Vamps News

2006-05-09: qVamps V0.98 Released

This release has some small new features as well as some enhancements and bug fixes. The copy tab now has a timer, which shows the elapsed time for copying. Another text field on the copy tab shows the current size of the copy target directory. And finally there is a new "copy" mode. Instead of feeding the source DVD's cells contents into dvdauthor, the user may decide to dump these MPEG streams to separate files.

The Linux x86 binary distribution's installer should start up significantly faster now.

2006-04-16: qVamps V0.97 Released

There are no groundbreaking new features in this release. The user may now restore the hardwired default settings. And the user is now asked to confirm when leaving the settings page with any unsaved changes. Finally we have a new icon!

But most important: there is a binary distribution for Linux x86 now. It includes an installer as well as an uninstaller. All you have to do is download and execute the .bin file. Please note that the file may not be easily launched from within a graphical desktop due to lack of execute permission. "chmod +x <file>.bin; ./<file>.bin" does the job. The uninstaller will be located in the base install path after installation and is called Uninstall. Please note that you need root priviliges to install to a system location like /opt/qVamps.

Another benefit of the binary distribution is that it comes with precompiled patched versions of PerlQt and dvdauthor. You may find both patches on the Vamps Documentation page.

2006-04-16: Vamps V0.99.2 Released

There are no functional changes in this release. It just fixes some build issues reported by binary package maintainers. Thanks to all of them!

2006-03-08: qVamps Flash Animation Online

Check out this. The blue MPlayer windows are due to X11 hardware overlay. I actually saw the video.

2006-03-03: qVamps V0.96 Released

This release does not have any essential new features, but two major bug fixes.

First, the "improvement" of V0.95 with the log viewer is fixed to print out line by line again. V0.95 prints everything in one big chunk.

The second fix is with multi angle titles. Now their size should be computed correctly. Thus also the evaporation factor is correct now.

qVamps now supports a new feature of Vamps V0.99.1. Gaps in cells, i.e. space that does not contain any movie content, are now taken into account when computing the evaporation factor. This gives a more accurate result of the copy's final size.

qVamps now checks the installed version of Vamps during startup. You will get a warning message, if you should update to a more recent version. qVamps will not run correctly when the warning shows up!

qVamps V0.96 requires Vamps V0.99.1!

Please also check the release notes in the README file.

2006-03-03: Vamps V0.99.1 Released

There is only a single change in this release. Space in DVD cells, that is not part of the movie, is now detected. These gaps were not copied by previous versions either, but the occupied space was incorrectly included in the uncompressed movie's size. Thus the evaporation factor may not always be met accurately.

Both Vamps and play_cell are changed. To enable the new feature, play_cell must be invoked with the new -g option. play_cell then reports the cell gaps' sizes to Vamps. There is no new option to Vamps. It automatically detects the special packets in its input.

Do not use the -g option with play_cell, if the output is processed by some other program than Vamps!

2006-02-19: qVamps V0.95 Released

The next step to our first stable release. V0.95 incorporates all (essential) features intended for 1.00. We have an empty TODO list!

In V0.95 users can now remove all files created by qVamps. The DVD image can be re-created based on a previous run of qVamps. Of course the same source disk is required again.

There is a new (experimental) feature to handle DVD read errors.

And finally V0.95 also fixes some bugs (refer to the ChangeLog file for details).

qVamps V0.95 requires Vamps V0.99!

Please also check the release notes in the README file.

2006-02-19: Vamps V0.99 Released

The major changes of this release are several improvements to the build process. There are no functional changes to Vamps itself. play_cell has got an extension to handle DVD read errors. This caused an almost complete re-write of the tiny program.

The new options to play_cell are:

2006-01-20: qVamps V0.21 Released

This release has got a lot of small changes. Most important for end users will probably be the DVD preview feature. You can preview the DVD image which was generated on hard disk and burn it in a separate step. Take a look on the Tools tab.

Furthermore users can easily switch to growisofs for DVD burning. Single DVD device copying should work in this release. And you may change the name of the copy directory as well as the volume ID of the copy.

To see even smaller changes and fixes please look into the ChangeLog file.

2006-01-02: qVamps V0.20 Released

This is a bug fix only release. Unfortunately V0.19 did not completely fix the issue with the MJPEG Tools version >1.6.2. V1.8.0 has the argument to the -S option changed from 420_mpeg2 to 420mpeg2. Thanks to Laurent!

2006-01-01: qVamps V0.19 Released

V0.19 integrates the user adjustable settings. Even if some (a lot) of them are rather cryptic, there are a few really valuable items. E.g. you now can easily adjust menu fonts, colors and spacing. Or you can change the DVD burner device and max. burning speed. Please note that the settings do not get effective before you have saved them.

Furthermore V0.19 improves error handling during the actual copy task. And qVamps should now work smoothly with the MJPEG Tools version >1.6.2. Please refer to the ChangeLog for more details.

2005-12-27: Vamps is in SourceForge Top 500!

Vamps is ranked number 430 out of >108,000 today. This should be worth a new qVamps release. The first actually usable version is to come in the next days. Stay tuned!

2005-12-21: qVamps V0.18 Released

This release has the copy/burning process fully integrated into the GUI. No need to manually execute the shell script commands. A (slightly improved) script is written nevertheless.

A sample DVD program stream for menu background has been added to the distribution (one for NTSC and PAL each). This enables menu generation on Linux distribution that lack mpeg2enc.

2005-12-03: qVamps Preview Released

A first preview of qVamps has been released. It is a full functional GUI for Vamps that lacks some convenience features yet. Creating the new DVD image and burning have to be done outside of qVamps. A simple shell script is generated, that includes all necessary commands. It may be adjusted and then started from the command line.

2005-12-02: Vamps Home Page Going Online

Just a very simple one. It is created from a plain file based CMS. Take a look at the phpCMS home page, if you like to learn more. The HTML code is generated by the phpCMS spider module.

2005-11-16: New Vamps Release V0.98