask them about my account as a caring and appreciative user, who liked the content of my channel. I have no idea, if that might trigger that they take a second look at it, but it is not hard to do, does not take too much of your time and who knows, might works. You are now the second user who contacted me because of that. Maybe others will start wondering too and could join in too. You don't have to do it of course, but I'd appreciate it really.

Doing What I Dared to Do

PS. I just used YouTube’s web form to request more information about the account suspension, which I also just found out about today, but have little hope to get anything back from there that would help in this situation, if I hear back anything from YouTube at all. So far YouTube/Google tends to follow the strategy of complete silence and ignorance when it is about unpleasant things they don’t want to cope with.

I did not want to speculate about why the account was suspended, but I found this post in Google Groups, which is interesting and says it all. There somebody stated it cold and clear that YouTube has the right to suspend any account at any time for any reason without any notice and that you are at their mercy from the moment when you created your YouTube account and agreed to their terms of services while doing so.

It also states that a typical reason for an account suspension is their “3-Strikes” rule, where a strike is ONE video where somebody complained about and it was removed without you fighting against it on the legal battlefront.

I had more than 3 movies that were removed from the account over the months and I stopped arguing with them in those cases, if there could be the possibility that the fair-use clause does apply. I did not involve a lawyer, heck no. I did all this stuff in my spare time as a hobby and to support Cirque du Soleil and the artists and not for profit. In some cases YouTube simply slammed additional ads over the video and shared the revenue from those ads with the alleged owner (or partial owner) of the content.

I also got contacted by companies and individuals about the content of some videos. A few even were unhappy at first, but then realized that what I was doing was not to do them any bad, but the exact opposite. Anger tended to turn into appreciation and acknowledgement of the work that I had done for them without them asking or compensating me.

Also Cirque officials contacted me through YouTube to send me information etc. in the hope that I would help them with the voluntary promotion of their stuff, if I liked it. This said, I doubt that Cirque du Soleil had any hand in this issue. You might would think otherwise, considering that the vast majority of the content at my CIrqueDuSoleilGuru channel was about or from Cirque du Soleil itself.

It’s all such a pain and waste.

Regards,

Carsten aka Roy/SAC aka Ex-CirqueDuSoleilGuru

Malware Threat Warning! Scam via Online Video!

This is not a prank! I Just stumbled across this when videos by the YouTube user  Kaleigh421112Trang suddenly showed up in my subscriptions (based on Keywords) for my CirqueDuSoleilGuru account.

I made the URLs that are not hyperlinked this way on purpose, to prevent any accidental harm to the readers. You can copy and paste the URLs into your browsers address bar, if you know what you are doing at your own risk. Don’t say that I did not warn you!

The user account in question was just created on 12/13/2009

By now this user has already 190 virtually identical videos uploaded that don't show much, except a message that the video cannot be watched on YouTube due to length limitation. See description for link to full video. etc. Here is a screen shot of it.

E.g. Circus Circus Part 1/13 Online*:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5kYgqUX0rE

*This video was actually already taken down by YouTube, maybe because I flagged it as Spam from an established YouTube account with almost 2000 subscribers. But most of the other videos are still up as I am writing this. For example this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJj-PkdLqac  (which I also reported so it is probably being removed shortly as well)

The videos that are still up all include a short description and a obscured link with tracking code embed via the redirection service TinyURL.com. In the example video that I mentioned before and reported to YouTube already the URL was: http://tinyurl.com/ycksuwy&499420166

Here Comes The Scammy Part

That URL redirects to: http://www.onlinemoviedb.info/watch.php?vid=Dreaming_in_Circus

The page states that a plug-in must be downloaded to watch the video. It includes multiple links where you are supposed to download the needed plug-in from, such as this one (Warning! Do not Download and Execute)!

http://preview.licenseacquisition.org/48/1056428137.51143/vlc-1.0.1-win32.exe

The referred to EXE “vlcsetup.exe” is 328,984 bytes in size. The file name is implying that the plug-in is related to the freeware VideoLan Video Player, what it is not.

I downloaded the executable without starting it. I then scanned it with McAfee Viruscan, which did not detect anything yet. So I uploaded it to VirusTotal.com, an online on-demand virus and malware scanner, which scans files using over 50 different scanners such as McAfee, F-Secure, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Panda, PC-Tools, Sophos, TrendMicro and others.

I wasn’t the first one who checked the file obviously, because a report was already available*, which gives it a 37% probability that it is infected. It is probably new and I bet the probability will increase as I write this (as do the uploads of virtually identical videos with the same purpose to YouTube).

Here is the link to the report from VirusTotal.com.

 

* VirusTotal.com knows that it is the same file as somebody else already submit based on the file size and file name, because that could be faked easily. It uses so called checksums that are generated from the entire content of the file. The Checksums for this file are for example: MD5   : bead2d46d08ff080ac4a6d0908922230 SHA1  : 0697fe4257419efc39921c9da71c8339cde3f463 SHA256: 6e62e219e38c90562a59851b72f2929000b599a6ddd0f2482c7b1acda0a8ce9d

More Hints and Scale of the Problem

Here are more accounts on YouTube. Just to name a few (Each with hundreds of videos each):

http://www.youtube.com/user/Moon230377Arletta
http://www.youtube.com/user/Dirk891479Pasty
http://www.youtube.com/user/Kathy664276Dominica

There are most certainly a lot more, but they should be easily be detected. Look for new users that have hundred+ videos of 9:58 minutes length and a TinyURL.com link in the video description.

All of those Users always have video listing disabled (does not show anything on the user’s home page)

The target website itself lists tons of copyrighted movies on its homepage.

Also suspicious, the detail page of every movie has the same comments to give the impression that people watched the movie etc. 

Here are the fake comments

Looploop
3rd link worked perfectly and fast mirror. I liked it. Thanks for the upload! 

Hotjamz
Yep that was a good one 5/5 

Monstersb
didn't think it was all that,but it was good.7/10.great qualit tho 

DazedNConfused
How do I watch this video? 

DazedNConfused
Never mind. I just downloaded the plugin and the video worked flawlessly! 

This Is Just The Beginning

The uploads are done on a large scale and with sophisticated scripts to dynamically create typical titles with matching descriptions in YouTube. YouTube also has a dupe checker that identical videos cannot be uploaded by the same account (at least used to be it that way). But changing a single byte is already enough to get around it. That’s probably all these guys did, because the videos appear to the human viewer identical. They also show all the same Thumbnail, which should raise suspicion by any user of YouTube with some working brain cells left (That is how I got suspicious). The hackers are obviously not sophisticated enough though, because they did not seem to have taken into account the problem with identical thumbnails that will appear in the box with “more videos by …” but also in the “related video box” where I got the other user names from. Because the videos are similar in some fashion, YouTube thinks that they are related.

It is very very hard to produce identical thumbnails for videos that are not identical. In the early days YouTube used frames that could be predicted in advance (and was used for manipulations by users). This isn’t possible today anymore.

I would not be surprised, if similar scams will pop-up in the future more and more, also on other smaller social networks and video sharing sites. Those scams will also get more and more sophisticated and users will be vulnerable until their Antivirus/Antispyware software will be updated to detect those new threats that will emerge and then disappear again quickly.

The only real protection is up to the user himself

NEVER download and install a plug-in where you don’t know and trust the source. Installing a malicious plug-in is like unlocking the door, disabling the alarm and then open it to invite the burglar in to have a look around and take whatever he likes.  Almost all video sharing sites use FLASH for the video playback. The Flash plug-in should only be downloaded from the Adobe.com web site (and not from anywhere else).

http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer

Some apps might use the Shockwave plug-in, also from Adobe, which can be downloaded and installed via

http://www.adobe.com/go/getshockwave

Although I have not seen used with online video yet, web applications might also use JAVA by SUN, which can also be downloaded absolutely free of charge (like the FLASH and SHOCKWAVE plug-ins) from the web site that was created by SUN just for this. The URL is: http://www.java.com/download

Be Careful, without getting paranoid. Use common sense and caution where appropriate. Unfortunately not everybody on the Internet has the safety and happiness of the users in mind.

