Software update: GSpot 2.52 beta 1

After eight betas for version 2.50 and two for 2.51, GSpot has now reached the first beta of 2.52. This program can analyze avi, mpeg and vob files and, among other things, indicates which audio and video codecs have been used and whether they are on the system, the bit rate and the number of frames per second. It can also determine the presence or absence of B-VOP, Qpel, and GMC frames in DivX 5 files to see if a movie is compatible with a hardware DivX player, such as Kiss’s. In addition, GSpot can also provide an overview of all codecs installed on the system. The changelog for this release looks like this:

New in 2.52 beta 1, build 040912:

• Fixed exception violation (“crash”) issues exhibited by, in particular, v2.51b2, which often overran an internal data buffer. The current version has been “road-tested” with over 2000 media files1
• Added 16 : 9 anamorphic support (for target and/or source) in the resizing information function. Also added ability to select different target sizes for “AVI” (ie 1:1 PAR) targets.
• Reorganized the GUI layout. see screenshot†
• Added support for parsing information from the optional MPEG-2 “sequence display extension”. When available, the “display” height and width are shown, as well as the color space mapping matrix (which may be useful only to a few video techno-geek users out there )
• Added support for identifying so-called “packed bitstreams”, an MPEG-4 construct sometimes used DivX 5.x and other MPEG-4 streams contained in an AVI file. The information is displayed as text in the “container” section; additionally a new indicator labeled “NVOP”, as these constructs are informally called, with the other MPEG-4 indicators.
• Finally “restored” the ability to find the details of the codecs and other filters, as well as the mediatypes involved, when the “MS” (Microsoft DirectShow) render function is used. The word “restored” is in reference to the fact that older v2.21 had similar capability, albeit more limited than the information now available in this version.[break]