In a press release, PDFTron Systems, a software developer specializing in PDF, SVG, and PostScript technologies, announced the release of a new update to PDFNet SDK (v.2.6). The new release focuses on improved compression in PDFNet SDK, utilizing the latest and most advanced compression technologies available on the market, such as JPEG2000 and JBIG2.

Using PDFNet you can write stand-alone, cross-platform and reliable commercial applications that can read, write, edit, print and display PDF documents. PDFNet is available as a 100%.Net component that can be used from any .Net language (e.g. C#, VB, and J#) and as a cross-platform C/C++ library.

The new release features a brand new high-performance, high-quality JPEG2000 engine which can be used to decode and process any JP2 embedded stream in PDF. The JPEG2000 filter was introduced in PDF 1.5

In addition to enhanced JPEG2000 decoder support, the PDFNet toolkit also features new JBIG2 decompression support.

More information here and here.

courant.com has an intersting article on makers of WinZip and the recent acquisition by Vector Capital. Apart from the things already discussed here at The Data Compression News Blog, here are some interesting points made there…

It mentions that the company behind the software, WinZip Computing Inc., could hardly be more low-profile.

Indeed, few in the Storrs section of Mansfield even know the company exists, although WinZip has operated here for at least a decade.

Its phone number is unlisted. Company officials routinely decline interview requests. And WinZip’s headquarters, a two-story, white-clapboard building not far from the UConn main campus, doesn’t even carry a sign to identify the occupant.

In short, the software program that practically everybody knows is made by a Connecticut company that practically nobody knows.

In a telephone interview last week, Edwin Siebesma, WinZip’s president, said the company is “excited” about its new ownership and opportunities. But in characteristic fashion, he declined to elaborate on the company’s product plans or its history.

“Yes, the company has changed hands,” he said. “But not a lot else has changed in the sense that we’re very private and like to keep things private.”

That close-mouthed posture is a company policy of long standing, said Jerry Lee Ford Jr., author of “The Book of WinZip,” published in 2001 by No Starch Press.

Lee Ford, the author of several other computer-related books, said he was rebuffed when he approached WinZip for cooperation with a planned volume about the software program’s features. Other software companies often leap at the chance for the publicity that a book would bring, but not WinZip, he said.

“They entertained the idea for a small period of time, but ultimately came back and said no,” he recalled. “It’s almost to me as if they were just reclusive.” He ultimately went ahead with the book without the company’s help.

Still, Lee Ford said he remains impressed with WinZip’s status as a handy little utility that enjoys great name recognition and strong user loyalty. “It’s very cool, I think,” he said. “It’s surprisingly powerful in some of the stuff it can do.”

Apart from this, the article mostly talks about how great WinZip’s history has been and that now “The No. 1 message they want to shout from the rooftops is: It’s not free, it’s not free.”

Mark Adler recently announced the latest release of popular data-compression library ZLib.

Fellow Compressors,

zlib 1.2.3 has been released, and can be found here:

http://www.zlib.net/

This version, among other enhancements and improvements, remedies a
buffer overflow security vulnerability, so all users of zlib 1.2.1 or
zlib 1.2.2 should upgrade. Full details of the changes can be found in
the ChangeLog file in the source distribution.

Mark Adler

Version 1.2.3 eliminates potential security vulnerabilities in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2, so all users of those versions should upgrade immediately. The following important fixes are provided in zlib 1.2.3 over 1.2.1 and 1.2.2:

• Eliminate a potential security vulnerability when decoding invalid compressed data
• Eliminate a potential security vulnerability when decoding specially crafted compressed data
• Fix a bug when decompressing dynamic blocks with no distance codes
• Fix crc check bug in gzread() after gzungetc()
• Do not return an error when using gzread() on an empty file

View the complete ChangeLog here.

The Code Project has an interesting article on Decoding Ogg Vorbis audio files in .NET from perry_marchant.

The TgPlayOgg project is a .NET C# library that allows you to play Ogg Vorbis files from your managed code. Decoding a given Ogg Vorbis file into usable sound data is done by TgPlayOgg which makes calls to an unmanaged C++ project TGPlayOgg_vorbisfile. TgPlayOgg also requires managed DirectX for sound output.

Code is available for download and is explained very nicely in the article. You can also download the demo project.

Global Technology Conferences, Inc. today announced the Video Compression Tutorials for GSPx 2005. GSPx 2005, the pervasive signal processing event, will take place October 24 - 27 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California.

Dr. Sridhar Srinivasan, Development Leader of Windows Media Codecs Group for Microsoft, will lead the four-module tutorial on VC-1. Srinivasan has contributed to the architecture, design and implementation of the WMV9 codec and is involved in the standardization of the VC- bitstream format.