Be Safe!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Berlin Wall Video Copyright Issues

Here is now another great example for the current copyright laws being not only outdated and not fit for today’s world we live in, but also how those archaic laws are actually bad for society as a whole.

Let me start from the beginning…

The Beginning of the Story

I was contacted by Emily B. Hager on Saturday, October 31, 2009 via email and via phone.

Emily B. Hager is a video reporter for the New York Times (yes, THE NY Times). She was working on a last minute video  called “The Man Who Opened the Gate”, which was published on Monday, November 2, 2009, together with the article by Roger Cohen titled “The Hinge of History” with a supporting video.

The article is about Harald Jaeger, the Boarder Guard at the border crossing “Bornholmer Strasse'” who opened the gates on November 9, 1989 to let people pass from East Berlin to West Berlin in violation of a direct order by his superior. Emily came across my video “Moments in History – The Fall of the Berlin Wall”

I was contacted regarding this video by many others before that and already had posted an article where I addressed many of the very similar questions that I received regarding my video. Emily found the video of mine at the Internet Archive, where I also posted it, among other sites, like YouTube, Vimeo, my blog and over half a dozen other sites. I told her that I have plenty of video footage that she was looking for, mostly from a German Documentary DVD by Spiegel-TV titled "Spiegel TV - Der Fall der Mauer⁵" (ISBN #: 3-937901-04-3), which I purchased among other Documentary DVDs about the Berlin Wall and East Germany.

I agreed to send her the footage from the events around checkpoint Bornholmer Strasse in original DVD quality MPEG format and also provided her with the contact information at Spiegel to clarify the legal situation with them regarding her commercial use of the footage for the New York Times website. I stated in my previous post already that I am not sure about the copyright situation regarding the content that I used myself in my own video, not the other general footage about this historic significant event.

I asked her to let me know about Spiegel’s response regarding the legal situation of the content that they used in their documentary  in return for me helping her with her own video. I provided her with the contact information that I found been printed on the back of my original documentary DVD.

Spiegel TV
Brandstwiete 19
D-20457 Hamburg
Telefon: +49 (0)40 - 301 08-0
Fax: +49 (0)40 - 301 08-222

Emily obviously finished her video on time, using some of the footage that I provided to her to be published only 2 days later on the NY Times website. I did not hear from Emily for a while after that, however, two days after the video was published at the Times, on November 4, 2009, I received an Email (in German language) from Stephanie Kröner, from the Legal Department at Spiegel TV GmbH in Hamburg, which was basically a Cease and Desist letter, demanding that I delete my Moments in History video at the Internet Archive. They stated “that they found out to their surprise” about my video, no mention of the New York Times.

Original Email from Spiegel TV

(in German language only, sorry)

From: stephanie_kroener AT spiegel-tv DOT de
ent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 1:37 AM
To: Carsten Cumbrowski
Cc: Ulrich_Meyer AT Spiegel-tv DOT de
Subject: Rechtsverletzung SPIEGEL TV Materialien

Sehr geehrter Herr Cumbrowski,

mit Überraschung mussten wir feststellen, dass Sie unter der Internetadresse http://www.archive.org/details/MomentsInHistory-TheFallOfTheBerlinWall1989
einen Filmbeitrag zum Abruf bereitstellen, ohne über die hierzu erforderlichen Nutzungsrechte zu verfügen. Die Rechte an einem Großteil der dort verwendeten Filmausschnitte stehen ausschließlich der SPIEGEL TV GmbH zu.
Wir weisen Sie hiermit ausdrücklich auf diese Rechtsverletzung hin und fordern Sie zur sofortigen Löschung der betreffenden Filmmaterialien auf. Die Löschung der kompletten Materialien hat bis spätestens zum

        07. November 2009

zu erfolgen. Sollten die betroffenen Materialien bis zur gesetzten Frist nicht vollständig entfernt worden sein, sehen wir uns gezwungen, die notwendigen zivil- und auch strafrechtlichen Schritte einzuleiten.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Stephanie Kröner
Rechtsabteilung
SPIEGEL TV GmbH
Brandstwiete 19
20457 Hamburg
Germany
Telefon 040.30108-0
Fax 040.30108-428
http://www.spiegelgruppe.de/

SPIEGEL TV GmbH
Sitz und Registergericht Hamburg HRB 46 100
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Fried von Bismarck, Dirk Pommer, Cassian von Salomon

Because of the very unusual timing I thought that Emily was able to contact Spiegel TV, that they own the rights for at least some of the content that I used in Video and that they did not like my video very much. I deleted the video at the Internet Archive the same day and responded to Stephanie and Ulrich Meyer at Spiegel TV, who was CC’ed in the Email that was sent to me, telling them that I was doing what they demanded.

I did not delete the entire entry at the Internet Archive. I only deleted the video there and updated the video description with some biting remarks regarding the fact why the video is now missing. :)

Since it appears that some of the footage that I used is protected by copyright, I admit that the Public Domain Video section is not the right place for my video, because it does not consist of only Public Domain video footage as I thought.

I included in my response to Spiegel TV more than just the acknowledgement of the fulfillment of their demand, because the story has a little bit more to it than just my video at the Web Archive and I was sure that Spiegel TV had no idea about that.

My Email Response to Spiegel TV

Here is my full Email response (also in German Language, but don’t worry, I also provide the content of my email in English language with additional comments further down below).

From: Carsten Cumbrowski
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 2:47 AM
To: stephanie_kroener AT spiegel-tv DOT de
Cc: Ulrich_Meye AT spiegel-tv DOT de
Subject: Re: Rechtsverletzung SPIEGEL TV Materialien

Sehr geehrter Spiegel TV,

Ich habe das Video vom Internet Archive auf  http://www.archive.org/details/MomentsInHistory-TheFallOfTheBerlinWall1989 entfernt, wie Sie es von mir verlangt haben.

Damit habe ich ihrer Aufforderung Rechnung getragen. Mit dem offiziellen Teil aus dem Weg, moechte ich gerne ein paar persoenliche Kommentare zu Ihrer Email machen.

Kommentare und Fragen

• Sie mussten feststellen? Bloedsinn. Emily B. Hager von der New York Times (oder ihrer Rechtsabteilung) hat sie kontaktiert, dank mir. Bitteschoen, (nicht mehr) gern geschehen.
• Da Urheberrecht fuer einen Teil des verwendeten Materials existiert ist das Internet Archive eh der falsche Ort zur Veroeffentlichung.
• Damit ist das Video aber nicht aus der Welt. Nach Amerikanischem Urheberrecht, was bei mir Anwendung findet, da ich schon lange nicht mehr in Deutschland angemeldet bin, da ich meinen Wohnsitz heute in den USA habe, faellt mein Video sehr wahrscheinlich unter die "Fair use" Klausel, die es erlaubt Teile eines urheberrechtlich geschuetzten Werkes unter bestimmten Bedingungen zu verwenden.
• Ich finde es enttaeuschend von Ihnen auf diese Art und Weise zu hoeren. Es handelt sich immerhin nicht darum, dass ich Ihre DVD zum Download bereitgestellt habe, sondern nur ca. 5 minuten des Materials (von ungefaehr 2 Stunden) fuer ein persoenliches Video ueber wichtige Ereignisse der deutschen Geschichte benutzt habe. Ich habe auch keinerlei kommerzielle Interessen mit dem Video verfolgt, nicht einmal indirekt.
• Dieses Material duerfte meiner Meinung nach nicht einmal durch Copyright geschuetzt sein, da es sich hierbei um wichtigen Belege von bedeutende geschichtlichen Ereignissen handelt. Nicht-kommerzielle Nutzung zum Zwecke der Bildung und Aufklaerung sollte nicht durch kommerzielle Interessen unterbunden und zunichte gemacht werden. Da es sich hierbei offentlichtlich um eine Nachlaessigkeit des Gesetzgebers handelt, sollten Sie stattdessen die soziale Verantwortung uebernehmen, falls denn Spiegel TV GmbH ein Interesse daran hat, im Interesse der Gesellschaft als Ganzes zu handeln.
• Ich wurde von verschiedensten Personen, Publikationen und Gesellschaften kontaktiert wegen meines Videos. Koennten Sie mir wenigstens den Gefallen tun, mir eine Liste zu schicken mit den verwendeten Video Material fuer die DVD "Der Fall der Mauer" (ISBN 3-937901-04-3) und des Bonus Materials und wer dazu Urheberrechte besitzt oder nicht? Ich weiss zum Beispiel das einiges des Materials um 1961 von Universal Studio's Newsreels stammen, die sich seit laengerem in der Public Domain befinden. Ich plane naemlich noch weitere Videos ueber dieses Thema zu erstellen und es ist unheimlich schwer zu ermitteln wer was fuer Rechte oder nicht besitzt.
• Ausserdem, was waere notwendig, um das verwendete Video Material fuer die nicht-kommerzielle Nutzung durch Andere zu "clearen"? Zum Beispiel einer Regierung, die das Video fuer die Einweihung einer Mauergedenkstaette verwenden moechte, oder einer oeffentlichen non-profit Kulturverantstaltung zum anlaesslichen Jubilaeum des Mauerfalls in Berlin bei der Deutschen Botschaft in einem anderen Land? Das sind nur zwei Beispiele von vielen, die hier nur zur besseren Erklaerung meiner Frage dienen sollen.

