DVDAfterEdit 3.0.5d3 Release Notes

DVDAfterEdit 3.0.5d3 Mastering Edition is available for download. This fixes an error in the placement of the AVDP (Anchor Volume Descriptor Pointer) at the end of the disc when building a DDP tape image (AKA Plant Direct) for CSS encryption. (It was misaligned in the sector). This error does not normally affect playability, but prevented Macrovision RipGuard from being applied.

This release is for Mastering Edition only, there is no change for Standard Edition.

DVDAfterEdit 3.0.5d2 Release Notes

This is a release for Mastering Edition only, which fixes a bug in the ISO Directory back pointers. This bug prevents proper playback of DVD's pre-mastered with DVDAfterEdit in Yamakawa DVD players, which rely on the ISO rather than the UDF Directory. This is not a problem for most other DVD players.

Thank you Robert Schneider of GLS Studios and Peter Sabath of X-Protect for providing us with a detailed description of this problem.

Releases 3.0.3 and earlier have been removed from the download page.

The following are known issues:

Standard/Demo/Mastering

1. The program will not open certain Hollywood Seamless Branching releases, such as "Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition", and Alien 2004 "Quadrilogy" box set, Pal region 2 versions. This is because they use a method that, while it does not technically violate the DVD Video Spec, was unexpected and not allowed for by the program. This error will never come up in DVD's authored by by commercially available authoring systems.
2. RECOMMENDATION : It is good practice to trash the project preferences whenever opening a fresh re-build of a project. This ensures that all the correct "pre-flight checks" are made before you continue working.
3. SPRM 7 (PTT) does not always update correctly when previewing in Tracer.
4. Tracer may freeze at the end of a motion menu where the Cell Playback Mode is set to "Continuous". Workaround - Select the motion menu's cell in the Left Pane. Change it's "Cell playback mode" to Go "VobUStill", then re-select "Continuous". This issue should only affect Tracer, not the final behaviour of the disc.
5. Tracer may hang when trying to execute button commands such as "Jump VTS TT 1 PTT XX"
6. A forced button number of 63 should activate the last selected button in a PGC. Tracer does not reflect this behaviour correctly
7. Drag and drop in the Title Map Editor is not working correctly, and may cause DVDAE to crash. WORKAROUND : Perform all Title PGC editing using the contextual menus in the Left Pane.
8. In Step or Stride, Tracer will pause video preview when it encounters a Break command.WORKAROUND : Click the Play button to resume video playback. Confirm the command works as expected by testing in Run mode.

Mastering Edition Only

1. If Macrovision copy-protection is set in the Format/Copy dialogue, but CSS is disabled, the tape will be written without Macrovision. WORKAROUND : Write the DLTs with CSS and Macrovision. Ask the replicator to ignore the CSS flag and write the tapes without CSS.
2. Sometimes when attempting to Format a new DLT tape, the message "Media in tape drive unrecognized" or "Format Failed" will be seen. WORKAROUND: Media in tape drive unrecognized
3. Choosing DLT as the Source of a Compare operation on a dual-layer project may cause a failure even though the tapes have been written correctly. WORKAROUND: Always choose the DLT drive as the Destination for compare operations.
4. On some systems DVDAfterEdit ME may crash if there is insufficient disk space for a restore operation.
5. DVDAE may crash when trying to write a DLT or image if the project is not also open in the main program window. WORKAROUND : Always open the project in the main window before writing projects.

DVDAfterEdit 3.0.5d1 Release Notes

DVDAfterEdit 3.0.5d1 Mastering Edition is be available for download. This fixes an error which prevented opening Sonic "Plant Direct" tape images. (Better described as DDP Images).

This is the only change in this version from the official 3.0.4 release, therefore this preliminary release does not apply to the Standard and Demo versions.

Please read the 3.0.4 release notes.

DVDAfterEdit 3.0.4 Release Notes

1. The Apple link for downloading the QuickTime MPEG2 Playback component changed. Now there are two versions, one for QuickTime 6 and one for QuickTime 7. The link is given in a dialog box if the component is missing.

