A new version of the DivX codec and The Playa were released yesterday. The list of changes and fixes is long so be sure to hit read more. This release includes codec 5.02 and The Playa version 2.0 alpha 4. The Codec 5.02 Changelog New: Added several new options to the codec properties dialog that allow users to tweak settings for smoother playback and improved support for some video cards. Added a "Smooth Playback" option. Turning this off will allow B-frame encoded content to playback with lower CPU usage. However, enabling this option will introduce a 1 frame delay in the decoder (because of buffering), which may cause the last frame of the video to not be displayed. Added a "YUV Extended" mode option. When selected, the codec will attempt to use YV12 mode to decode the video. This is the fastest way to decode DivX content, but the drawback is that brightness/contrast/saturation controls cannot be used in this mode and are disabled. Added an "Overlay Extended" mode. Selecting this will cause the filter to try to display video using the hardware overlay instead of the software overlay. The hardware overlay is much faster, but may not be supported on some video cards. When this mode is enabled, DirectShow-based player applications will be unable to open more than one window at a time. Added a "Double Buffering" option. Enabling this will force the video card to allocate a second buffer for the video playback. This will increase the smoothness of the video playback, but may not be supported on low-end video cards with less than 8 MB of RAM. Added a "Film Effect" option. This is a warming filter that when enabled will add film noise to the decoded picture. This may increase the perceived visual quality of the picture, especially if you are used to watching film. It's a personal preference, however, so use it if you want. Added a hidden "Force Color Mode" control. You can manually set the registry key "HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareDivXNetworksForce Color Mode" in the Windows Registry and assign it a number from 1 to 7. This will force the video card to use a particular color mode, depending upon the value. This is only necessary in rare circumstances to solve video card problems. Supported color modes: 1: YV12 2: YUY2 3: YUYV 4: RGB32 5: RGB24 6: RGB555 7: RGB565 Improved: The default psychovisual modeling settings are tweaked slightly. This should decrease blockiness in black regions and flat areas in the video content. Optimized the decoder so that it more consistently plays back video, particularly on lower-end CPUs. (A P-III 466 MHz machine can play real-time, 640x480 video with B-frames and GMC at 80% CPU load.) Fixed: Fixed a lot of memory leaks in the encoder. This should prevent the codec from slowing down gradually during a long encode. Version 5.0.1 encoded 7% slower than 5.0. DOH! Not sure how that happened. This has been fixed and version 5.0.2 is as fast as version 5.0. Fixed a problem where the trace_b.txt log file would be written out during encodes which would take up significant disk space. The log file is no longer written. Fixed a problem where the MP4 Creator would not work on files that included B-frames. The MP4 Creator should now work with all DivX 5.x files. Fixed a bug where the right macroblock would not be displayed with the custom brightness/contrast settings. This would cause a dark or light "band" of video on the right side of the screen. Fixed a bug that would cause playback problems when the seek bar was moved back and forth quickly. This same bug some cause bad frames to be displayed at the beginning of some content when playing back video in Windows Media Player. This should no longer happen. Fixed a bug where the "Decoder Configuration" application would crash when run on Windows 98. The application should now run properly. (Yes, we know we said we fixed this in 5.0.1, but we really fixed it this time.) The Playa Changelog New: Integrated the new DivX 5.0.2 decoder into the application. Installer now associates *.div file extensions with the DivX Player. DivX software bundle installer no longer requires the DivX Player to be installed. You can uncheck the DivX Player in the installer and install only the codec. Added a user option to disable screen savers during video playback. Improved: The DivX Player will now properly playback AVI files with the "DIV2" and "MP43" FOURCC codes. Even though previous versions were capable of playing these files, the FOURCC settings prevented them from doing so. This is now fixed. The application will now correctly report an error when it attempts to play AVI files that have corrupt AVI chuck headers. Before, the application would hang when it encountered these files. Fixed: Fixed the default skin so that the small "+" button in the lower right of the compact mode now returns the Player to normal mode as it should. Fixed a problem where 16-bit color icons were being installed. The installer now properly installs the 32-bit icons. Fixed the "B-frame flicker" problem caused by the new B-frame architecture introduced in version 5.0.1 of the codec. This would manifest itself as "skipping" or "jerky" playback on certain types of content. Fixed an issue where the audio and video synchronization on some files would be gradually lost. This was a problem that affected the 2.0 Alpha 3 player but not the 2.0 Alpha 2 player. We've now fixed the bug introduced in Alpha 3 and the audio and video should stay in synch. Fixed a bug where the Player would crash with an error if run from a user account that did not have Administrator rights. This was caused by the fact that the Player could not access certain registry keys that were stored in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE tree. These keys have now been moved to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER tree so they can be accessed from accounts without Administrator rights. Download Now