Ich hoffe das Sie sich meine Kommentare einmal durch den Kopf gehen lassen und das Sie mir trotz alledem auf meine Fragen antworten werden.

Vielen Dank. Liebe Gruesse aus Kalifornien.

Carsten Cumbrowski

Geboren April 1974 in Ost Berlin

e: MY EMAIL ADDRESS

I was making them aware of the fact that I believe that they only became aware of my video at the Internet Archive because of the inquiry by the New York Times reporter that I was sending to them. I also expressed my disappointment to hear from them like this. If they had send me a friendly letter without legal threats telling me that they own rights to some of the content in my video with the request to remove it from the Internet Archive, which makes it appear to be public domain, that would have done the trick as well.

I also stated that this does not make my video disappear from the face of this world, because of my publication of it elsewhere. However, I believe that my video publication at those other locations should fall under the fair-use clause (or exception) of the U.S. copyright law.

I made them aware that the laws of the United States and not Germany apply to me even though I am a German citizen, because I am living permanently in the United States now and not in Germany anymore. The fair-use clause does basically permit the use of small amounts of copyrighted material under specific circumstances, which I believe to apply to my situation.

I went ahead that I think that the material should not even be protectable under copyright law, because of their historic significance for society, but that was more as FYI because Spiegel TV is obviously not the right place to do anything about this general problem. But they could for this particular content do something about it, for example release it into the public domain or at least stop sending C&D letters to people who use their footage non-commercially for educational purposes. That is, if Spiegel TV would be interested in what is good for society versus what only being good for them and bad for society in general.

Then I made a request. I asked them to send me a list with the legal situation of the content used in their DVD production and where they or somebody else owns any rights for. I also asked them what the requirements are to use their stuff, using real examples from requests that I received regarding my own short video. It is now over 2 weeks since I send them this request and they still owe me a response to it.

Hearing Back from the NY Times

Meanwhile, I was contacted again by Emily from the New York Times on November 12, 2009. There I found out that she had only brief contact with Spiegel TV, but somebody else than Stephanie Kröner or Ulrich Meyer and that this person promised to get back to her regarding the use of material in the New York Times video, but until then also didn’t do.  Well, the New York Times won’t have a problem if and when Spiegel TV gets back to them. They are a commercial publication and deal with those things on a daily basis. However, what I learned from this fact is that there must be some internal Spiegel TV communication going on across multiple departments, acting independent from each other. So the legal department from Spiegel TV may never heard of the New York Times reporter, but got notified about my video somehow else, but triggered by the inquiry that was made my Emily.

Conclusion

As you can see, it is a mess. And I still don’t know what is expected of me or anybody else to do in order to use the historic video footage about the Berlin Wall to educate people and raise awareness of what happened and what did not in non commercial projects. The only SAFE thing to do is not do anything at all. That is probably expected and hoped, but we as society would take more than one step backwards in development and at the same time increase the risk of the development of totalitarian states and governments taking control to enslave its people. It happened before, but I will not sit on my hands doing nothing in order to prevent it from happening once more and so should you.

I know that this story did not come to an end yet so there will be another post of mine, if there are new and noteworthy developments in this matter.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

p.s. all this attention to my Berlin Wall video has to do with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which just passed 2 weeks ago on Monday, November 9. 2009.

RoySAC.com Updates Brief

I have not posted at my blog for a long while (in comparison to the months before). This was actually not because of the lack of things to write about. There was plenty for me to write, but it seems that I tend to write less, the more is happening. Maybe because of the lack of time that usually concurs with more events happening or maybe it is just that I think too much about all the stuff I should write about that I forget to actually write something altogether.  Well, I need to think about that one :).

I decided now to write about each thing that I consider noteworthy only briefly and consolidated in this and another post to follow. Each thing by itself would probably have warranted its own post, but not at this time.

Downloads Section Expanded

   

I expanded the downloads page of my website to include two new sections.

1. Music Trackers tools for Windows and DOS.

See Tracker Downloads

Tracker music is a staple of the classic demo scene before the computers became powerful and advanced enough to use fully digital recordings of music for programs, demos and games. It was also the limitations of hard disk space and memory that lead to the development of alternatives such as the “Tracker”. The most famous known tracker software is probably the program “Sound Tracker” for the Commodore Amiga. Its file format, the classic “.MOD”, is still a pseudo standard today, including on the PC and supported by virtually all other tracker programs that came later. A tracker uses sound snippets (samples) rather than a full recording of a song, which can be played back at specified times with effects applied to them to change things like the tempo, volume and  octave.  Those settings are arranged in patterns and tracks with one track for each output “channel” for allowing stereo effects. Most of these tools were developed by members of the demoscene and are available for free for anybody who wants to use them. I made the most popular ones for DOS and also some newer ones for MS Windows 32b available for download, including FastTracker 2 by Triton (.XM files) and ScreamTracker 3 by Future Crew (.S3M files).

2. MS DOS Emulators

See Emulator Downloads

During the video capture of old MS DOS intros and cracktros that where created by SAC I became aware of the problems with running those old DOS programs on modern day PCs with operating systems like Windows XP and later. Most won’t run and with the introduction of 64 Bit versions of Windows, not even start, because Microsoft does not support old 16 bit applications with those operating systems anymore.

I had to use MS DOS emulators in order to be able to run and then capture those intros. Again, many of those emulators are free to download and use. Famous examples of DOS emulators that are available for download at my site now are the programs DOS Box and Bochs.

TheDraw Fonts Page

See: Over 100 fonts for the DOS ANSI Editor TheDraw

I am using since 1993 or so the DOS ANSI Editor TheDraw. Although later tools like ACiDDraw provided more features and problems with using the editor under Windows XP and Vista and the emergence of editors for Win32 operating systems, like PabloDraw, I continued to use it to this day. TheDraw provides a nice feature that was appreciated by sysops who were not ANSI artists themselves and could not find one to do custom artwork for their Bulleting Board System, called custom fonts. Unfortunately only too few fonts were made and released though, but I was able to collect over 100 of them. I made them available for download in one single package and also for individual download.

I created a special page where I also show the full character set of each font to show how they look and to show the characters that each font supports. I also added additional information to most of the fonts, like the style and the colors used (for the ANSI fonts). I broke the fonts up into two groups, ASCII fonts (no colors) and ANSI fonts. Those fonts are still a viable option for anybody who needs an ANSI for whatever reason and cannot find an artist who is willing to make one for you (Like me, many oldskool ANSI artists are “retired” today and don’t accept any new art requests by anybody).

My collection also includes fonts that I created myself. I created two fonts for example to be able to quickly create new page headers for my site. Those fonts can also be downloaded and reused by you.

I also provided instruction for how to install and use custom TheDraw fonts. The tool TheDraw itself is also available on my web site at the download section, where you can also find the other editors for download that I mentioned earlier.

Dytec – Dynamic Technologies Homepage

See Dytec Temp Homepage

I was a senior member and at some point in time even leader of the PC section of the German release group Dynamic Technologies, short Dytec, which was founded for the Commodore 64 in East Berlin, Germany in 1990 by a my personal friend with the handle “Fatman”.