2. There was another bug in saving when the automatic "Fix Sectors" command discovered a problem after the title manager was already saved. This could result in the fixed values not being saved on the disk, which in turn could lead to improper values on a DLT or DDP image.

3. Bugs when importing multi-angle video and broken time maps have been fixed.

4. Audio and sub-picture streams now allow editing of the "Stream available" flag. This can be very useful for doing some neat things, which Michael Lazar will explain later in these release notes and in the discussion forum.

5. DVD's can have Titles without Chapters (PTT's). Tracer has now been fixed to jump the beginning of the PGC in this case.

The following are known issues:

Standard/Demo/Mastering

1. The program will not open certain Hollywood Seamless Branching releases, such as "Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition", and Alien 2004 "Quadrilogy" box set, Pal region 2 versions. This is because they use a method that, while it does not technically violate the DVD Video Spec, was unexpected and not allowed for by the program. This error will never come up in DVD's authored by by commercially available authoring systems.
2. RECOMMENDATION : It is good practise to trash the project preferences whenever opening a fresh re-build of a project. This ensures that all the correct "pre-flight checks" are made before you continue working.
3. SPRM 7 (PTT) does not always update correctly when previewing in Tracer.
4. Tracer may freeze at the end of a motion menu where the Cell Playback Mode is set to "Continuous". Workaround - Select the motion menu's cell in the Left Pane. Change it's "Cell playback mode" to Go "VobUStill", then re-select "Continuous". This issue should only affect Tracer, not the final behaviour of the disc.
5. Tracer may hang when trying to execute button commands such as "Jump VTS TT 1 PTT XX"
6. A forced button number of 63 should activate the last selected button in a PGC. Tracer does not reflect this behaviour correctly
7. Drag and drop in the Title Map Editor is not working correctly, and may cause DVDAE to crash. WORKAROUND : Perform all Title PGC editing using the contextual menus in the Left Pane.
8. In Step or Stride, Tracer will pause video preview when it encounters a Break command.WORKAROUND : Click the Play button to resume video playback. Confirm the command works as expected by testing in Run mode.

Mastering Edition Only

1. If Macrovision copy-protection is set in the Format/Copy dialogue, but CSS is disabled, the tape will be written without Macrovision. WORKAROUND : Write the DLTs with CSS and Macrovision. Ask the replicator to ignore the CSS flag and write the tapes without CSS.
2. Sometimes when attempting to Format a new DLT tape, the message "Media in tape drive unrecognized" or "Format Failed" will be seen. WORKAROUND: Media in tape drive unrecognized
3. Choosing DLT as the Source of a Compare operation on a dual-layer project may cause a failure even though the tapes have been written correctly. WORKAROUND: Always choose the DLT drive as the Destination for compare operations.
4. On some systems DVDAfterEdit ME may crash if there is insufficient disk space for a restore operation.
5. DVDAE may crash when trying to write a DLT or image if the project is not also open in the main program window. WORKAROUND : Always open the project in the main window before writing projects.
6. ( Fixed in release 3.05d1 ) Some "Plant Direct" DDP images split the DDPID information between the DDPID and the DDPMS file. DVDAE cannot restore this type of file yet. WORKAROUND : Using the terminal, then you can join the two MAIN.DAT files into a single .img file using this command: cat MyPath/Layer0/MAIN.DAT MyPath/Layer1/MAIN.DAT > /joinedMAIN.img - which you should then be able to mount in order to get the files out. MyPath is the path to your enclosing folder.

DVDAfterEdit 3.0.3 Release Notes

1. Allows multiple selections in the Title Play List and PGC List areas at the top of the right pane. This can greatly reduce the amount of work required to drag cells to PGC's, etc.

2. Copying and pasting of project commands to and from text files has been improved. Previously, cell commands were copied to and from the PGC's, but their callouts from the individual cells were forgotten.

Now, the cell command index and what it points to are captured in the copy operation. On paste, it attempt to paste back into the same index. However, if that command index in the destination PC does not contain the same instruction, it look for the command at any other index of the cell commands. If it finds one, it uses that index. If the original command is not found in the list, then a new command is added to the cell commands and the cell is set to point to that entry.