Dr. Marta Karczewicz, Senior Research Manager at Nokia Research Center, will lead a tutorial on the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC coder. The tutorial will provide attendees with the history of the MPEG-4 AVC standard and a comparison to previous standards. It will also cover new video coding layer elements, system integration, error resilience, MPEG-4 AVC payload and file formats, new standardization initiatives such as SVC (Scalable Video Coder) and more.

Karczewicz is actively participating in work on MPEG-4 AVC and SVC standards within Joint Video Team (JVT) of ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG. She has 13 patents in the area of Information Technology and has authored or co-authored over 20 publications, receiving EURASIP’s 1997 Award for the Best Paper of the Year.

GSPx is the comprehensive signal processing event with white paper presentations, technical workshops, tutorials, technology panels, exhibits and the New Product Forum. The conference targets design engineers and senior-level executives responsible for the development of embedded technologies and products. GSPx will cover the latest technology in video compression, wireless, multi-core/multiprocessors, synthetic aperture radar image exploitation and more.

Nero announces the release of Nero Digital Pro, audio and video compression solution bundled with Nero’s top five applications. The package includes full versions of five different applications: Nero Recode 2, Nero ShowTime 2, Nero PhotoSnap, Nero MediaHome and NeroVision Express 3.

Nero Digital(TM) is a complete audio/video codec solution based on the MPEG-4 standard, but also supports the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec, already adapted as mandatory codec for future standards, such as HD DVD and Blu-ray. Nero Digital(TM) videos can be played back on PCs running the Nero Digital codec and on the growing number of certified Nero Digital(TM) consumer electronic devices.

Co-developed by Nero and Ateme, Nero Digital(TM) is fully based on industry standards MPEG-4 Video (MPEG-4 SP/ASP and AVC/H.264) and MPEG-4 Audio (LC AAC und HE AAC) compression technologies, allowing the flexibility to play MPEG-4 compliant content, yet offering advanced interactive features in unprecedented audio and video quality.

Is it possible to make money off a product that millions have downloaded for free? The new owners of WinZip Computing hope so.

Vector Capital has acquired the maker of popular file compression software WinZip. Vector Capital said it closed the deal, for which terms weren’t disclosed, earlier this year.

WinZip is available to download for free, but charges $29 for use after the 21-day trial period. Historically, however, few WinZip users have paid for the product. Vector Capital said that it bought WinZip Computing in a bid to reinvigorate the file compression software that generates little revenue despite its popularity. (Privately held WinZip has never disclosed its revenues.)

Vector has inked a co-marketing and distribution agreement with Google, bundling the product with the Google toolbar. WinZip also recently released the WinZip Companion for Outlook, which compresses and encrypts email attachments like Excel files and PowerPoint presentations that are usually difficult to email because of their size.

Vector Capital, which specializes in buyouts and recapitalizations of technology companies that have great software products but lack the power to monetize them effectively, has had success with challenging turnarounds in the past. (In 2003, Vector Capital bought software company Corel, took it private, streamlined its product lines, and turned it into a profit-making venture.)

Original sources here and here.

This time they are claiming a patent for digital video recording. The patent relates to a computer-controlled video system allowing playback during recording. During playback, the system reads the video content from its storage component.

The Maximum Compression website, a major lossless data compression benchmark, has been updated. The update includes new versions of the current top two programs (WinRK and PAsQDa), WinRK 2.1.4 now takes 5 1st places, PAsQDa 4.1 takes 4 1st places.

PAsQDa 4.1; this latest version of the PAQ family shows a nice improvement in the TEXT-file test (-6 Kb). Overall PAsQDa still takes 2nd place in the single file compression testset.

WinRK 2.1 build 4; apart from many bug fixes, the biggest news is the improvements made to the PWCM codec plugin. The speed is improved and some extra models were added along with some modifications to the text filtering. This method now compresses significantly better, especially on the text data and bitmap test; TXT (-8 Kb), LOG (-11 Kb) and BMP (-7 Kb). Some degradation was seen in the HLP (+6 Kb) and DICT (+4 Kb) test. It takes 1st place in the single file compression testset.

For an overview of the single file compression results have a look at the sites’ summary pages. Results of the multiple files testset will be added later on.

The Code Project web site has a nice LZW article that was updated last week. The author, Hatem Mosafa Helmy, tries out a different technique for management of the dictionary. The classic implementation of LZW has always used a hash table, Hatem tries out a binary tree instead.

Checking out Hatem’s CV shows that he has a few other compression projects cooking out of his home base in the big city of Cairo. It might just be my imagination, but it has always seemed to me that the compression community has a much broader global presence than a lot of the less exciting areas of computer science. True?