Dytec has no official homepage on the Internet and information and productions, like intros, cracktros and dentros created by the different sections for the Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga and PC are scattered all over the Internet. I created a page that provides some historic background of the group and video captures of all productions from all three platforms that I was able to find. I also show some of the ASCII artwork that was used by Dytec PC for its releases, like NFO files and FILE_ID.DIZ.

It’s not the official homepage for the group by any means, but the best there is IMO to compare it to something like that, until a real homepage/site is maybe created for Dynamic Technologies one day.

OldSkool DemoMaker (OSDM) Intros Page

See My OSDM Intros Page

I created a bunch of nice oldskool intros and cracktros for RoySAC.com and other purposes using the cool and free tool called OldSkool DemoMaker by Peace/Testaware. I showcase each of my intros and show the video capture for each of them. Links to download the videos and the intros themselves are also provided.

I also provided some background story and information for each of the productions, including full credits for the music that I used and graphics that I did not create myself.

For all the folks who are interested to learn more about the tool itself, I provided some background information and useful links related to the OSDM in general as well.

FILE_ID.DIZ Collection

Update! See File_ID.DIZ Collection

I almost forgot this to mention. I also created a small collection on the side for FILE_ID.DIZ logos used by scene groups to describe and promote their releases in bulletin board systems and FTP sites.

I have so far already 131 individual File_ID.DIZ ASCII designs collected and added to my collection. File_ID’s are not large, so the whole collection is displayed on just a single page. Check them out!

          ____:_THE_:_        ________  _:_  _____:_
          \__ |___/ |______  /  ____  \/ |  |  ___/
          D/  i  _  |  ___ \/   |  |  /  |__|  __|_
          /   _  |  l  |  \  /  |  |  \  l  \  _l  |
          \___|  |_____|__|\/|  |_____/\_____\_____|
          :  .`--'     .  :  `—-'  -*GUYS*- .  :   .
          .           Dungeon Hack      Disk [1/4] .
                FROM STRATEGIC SIMULATIONS INC.

Other Things I Already Reported

I already wrote about other additions and changes to my site in previous posts of mine that you might want to check out for more information.

• SAC Art Packs Now Available Online
  
• SAC Extended Intros/Cracktos Collection Online 
• ASCII Nudes Gallery Redesign

That’s it, regarding news about my Site RoySAC.com 

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

VNV Nation Box Set – Reformation 01

I received today the Reformation 01 box set (limited edition) by my favorite band “VNV Nation” that I pre-ordered at Amazon.com, who still sells it for only $21.xx dollars. (This is not my first exclusive post about VNV Nation. You can check out the other ones to learn more about VNV here and here.)

The limited edition of the Reformation 01 box set by VNV Nation is a real bargain. For little more than the price of a regular album CD you get 2 CD's and a video DVD with 8 tracks recorded at live concerts in Europe (mostly Hamburg, Germany).

Backup Link to Video on Vimeo
Download this video in AVI format in High Definition (1280x720, 81 MB)

Video Notes and Credits: The video above was edited by me and includes snippets from the DVD  that is part of the Reformation 01 box set. It also uses various images that are not part of the box set and video snippets from the viral “Illusion” video with animations by Andrew Huang, which were unfortunately not included in this box set (it would have been the right place for it though :) ). All music by VNV Nation.

I also like to remark that the box set includes the first ever LIVE ALBUM by VNV Nation, so fans who prefer VNV Nation live over the studio recordings (like I do) do not have to fall back on the not 100% legitimate Live album solution by ripping the audio tracks of the previously released Pastperfect Live DVD :). Vnv Nation - Pastperfect Limited Edition.

The latter one was actually suggested by Ronan and Mark from VNV themselves, when I meet them by accident in Berlin and asked them (AGAIN) why there is no VNV Live Album yet. I think I sent them all in all 2 or 3 additional emails before I talked to them in person and after. Well, the message finally “found its way home” hehe.

Ronan Harris, the main guy behind VNV Nation, is very responsive to contact attempts and close to the fans and not such an arrogant and careless asshole like the guys from Depeche Mode (a band that I used to adore for about 20 years of my life :( ). VNV has a MySpace page where you get fresh news and updates via their MySpace blog and also some nice goodies sometimes, like a preview of upcoming CD releases via the MySpace audio player. They did this for this Box Set actually.

 
VNV Nation is also on tour soon. The 2009 tour is called “Faith, Power and Glory”. Some tickets are on sale via Fan Direct sale (cheaper) at a ticket solution that I developed for the most part (and my old company hehe). It’s an older and heavily customized solution, because of it’s unique use for fan direct sales by artists. More tour dates and link to regular ticket purchases are available at this blog post at the VNV MySpace blog.

A new album with the same title as the tour will be released by VNV Nation on June 23, 2009. You can pre-order "Of Faith, Power and Glory" at Amazon.com for only $13.99

Now back to the Reformation 01 box set :)

CD 2 of the set includes in addition to various remixes of known songs also some new material, which was previously unreleased.

Last but not least some comments about the box set itself. It's of high quality, compared to other box sets by other bands that I have seen myself in the past. It also contains a thick booklet that wouldn't fit into a regular CD case. The only bummer here is that the booklet is glued to the box set and thus hard to read in comfort because of the 3 discs next to it (when you unfold the whole set).

You can get a good idea about the quality of the box set by looking at the large version of the product image that was provided by Amazon. Use the zoom feature to get a real close look at the material and the "engraved" VNV Nation logo. That's why is the cover so dark, because it isn't printed color. You can feel it (if you bought it :))

p.s. Yes, the links to Amazon.com are affiliate links and I will get $1 or so commission if you decide to by the set from Amazon, right after you clicked on my link. This is not the reason for this post and if you know me a bit better, you wouldn’t even assume that I would do something like that. But for those folks who don’t know me, be happy about this unnecessary disclaimer and shut up :).

VNV Nation – Reformation 01 – 3 Discs Box Set - Track List

Reformation 01 – CD #1 (the Live Album) 01    Joy              05:24 02    Chrome           04:49 03    Testament        06:22 04    Nemesis          04:37 05    Endless Skies    05:58 06    Farthest Star    05:06 07    Procession       05:26 08    Entropy          05:17 09    Illusion         04:51 10    Arena            05:34 11    Honour 2003      07:06 12    Perpetual        08:47 Note: Sound samples for every track of CD 1 and CD 2 are available for free at the Amazon.com web site.

Reformation 01 – CD #2 (the Remixes) 01  Chrome (27.2 Mhz Remix by Modcom)          06:26 02  Chrome (Sitd Remix)                        04:58 03  Chrome (Apoptygma Berzerk Remix)           04:42 04  Interceptor (ABM Version by VNV Nation)    05:35 05  Nemesis (S.A.M. Remix)                     03:50 06  Carry You (Frozen Plasma Remix)            06:36 07  Still Waters                               07:36 08  Suffer                                     07:00 09  Precipice                                  05:40 10  As it fades (2nd Mvmt. by VNV Nation)      03:31 11  Main Theme (from 'Gene Generation')        02:45 12  Mayhem (from 'Gene Generation')            02:03 13  The Lair (from 'Gene Generation')          02:57 The songs in red are NEW and previously unreleased. I also do not recall the songs from track 10-13, but I wasn’t able to listen to all of them without being distracted to be sure. Well, three new songs as bonus is better than none, but 7 would be more than twice as good hehe.

Reformation 01 – DVD #1 (the Live Videos) 01 Farthest Star     05:15 02 Chrome            04:48 03 Nemesis           06:00 04 Illusion          04:54 05 Homeward          05:42 06 Arena             05:57 07 Honor 2003        06:54 08 Perpetual         08:49 Only Honor 2003 was previously available on DVD Video. It’s a different recording though. A previous live recording of Honor 2003 is one of the hidden “Easter Eggs” of the “Pastperfect” Live DVD. Oops, did I say that out loud? Sorry ;)

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

A Guide to Video & Audio for Microsoft Windows

What is this? Online video is booming and more dads become hobby “Spielbergs” every year. Dropping prices and increasing power and capability of video recording, playing and transmitting equipment is also doing his part to aid this trend.