The idea is that you can delete the cell commands list from the copied text and the cells will rebuid any necessary commands. Under normal circumstances, the indexes will remain the same (because they will match the original list).

The copying and pasting of button commands to and from Nav Packs now uses the Nav Pack number relative to the containing cell, rather than the absolute Nav Pack number. This means that it is now possible to copy commands between projects of greatly differing video sizes, as long as the cell structure is the same. For example, this feature was used to copy the commands from "The Quick and Dirty Guide to Pilates" actual DVD to the Template project built with stills, and then back again.

3. There was an interlock error in making changes from the Format/Copy dialog during pre-mastering. Creating a DLT or DDP image could proceed before the changes were saved to the hard drive, so that the changes were not included in the image. This error has been fixed.

The following are known issues:

1. The program will not open certain Hollywood Seamless Branching releases, such as "Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition", and Alien 2004 "Quadrilogy" box set, Pal region 2 versions. This is because they use a method that, while it does not technically violate the DVD Video Spec, was unexpected and not allowed for by the program. This error will never come up in DVD's authored by by commercially available authoring systems.
2. Sometimes when attempting to Format a new DLT tape, the message "Media in tape drive unrecognized" or "Format Failed" will be seen. Some workarounds are suggested here:
   "Media in tape drive unrecognized"
3. SPRM 7 (PTT) does not update when previewing in Tracer.
4. Choosing DLT as the Source of a Compare operation on a dual-layer project may cause a failure even though the tapes have been written correctly. Workaround - always choose the DLT drive as the Destination for compare operations.

DVDAfterEdit 3.0.2 Release Notes

1. The Disc Layout Graph was added to the lower left corner of the main window. Please see Inside DVDAfterEdit for a description of this feature.

2. QuickTime 7.0.2 and earlier (not 6) crashed DVDAfterEdit when trying to preview angles. This release has a work-around to avoid the crash. And now Apple has fixed the original problem with the release of 7.0.3.

The .zip file for this release was created with the OS X "Archive" function, which may cause problems for some 3rd party zip utilities. It unzips correctly with OS X and Stuffit 9.

The following are known issues:

1. The program will not open certain Hollywood Seamless Branching releases, such as "Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition", and Alien 2004 "Quadrilogy" box set, Pal region 2 versions. This is because they use a method that, while it does not technically violate the DVD Video Spec, was unexpected and not allowed for by the program. This error will never come up in DVD's authored by by commercially available authoring systems.
2. Sometimes when attempting to Format a new DLT tape, the message "Media in tape drive unrecognized" or "Format Failed" will be seen. Some workarounds are suggested here:
   "Media in tape drive unrecognized"
3. SPRM 7 (PTT) does not update when previewing in Tracer.
4. Choosing DLT as the Source of a Compare operation on a dual-layer project may cause a failure even though the tapes have been written correctly. Workaround - always choose the DLT drive as the Destination for compare operations.

DVDAfterEdit 3.0.1 Release Notes

Larry Applegate & John Brisbin

This is a maintenance release which fixes errors and adds enhancements.

1. A problem with our processing of cell angles prevented opening some DVD's, and has been fixed.
2. Copying and pasting commands across multiple angles did not work. This has been fixed.
3. Typing in the Format/Copy dialog disc name and related fields has been fixed. This error was accidentally introduced in the final release version.
4. The "Include Mac Rom Data" preference was implemented incorrectly, and has been fixed.
5. It was possible, but not likely, to be unable to set the option "Encrypt VTS Menus" when setting CSS in the Format/Copy dialog. This is legal in the spec but erroneously flagged as a error in Eclipse. Now this option is always forced on, if CSS is selected in the dialog.
6. We had misinterpreted the spec rules on the scope of changing audio and sub-picture streams for different PGC's within the same VTS. It turns out that the rule applies to the way the stream is constructed, not the exact stream number. Thus a similar two channel AC3 stream may be interchanged with another AC3 stream, even within the same title. This has been fixed.
7. Tracer video display and command execution have been reworked to better coordinate the two functions, particularly starting and stopping the video appropriately. This has resulted in a speed improvement when processing consecutive commands, and when navigating between buttons with the arrow keys.
8. The link PTT command was broken, and has been fixed.
9. In Tracer, the user operation bits in Nav Packs were incorrectly cached in a manner that could leave the operations disabled in subsequent Nav Packs that had the bits turned off again. This has been fixed.
10. At the request of users, region 7 has been added back to the region list so that it can be disabled, because some authoring systems do this by default. Although the spec states clearly that region 7 is undefined, and that all undefined bits of a DVD must be set to 0, it also states that players must ignore this bit, so permitting this spec error won't affect playability.
11. The function "Paste Deeply Into" has been added to Copy/Paste. This new function permits pasting in all Nav Packs in a cell without having to expand the cell arrow and select all of them. See Editing in DVDAfterEdit for an explanation.
12. For the Project-wide "Paste Commands from Text" function, commands that could not be pasted because their target did not exist in the project are now listed in the log.
13. It was possible to add VMG menus when there were none, to the wrong left panel item. This is fixed.