Chances are good that it happened to you that you received a media file, audio or video from somewhere or someone that you wanted to play back on your computer, but couldn’t. Your friend opened it without problems, but you are getting a cryptic and technical error message instead, with no real solution offered to solve the problem.

If you started doing editing of videos and published your creations on CD, DVD, online or elsewhere, the problems encountered related to compatibility issues of your video and audio data that you are working on, probably increased exponentially compared to the time when you just consumed media.

That was at least what happened to me.

I found myself spending more and more time on solving those issues and less and less time on actually editing and publishing videos. I had to learn more about the subject than I ever wanted to, but I was kind of forced to deal with it anyway. I collected a lot of resources and experiences over the past months and even years and sat down one day to work on a consolidated article, post, guide or whatever you want to call it. Well, here is the result of this work that I actually enjoy: writing (and talking hehe).

I hope that this article and the provided information and resources will help you to solve some of the issues faster than I did and to get a general understanding of the subject in a much shorter period of time. I found many great resources, but none that is like mine. The resources that I found were often very detailed and very much technical, talking about my problems, but providing answers that I did not understand and asked me to do decisions for things where I did not understand the consequences of each choice that I could pick from. I pretty much had to rely on instinct, luck and trial and error, which is not a great way of fixing Windows issues efficiently and absolute.

I try to be more generic and only in a few cases specific, where I think I have to, but in the hope that I already provided enough general information that you got a pretty good idea of what the details mean once we get to them.

Feel free to use the comments to provide feedback, suggestions, praise or ask questions.

Thanks and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

The Containers - Media Files

A video container contains the video images, the audio and any additional features and content for the presentation of what normal people call “a video”. The additional stuff is often not noticed or believed by many, not part of the video files themselves.

Those things include “closed captions” or “sub titles”, “chapter indexes”, “Menu’s” like DVD menus and “Metadata” like “Genre” tags, “Description”, “Copyright”, “Publisher”, “Author”, “Ratings” etc.

The containers are represented as video files with specific file extensions that helps (more the) users and (less so) the computer to be able to identify the different containers, used for a particular “video”.

 

Container	Name	Parent	Company/Consortium
3GP/3GP2	3rd Generation Mobile	MP4	3GPP/Mpeg
AVI	Audio Video Interleave	AVI	Microsoft
ASF	Advanced Streaming/System Format		Microsoft
DIVX	DivX Media Format		DivX
DV	Digital Video		Sony, JVC, Panasonic
DVR-MS	Microsoft Digital Video Recording		Microsoft
EVO	Enhanced VOB	VOB	Mpeg
FLV	Flash Video		Apple
M2TS/MTS	MPEG-2 Transport Stream 192 B		Mpeg
MCF	BSD/GNU Container		BSD/GNU
MKV/MKA	Matroska Video/Audio		Public Domain
MP4	MPEG-4		Mpeg
MPG/MPEG	MPEG Program Stream		Mpeg
MOV/QT	Apple QuickTime Movie		Apple
NUT	NUT Project/GPL		GPL
OGM/OGG	Ogg Media File		Xiph.org
PS	MPEG-2 Program Stream	MP4	Mpeg
RAT	ratDVD (based on VOB)	VOB	GPL
PVR/DVR	MPEG-2 Transport Stream 188 B, DVR (Digital Video Recorder) PVR (Personal Video Recorder)		Mpeg
RIFF	Resource Interchange File Format (AVI)	AVI	Microsoft/IBM
RM/RM VB	Real Media - Variable Bitrate		Real Networks
TS/TP/TRP	MPEG-2 Transport Stream 188 B	MP4	Mpeg
VOB	Video Object		Mpeg
WMA	Windows Media Audio	ASF	Microsoft
WMV	Windows Media Video	ASF	Microsoft

Container	Video Codecs	Audio Codecs
3GP/3GP2	H.263, H.264, MPEG-4	AMR-NB/WB, (HE-)AAC
AVI	MPEG-4, MJPEG, DV, Cinepak, Indeo	MP3, MP2, AD(PCM), AC3
ASF	Windows Media Video, VC-1, MS MPEG4 v3	Windows Media Audio
DIVX	DivX	MP3, AC3, PCM
DV	DV	PCM
DVR-MS	MPEG-2	MP2, AC3
EVO	H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2	(E)AC3, DTS(HD), PCM
FLV	H.263, H.264, VP6	MP3, AAC, ADPCM
M2TS/MTS	H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2	(E)AC3, DTS(HD), PCM
MCF	various	various
MKV/MKA	H.264, MPEG-4	MP3, AC3
MP4	MPEG-4, H.264	AAC
MPG/MPEG	MPEG-1, MPEG-2	MP2
MOV/QT	H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-1, MJPEG, Sorenson Video	MP3, AC3, PCM
NUT	Anything	Anything
PS	MPEG-2	MP2, AC3, DTS, PCM
OGM/OGG	Ogg Theora, Xvid	Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AC3
PVR/VDR	MPEG-2, H.264	MP2, AC3
RAT (ratDVD)	XEB	AC3, DTS, PCM, MP2
RIFF	ANI, MPEG-4, MJPEG, DV, Cinepak, Indeo	WAV
RM/RM VB	Real Video	Real Audio, AAC
TS/TP/TRP	MPEG-2, H.264	MP2, AC3
VOB	MPEG-2	AC3, DTS, PCM, MP2
WMA	-	Windows Media Audio
WMV	Windows Media Video, VC-1	Windows Media Audio

Pretty much all containers support directly or via support tools variable audio bit-rates (VBR), variable video frame-rates (VFR) and b-frames.

FLV, MPG/MPEG (and TS) do not support chapters, those containers also do not support subtitles (or only very poorly via workarounds)

Wikipedia – Comparison of Container Formats

The Components

File Sources

Now I mentioned already that a container holds all the pieces together that we call a “video”. Now we have to start taking them apart and enter the dark side of video format land (slowly).

A file source is a special software component that is able to open one or multiple of the mentioned video containers and get them ready to be processed. It can read the header information of the container and check if it makes sense and what criteria the next components would have to meet to be able to process this media file. You already learned that many containers can handle multiple video and also multiple audio encoding formats. 

Let me use a modified version of a classic saying: "Not all .AVI files are made equal". There is usually not just ONE component that can handle ALL of the video formats an AVI container supports. Also, the container contains VIDEO and AUDIO data, which are two entirely different things (technically) that will have to be processed separately. They must be separated, split from one another, which is also referred to as demuxing.

Muxer, Demuxer (Splitter)

Let’s start it easy and separate just the Audio, Video.

Several of the media containers also support other types of data that are related to the video and/or audio content. Also more than one instance of each media type is possible. A good example is the audio selection on a DVD. Most DVD movies offer a choice of spoken languages and sound quality, such as Stereo, Surround Sound and Dolby Digital. Also available are typically a set of different languages for the sub titles or closed captions for the hearing impaired folks out there.

Captions/Sub Titles, Meta Data and Menu’s are still not unimportant, but less of a problem in my opinion. So I decided to move them to the end. Hey, that does not make me intolerant towards people who are impaired in their hearing. I am a collector junkie myself and love Meta Data.

The file source component that I mentioned before is often part of a splitter/demuxer, which does make sense. A file source already has to know the format of the container. It's from there only one more logical step to take the parts of the media content in the container and pass them over to the right next component to process it. 

The reversed process of the splitting of the content in a media container (demuxing) is the combining of the various parts that need to go into a container and wrap them together to generate a single file that has all the video and audio data etc. in it. This process is being called "muxing" and the component that does this is referred to as a Muxer. The muxer receives the data from the counter part where the demuxer passes the different data streams to.One gets the audio to deal with, the other one the video and maybe another one to take care of the closed captions. The Demuxer passes the data to a "Decoder", while the "Muxer" would receive its data from an "Encoder". An Encoder/Decoder or both is referred to as a Codec.

Codec

The word codec is short for compressor/decompressor but also referred to as encoder or decoder.

Codecs are in many cases not bound to a specific container, which does not make things easier and only more confusing, especially, if you consider the amount of Codecs and their variations that exist. A codec can be a hardware or software component, but in our case are only the software Codecs of importance.

That component can compress and/or decompress video using a particular compression algorithm.

Since all those Codecs and containers must be defined somewhere that the computer system and software can find out what it needs in order to provide/play back all the elements that make up your “video”. You probably noticed all the “aka” and “/” usages for the same or very similar thing. It’s a mess!

The codec tweaking tool GSpot Version 2.7 knows about 749 different FourCC video Codecs and 247 different audio compression Codecs. That gives you an idea about the scope of the problem. This does not even include any special filters, splitters, file sources; renderers and all that other stuff that is part of the system, playing a role in the process of bringing up the video from a file on your screen and the audio out of your speakers.

FourCC

To help the computer a little bit with making sense out of things, a system was devised that is called FourCC or 4CC, which means literally “four character codes”. The folks from the video game development company Electronic Arts introduced what is considered the father of the FourCC concept, called IFF (Standard for Interchange Format Files) in 1985 for the Commodore Amiga line of computers (“EA IFF 85”).

A simplified definition for 4cc could be: Every media component format will be assigned a unique 4 character code, which will be included in the media data itself, that apps and systems can look at a specific place in the media data to find out what format the data is in. It can then simply check, if it has the information for the format that is labeled with that 4 character code or not. If it does not, it will return an error and tell the system or user that it requires the specifications for that format to understand the structure and layout of the data in order to be able to process them properly (e.g. show images from your last vacation instead of a bunch of colored dots that look more like works by Escher).

A good list with Codecs, their FourCC designation, company name and website URL is available at FOURCC.ORG. 

The words “Filter” and “Codec” are unfortunately often used beyond their actual meaning, which only adds to the whole confusion even more. A “DirectShow Filter” might be a Codec, a file source, a splitter, a muxer, a renderer or maybe actually just a filter. The term Codec might be used in the same fashion, but usually implies that the actual encoding and/or decoding piece, is at least part of the software package. For example, if you download the DivX Codec from the DivX website, you get more than just the encoder or decoder, even more than the stuff that is needed by Windows to encode and create or decode and render videos using the DivX video compression algorithm. It comes with players, a converter, statistics and configuration tools along with it.

Why Do We Need All This in the First Place?

Video data are nice, but also have a flaw: they are huge and eat up a lot of space, so much space that it is even with today’s low hard disk cost and higher available bandwidth not feasible to work with raw video data all the time. Codecs reduce the size of video and audio in a flick significantly. There are a number of different algorithms out there and used for the compression, each with their own pros and cons. Some compress higher with less loss of quality, but suck up a lot more resources and demand much more powerful hardware to decode the flicks again for presentation that not all hard and software is able to support them yet, compared to other Codecs, that might not be as good with compression and loss of quality, but are faster and require much less computing power to do something with the crunched data files.

But it is also true that competition, patents and commercial interests play a significant part in this game as well. It does not have to be that messy as it is today.

Most popular Codecs on the Internet

(based on Codecs Database)

I will not mention every of the over 1000 or so video and audio codecs that exist. I will reduce it to one a few that are popular online and offline and cover well over 90% of the entire spectrum. 

Some Video Codecs

MPEG-1/MPEG-2

The video codecs used for standard DVD Video and VCD/SVCD. Typical file formats have the extensions: .VOB

or .MPG/.MPEG.

MPEG-4 Part 2

Most .AVI  files on the internet are using one of the following two video codecs, the commercial DivX video codec (4CC codes: DIVX, DX50, DIV3, DIV4 and DIV5)  and the open source Xvid codec (4CC: XVID, sometimes also xvid or Xvid, which should not but unfortunately does matter some times, if a software component is case-sensitive. I bitched about that elsewhere already).

Xvid is able to process many of the different versions of DivX, except for the really early ones

MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding)

.MP4 files and newer Apple QuickTime .MOV files (4CC: AVC1). You can rename a MOV file to MP4 for example, if a program causes trouble when you want to load a MOV file with it and it might does the trick for you.  Typical are H.264 format based codecs, like the open source X.264 codec  (4CC: X264) or the commercial Dicas H.264 codec (4CC: DAVC)

QuickTime Movies

.MOV (also .QT) files from Apple. The latest versions use the H.264 format, but Apple used in the past a propriatory format (4CC: SV10) and then versions of the Sorenson Video Quantizer  video codec (4CC: SVQ1 or SVQ3), with it's version 3 being already a variation of the H.264 format to make it the next logical step  for Apple and it's QuickTime product to use a standard video format and not continue with its own.

Flash Video

Probably mostly because of the popularity of YouTube who uses Flash Video for showing movies on its social video sharing platform and the general popularity of using Flash for video on the Web, .FLV transformed from exotic video format to a format most internet users are familiar with.

Flash 7 uses the Sorenson Spark video codec (4CC: SPRK) and Flash 8 the On2 VP6 codec (4CC: VP60)

Windows Media

Microsoft developed their own video and audio codecs, which are known as Windows Media Video and Windows Media Audio. They are used in the media containers WMV and WMA and ASF for streaming. 

Real Media

Like Microsoft, Real Network, the giant content portal on the Internet, developed their own video and audio codecs (4CCs: RV20, RV30, RV40). The .RM (real video) and .RA (real audio) file format is still the primary format for Real Networks Real Player. Real Video became popular because it was one of the first video formats that could be streamed over the Internet.

Some Audio Codecs

MPEG-1 Layer 3

Simply known as MP3 is the most known and used audio format today. Part of the credits for making it as popular as it is today would probably have to go to the former file sharing peer-to-peer network Napster and of course to Apple iTunes and their iPod portable MP3 audio player. It was developed by the Frauenhofer Institute in Germany and also made head-line new with it's patent disputes and lawsuits in the early 1990s.

(AD)PCM

Raw WAV files are usually encoded in PCM format. 

AC3

Better known as Dolby Digital (5.1). The popular sound format used on many DVD movies for high quality surround sound at home and at movie theaters. 

MPEG Audio (AAC)

AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding and was meant to be the successor of MP3. It is today in wide spread use, for example in iPhones, iPods (and iTunes now) or the Sony Playstation 3 game console.

DTS (AC)

You probably know DTS from the sound options of many DVDs. DTS is a common alternative audio format, competing with Dolby Digital. DTS stands for Digital Theatre System -  Coherent Acoustics if spelled out. Similar to Dolby Digital 5.1, but some say that it is slightly better that 5.1. Mh. :) 

I mentioned Windows Media Audio already. 

Filters

There are multiple meaning of the word "filter" in video land. In DirectShow (see further down below), every component is called a "Filter", independently from it's function and purpose. So a DirectShow Filter could be a File Source, a Splitter, Encoder/Decoder (Codec), Renderer or actually a Filter in the true sense of the word.

A Filter in traditional terms is a component that alters the video or audio stream. Classic filters that you probably used yourself every time when you edited a video, sound or picture, without knowing that you used one. PhotoShop users will smile now, because they should have a pretty good idea of what is coming now.

If you resize a video for example, or change it's contrast, brightness, saturation, hue, color encoding, number of colors, or turn color video images to gray-scaled ones, deformations, slicers, blenders, mixers, volume adjustments, normalizers etc. etc. All those functions are performed by Filters. Something goes in, gets manipulated and then comes out and hopefully enhanced on the original output as we wanted it to do.

Renderers

Renders are responsible for the output of the video and/or audio stream data to a device that is capable of displaying or playing back the content, such as the video card that then renders the images on to your computer screen or display or to the sound card, which feeds your side speakers or your receiver and then out of your high-end speaker system that you can listen to the sounds and voices of the audio or video file.

Streaming

Streaming is only a special form of rendering that requires that the video data are rendered fast enough to allow the play back of the audio or video in real time, without the need to download the whole video or audio before I play it back. You might think that this is the normal way of doing it, but if you ever converted a video to a DVD or a DVD movie (e.g. MPEG-2/PCM) to a MP4 video file (e.g. H.264/AC3) for example then you probably know that this process takes still longer than the video material itself is long. A 90 minutes movie takes usually more than 90 minutes to re-code/convert from one media type/format to another. The conversion of a video file to HD DVD (such as Blu Ray) can take many hours or days, depending on the hardware equipment used for the conversion.