The following are known issues:

1. The program will not open certain Hollywood Seamless Branching releases, such as "Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition", and Alien 2004 "Quadrilogy" box set, Pal region 2 versions. This is because they use a method that, while it does not technically violate the DVD Video Spec, was unexpected and not allowed for by the program. This error will never come up in DVD's authored by by commercially available authoring systems.
2. Sometimes when attempting to Format a new DLT tape, the message "Media in tape drive unrecognized" or "Format Failed" will be seen. Some workarounds are suggested here:
   "Media in tape drive unrecognized"
3. SPRM 7 (PTT) does not update when previewing in Tracer.
4. Quicktime 7 crashes when previewing multi-angle material. The work-around is to install Quicktime 6.5.2 from the Apple site, on Panther. We are working to resolve this problem.
5. Choosing DLT as the Source of a Compare operation on a dual-layer project may cause a failure even though the tapes have been written correctly. Workaround - always choose the DLT drive as the Destination for compare operations.

DVDAfterEdit 3.0 Release Notes

The following items were fixed since the last of the beta releases:

1. It was found that cells could have duplicate angles, for example if there were three angles, two of them could use the same physical angle cell. We had not allowed for this case, now it is fixed.
2. The Tracer remote buttons were expanded to include four new buttons: Skip to first Nav Pack, skip to Last, skip to next, and skip to previous. All of these operate within the current video preview selection. Also the Play/pause button now works properly, and some issues with playing cell stills were resolved.
3. Import now requires that a VOB file to be imported must exist within a valid VIDEO_TS folder, which is necessary for the import to work properly.
4. If the VMG VOB was deleted, it was not possible to add back a dummy VMG menu. This has been fixed.
5. The suffix ".image", as created by Sonic, is now recognized as a disc image for Pre Mastering format/copy purposes.
6. Tracer now checks the region code in SPRM 20, and warns you if the DVD would not play in that region.

The following are known bugs:

1. The program will not open certain Hollywood Seamless Branching releases, such as "Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition", and Alien 2004 "Quadrilogy" box set, Pal region 2 versions. This is because they use a method that, while it does not technically violate the DVD Video Spec, was unexpected and not allowed for by the program. This error will never come up in DVD's authored by by commercially available authoring systems.
2. Tracer drops out of "Run" mode and video preview when an auto-execute button-command is accessed, or the computer's numeric "Enter" key is used.
3. Import VTS may cause a crash or corrupted build in a few limited circumstances ( eg. very short angle blocks exist )
4. Tracer may crash when attempting to navigate to a non-existent PGC
5. Typing in the Format/Copy dialog disc name and related fields does not work as intended.
6. Sometimes when attempting to Format a new DLT tape, the message "Media in tape drive unrecognized" or "Format Failed" will be seen. Some workarounds are suggested here:

   "Media in tape drive unrecognized"

7. The "Include Mac ROM Data" in the mastering preferences is not correctly saved.
8. Choosing DLT as the Source of a Compare operation on a dual-layer project may cause a failure even though the tapes have been written correctly. Workaround - always choose the DLT drive as the Destination for compare operations.