That is not an option for streaming, especially if the video is streamed while the content is being generated/recorded, such as a Live Event Broad Cast. You don't want to wait to see today’s ball game tomorrow, because it takes a day to recode the video images that you can watch it on your computer or TV, right?

Not all video formats can be streamed and the ones that can, need to be transmitted to the receiver in an optimized way to ensure that the video stream is constant to guarantee fluid video images and flawless sound. For the transmission of the video and audio data are different streaming protocols used, like RTSP, PNM, MMS  or HTTP.

Components Wrap Up

Now you have all those components and elements in the process and all these different methods and formats where non of them just by itself is anything but easy to do. It is already hard enough to get all those things work together in unison and as a whole that the least thing you would want to do is adding another layer of complexity to it and makes things even more complex than they already are, right? Yeah, sure, common sense tells you that this is probably a good idea, but since when was common sense applied to the real world? Think about it!

DirectShow (DS) - Filters, Video for Windows (VfW)

Now Microsoft thought that it could make things even messier… Aehm, I mean improve on them. But I will repeat what they say themselves in the introduction to their “Microsoft DirectShow 9.0 System Overview” at MSDN.Microsoft.com.

The Challenge of Multimedia

Working with multimedia presents several major challenges:

Multimedia streams contain large amounts of data, which must be processed very quickly.

Audio and video must be synchronized so that it starts and stops at the same time, and plays at the same rate.

Data can come from many sources, including local files, computer networks, television broadcasts, and video cameras.

Data comes in a variety of formats, such as Audio-Video Interleaved (AVI), Advanced Streaming Format (ASF), Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and Digital Video (DV).

The programmer does not know in advance what hardware devices will be present on the end-user's system.

The DirectShow Solution

DirectShow is designed to address each of these challenges. Its main design goal is to simplify the task of creating digital media applications on the Windows® platform, by isolating applications from the complexities of data transports, hardware differences, and synchronization.

To achieve the throughput needed to stream video and audio, DirectShow uses DirectDraw® and DirectSound® whenever possible. These technologies render data efficiently to the user's sound and graphics cards. DirectShow synchronizes playback by encapsulating media data in time-stamped samples. To handle the variety of sources, formats, and hardware devices that are possible, DirectShow uses a modular architecture, in which the application mixes and matches different software components called filters.

DirectShow provides filters that support capture and tuning devices based on the Windows Driver Model (WDM), as well as filters that support legacy Video for Windows (VfW) capture cards, and codecs written for the Audio Compression Manager (ACM) and Video Compression Manager (VCM) interfaces.

The following diagram shows the relationship between an application, the DirectShow components, and some of the hardware and software components that DirectShow supports.

The “simple” concept of DirectShow by Microsoft illustrated

The DirectShow API media-streaming architecture was introduced with the DirectX SDK for 32Bit Windows operating systems. If you remember Windows 95 and 98 and played some games on it, then you will remember that DirectX was always required and the minimum version needed to run the game was even shipped with the setup CD-Rom’s for the games and part of the setup process.

The DirectX SDK kind of died as a package with versions etc. The last DirectX version released was a DirectX 9.0 update from February 2005. DirectShow was moved to the Windows SDK. Windows 2003 Server and Vista are the first systems where only the Windows SDK is used and no DirectX anymore.

DirectX was the successor of Video for Windows (VFW), which was introduced in 16-bit Windows (Windows 3.0, 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups). For backwards compatibility reasons to be able to run 16-bit apps under 32-bit Windows, do the 32-bit OS versions of Microsoft support VFV.

But, they did not leave VFV completely alone. Starting with DirectX, many of the VFV features were suppressed, causing incompatibility issues for some 16-bit video applications, if used in Windows 32-bit. They launch and kind of work, but at the same time not really, at least not as expected and most of the time wanted.

Getting your computer to process any type of video with the application that uses DirectShow or VFV does not make things work for applications, which uses the other model. This can get funny and made me scratch my head more than once. Phenomena like player X can play back a video in format Y after you installed an add-on (probably a Codec), but player Z remains unable to do anything with that video.

One uses VFW and the other DS. Both are separate frameworks and each must be supported specifically by any component that is part of your video experience. Some applications support both, but most use either one or the other only.

Because of this mess, do some applications do not use either of those systems and use their own system to process video data. Those applications are limited to what they come with and support themselves. Some allow third parties to create plug-ins to support additional Codecs and file formats. Nullsoft’s Winamp Player would be a popular example for this approach.

DirectShow is like Lego with all the same great attributes and possibilities and virtually the same flaws as well, because of these great possibilities. If you ever owned Lego and played with it, chances are that you owned more than one set. You probably also mixed the parts of different sets and did not keep them separate. With the time became it harder to get original sets together again, because the manual got lost and you had to start guessing which part goes were and was part of a specific set or not. Also parts got lost some times. You had to improvise, and substitute things, which was only possible to a limited amount, because you had to make sure that the parts fit.

The process is virtually the same with DirectShow. A set would be a video file for example that you want to play back with a DirectShow enabled video player, such as Windows Media Player. The components of the set are actually mini-sub-sets itself, like a set in Lego that was part of a theme, e.g. modern city or the knights theme. Imagine having other players coming and using your sets and/or bring some new sets or even modify some of the sets that you already built, because they did not like the way you did it.

Those other players can be any video related software (big app to small tool) that is using DirectShow. Even a small and not very important tool that you want to use for splitting a video into multiple pieces for example, might messes things up or cause the system do things different that it used to before. Stuff is most of the time changed without warning.

I do not have an answer to the problem, that you cannot sit down, make everything work the way you like and then keep it forever. I can only say that if you got everything to work how you need it, be careful what software you install in the future and leave settings related to video and audio alone.

And to make thinks even more interesting for the future, Microsoft decided to introduce yet another system to the mix with their upcoming operation system version dubbed Windows 7 with the bright and shiny name:

Windows Media Foundation. "It will make everything better, promise". It sure will. The only question remains is for whom it does. Mhh?!

Video Tools

Splitter/Joiner

There are also video and audio file splitter tools that do what their name implies. They let you slice up a video or audio file into multiple pieces (splitter) or combine multiple video or audio files into a single file (joiner). You cannot simply cut a video or audio file into pieces or copy different media files together (like with the binary copy command in DOS).

Media files have a header, data at the beginning of the file, which are crucial that media players are able to play them. A missing or corrupt header can make the entire media file unusable und unplayable. If you simply cut a file in half, then you would end up with one file that has now incorrect information about the media file and a second one with no information at all. Individual video frames also have multiple components and a header. If it is a compressed video file (what typically all video files that are used by regular users are), then it is even more complicated, because some frames are needed to render a bunch of other frames, so called key frames.

Cutting a file into pieces without considering all this factors would be like going to a butcher and have him cut the next best piece of a cow when you order X pounds of steak. No pretty picture, but I hope that you get the idea.

Cutting a media file into pieces is generally easier than joining them together (as with almost everything else in life, taking things apart is easier than putting them back together). As long as the Cutter tool knows the file format structure and knows where to cut and to rebuild the file header, things will be fine. If they are not recoding the slices in the process, cutting is also done pretty fast.

Joining files is tougher, unless you want to re-join the pieces that you just created with your cutter. This is rarely the case though. If you only want to slice a media file up for storage and transportation, because the media file is too large, then you should not use a media cutting tool in the first place. Breaking it up with your backup software or with tools like ZIP, RAR, ACE, HJSplit or MasterSplitter will do just fine.

Simpler joiner tools are only able to combine media files that have exactly the same format. When I say exactly, then I mean more than just having the same file extension. The to-be-joined files must be compressed with the same video and audio Codecs and also settings that determine the video and audio quality, such as Bit Rate, Frame Rate, Sampling Rate and Resolution have to be identical. If this is the case, the joiner only has to re-create the information and not to re-encode any audio or video data.

More sophisticated joiners are a bit more flexible and will make adjustments to the source media in order to be able to join them. Some even re-encode the whole video and audio and work like converter, compositing and rendering tool all-in-one. If the joiner has to re-encode anything, then the process can take considerably more time, but it provides the most flexibility regarding the video and audio sources that can be combined together, even allowing the joining of media in entirely different formats.

To join .AVI files that are in the same format, you can use the free tool VirtualDub. You can also use free compositing tools like Windows Moviemaker (also free), or professional software, like TechSmith Camtasia Studio, Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle Avid, Ulead Video Studio (now Corel) etc., but there you have to re-encode the results every time, regardless if it would be necessary or not.

There are many commercial tools available. I can recommend the Splitter and Joiner tools from Boilsoft, because they are very universal and support various video file formats, including .AVI, .WMV, .ASF, .RM and .MPG. They cost about $50 together and you can test them free for a few days before you have to decide whether you want to buy them or not.

The Video Joiner by ImToo is more flexible and re-codes the source video files to the format that you select and only cost $19, with a free trial period to test it yourself.

Resources

The drops of water on the hot stones in the video & audio encoding and decoding desert. Some drops might vaporize away without quenching your thirst, while others might provide just the little bit of water that you need to survive another day in this desert. :)

Codec Packs

It became clear to geeks and people with a great deal of knowledge and understanding of the subject matter that this is not something that you can expect from a normal user to deal with. A large number of people would probably not understand it and an even larger number of people do not even want to understand it to begin with. I belong to the second group that is not a part of the intersecting set with the first group. I just want to watch and edit a movie, that’s it.

The market failed, the competition lead to incompatibility issues and conflicts and the need to spend the equivalent of a college education in time and resources in order to be able to talk the talk and blame it on the other party.

Ordinary people stepped up and developed tools and build packages, most of the time absolutely free, that other people can download and install, to make many of the things work that usually do not, or at least make the problems smaller and easier to deal with.

They are called Codec Packs and are a collection of containers, Codecs, filters and tools that are pre-configured to work together and as many as possible components compatible to each other.

The problem is that Codec Packs, if not done right, can help making things worse. Some packs also think that doing their own thing, ignoring any other standards and best practices, creating their own little island is the solution to the problem. This lead to hate and love that you will get exposed to, if you are doing some of your own research on this subject. Some despise them, some hate them, others love them and calling them saviors. 

To sum it all up, Codec Packs might not a quick and general applicable solution to a wide spread problem as they tried to went out to become. From what I heard from "experts", other geeks and based on some experiences that I made myself with those packs, there are only a few that I would recommend. 

Some of the biggest and popular Codec Packs include:

• K-Lite Codec Pack (KLCP) – provides different packs with different configurations for the different types of users out there. They also have pages with name, brief description and download link for circa 300 video and audio Codecs, filters, splitters, Muxers and De-Muxers etc.
• Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) is the pack that is praised the most (or hated the least) by people who call themselves expert in this subject. I was okay with it, but personally preferred K-Lite.

Other Codec Packs
Please use with Caution and check first, if they offer everything that you need, before you install them.

• Windows Essential Codec Pack (W.E.C.P.) 
• Cole2k Media - Codec Pack
• Gordian Knot Codec Pack
• MediaCoder Pack
• X-Codec Pack

Special Players and Codecs

• QuickTime Alternative
• RealPlayer Alternative
• nLite Windows Installation Customizer
• WMLite, TTPack and QTLite for light-weight versions of Windows Media Player, Apple QuickTime, Real Networks Real Player, FFdshow, Ogg and AC3
• Media Player Classic (MPC) and VobSub
• DirectShow FilterPack (DSFP)

I don't use codec packs today anymore. I install and deal with codecs one-by-one. This is probably the best way to go in the long ground, once you are familiar with the various available options out there and know what you need for your own purposes. The needs of video creators and consumers are not alway the same. I am both and experienced this first hand myself.

Info and Help Resources to Audio & Video

• http://www.doom9.org/
• http://www.videohelp.com/
• http://www.free-codecs.com/
• http://www.codecguide.com/

Advanced: Tools you got to have

Only for the geeks out there, tools to tweak and troubleshoot codec and filter related issues and tools to fix them as well.

• Media Info Lite
• Graph Edit
• GraphEditPlus  (commercial software, $60)
• GSpot Codec Appliance
• AVICodec 
• RadLight Filter Manager
• DirectShow Filter Manager
• Codec Tweak Tool (part of the K-Lite Codec Pack) 
• Sherlock - The Codec Detective
• WinXP Decoder Check  (alternative download)
• VirtualDubMod
  - DirectShow Input Driver for VirtualDub
  - VirtualDub MPEG2 
• MP3Tag
• abcAVI
• aviUtl

Codec Lists and Databases

• Codec Library
• Codecs Database
• Codecs.com
• abcAVI Codecs List
• Codecs Wiki at Multimedia.cx
• FourCC.org

Acronyms and Definitions

Source: http://www.fourcc.org/

Acronym	Definition
ACM	"ACM" files, also known as "Audio Converter Modules", are audio codec drivers installed on your system which export methods that can be performed on a particular audio stream. This includes converting audio from one type of stream to another. An example of this is perhaps an MP3 ACM which could convert MP3 audio to PCM audio.
ATSC	Advanced Television Standards Committee. The technical group that defined the high definition TV standard for US terrestrial transmission.
AVC	Advanced Video Codec. Otherwise known as MPEG4, part 10 this is the codec that most of the worlds broadcasters are moving to for HD transmissions.
AVI	Audio Video Interleave - a Windows file format used to store movies.
Codec	CODEC stands for COmpressor/DECompressor - a software or hardware component that can compress and/or decompress video using a particular compression algorithm. Though CODECS are generally thought of in the context of video and audio, they are not limited to this scope.
FOURCC	Four Character Code - an 8 digit (or 4 ASCII character) value used to identify the pixel format or compression standard (codec) used to store images or video files. FOURCCs are also used for a similar purpose in some audio applications.
HD	High Definition. This refers to a video picture size higher than SD (see below) and typically one of the set of resolutions defined by ATSC such as 1080i (1920x1080), 720p (1280x720) or 480p (720x480).
JPEG	Joint Photographic Expert Group. The standards group that defined the hugely successful JPEG still image codec.
MPEG	Motion Pictures Expert Group. The clever people who brought you the entire ISO standard Codecs that are used in TV broadcast today.
NTSC	National Television Standards Committee. The group which defined the 480 (visible) line video standard used for analog and pre-HD digital TV transmissions in the USA.
PCM	PCM is Pulse Code Modulation. This is basically an audio format that is pretty much "raw" audio. This is generally the format that audio hardware directly interacts with. Though some hardware can directly play other formats, generally the software must convert any audio stream to PCM and then attempt to play it. An analog audio stream generally looks like a wave, with peaks and valleys that are called its amplitude. These are generally sent to the audio hardware and are then digitized. The conversion basically samples this data stream at a given frequency such as 8000Hz, etc. This sampling will generally measure the voltage passing through so many times a second and generate a value based upon this. Remember, Im not an audio engineer so this is just a simplistic way of thinking about this. The PCM format, for example, I believe the base line is either 127 or 128 (in 8 bits per sample). This is the middle, silence. Anything going below is a low tone and above is a higher tone. If you take a bunch of these values and play them at a certain speed, they will make a sound.
RGB	Red Green Blue - a method of describing colors commonly used in PC graphics.
SD	Standard Definition. The size of a typical video image for a "legacy" TV system. In the US, this will typically describe an image with 480 lines (and one of a number of widths, 720 being the maximum, 480, 640 and 704 being other common choices). In Europe (and other areas which use PAL TV standards), SD refers to an image with 576 lines of resolution.
YCrCb	Color format typically used in video processing. A color is defined in terms of a luminance (Y, brightness) value and two "color differences" or chrominance values (Cr and Cb). One correspondent indicates that Y, R and B likely refer to primary colors yellow, red and blue and "C" indicates a color difference.
YIQ	YIQ is another color format and another way of defining a color and is commonly used in NTSC video systems as far as I can remember.
YUV	YUV also describes a luminance/chrominance color model. This is frequently used interchangeably with YCrCb though, technically, they are different.