Price AGK

[ukb007]

Hi, all.

DVD prices are falling; DVD-writer prices are falling; DVD-blank prices are falling; dual-layer writing has now become possible.

DivX/XviD encoding is slated to have less and less appeal, because <i>DVDs can now be backed up in/as DVDs more and more economically</i>.

AGK is hugely popular now. It is high time AGK is now made a priced product. Right now. Maybe $19.95 or $29.95.

Delay it, and it will be too late.

Just my personal opinion, is all.

Regards.

[Sharktooth]

AutoGK is based on opensource software (virtualdub, dgindex, dgdecode, avisynth etc...).
It cant be "priced". However who wants to support the AutoGK development can do it by DONATING money to it's author (lenox) via Paypal.

[len0x]

Well, a belief that a commercial software cannot use GPL-based software is incorrect (it can in fact). So technically I have no problems with everything apart from BeSweet (which i have to leave if I were to release AutoGK commercially).

However I cannot afford making it commercial at this stage (it rather brings more work that I want to) and moreover I do not wish to make it a payable product in this form as it is now (I do consider a PRO version though). As far as I can go is make it more of a donate-ware (but definitely not like Fairuse does).

[richarddd]

fwiw, I use AutoGK to compress movies to my HD for use when travelling. xvid takes less HD space and less processor power than DVDs (it's a hassle to carry lots of DVDs and my favorite notebook doesn't have a DVD player). The availability of cheap DVD-R won't affect this, although increased HD capacity and notebook processor power might at some point.

Consider that CD burners are universal and media is cheap, yet we see lots of mp3s.

[crahak]

When I tell some people I back up to XviD nowadays, they look at me like I got 4 heads. It seems like almost everybody I know moved to DVD to DVD copies (with DVD Shrink or what not). DVD burners and media is dirt cheap, quality is good, the process is rather simple, and it plays in a set top player. No fancy settings, codecs or anything to setup for encoding or playback... It seems like the average person likes that (simplicity). Also, lots of people associate "divx" (the only term they know) with "lower quality" as in some old crummy low resolution rips - and DVD with the quality they know/are used to. After all, retail DVDs like they know do look a lot better than many old divx rips "floating around", and that alone contributes to people associating quality levels to a name (dvd=good/divx=bad). It looks like the overall interest towards mpeg4 is decreasing a lot anyways.

There are also lots of other freeware encoders, so I don't know if people would really want to pay for it. Checking the poll on AGK's site, about 2/3rd of ppl who answered said "no" or "under 10$". Also, not everybody that does mpeg4 encoding uses AGK (I don't)

[ukb007]

You may be right on falling prices of DVD technology. DivX/XviD is a geekish subject, and geeks aren't insignificant in numbers. But yes, some members of the general public may attribute a sense of 'lower quality' to DivX.

Regarding the polls, though, the results may not be conclusive because a lot of AGK users may not have participated in the poll at all.

Have you heard the rumor (a factual one, this time) that len0x has promised a dark future (?!) for AGK ?

Regards.

[crahak]

Not conclusive? Well, there was still 970 votes... It should give a pretty good feel, and the poll being on AGK's website, the votes are from AGK users (if someone is going to support it, it would be them)

Yes, I have read what len0x said about AGK and honestly it doesn't bother me one bit as I don't use AGK. The sad this is, GK has a even darker future... I'll use it for as long as it's going to be useable for, and after that I'll use something else (most likely do it all manually or perhaps by then we'll be using H264/AAC/MP4?). Until then I've started working on something for myself... No plans on using AGK whatsoever...

[Darksoul71]

Hi there,

I don´t want to throw oil on the fire, but it´s something like both UBK and crahak are describing: Times are changing.....

DVD Burners are available for less then 80€ (that is multi-format 8x).
Prices of DVD-R/+R have dropped to something below 1€.

I am / was a DivX guy right from the start (MPEG2AVI, FlaskMPEG). This didn´t change for a long time. I did all my recordings from TV using an ordinary TV card without hardware codec in MJPEG and post-compressed them as DivX AVI. All my DVD "ripps" were One CD-Ripps and I was proud of the quality that was possible using GKnot in combination with Nandub and DivX 3.11

I even developed a supporting application specially dealing with the needs of "mass video processing" in combination with GKnot.

All this was mainly for the following reasons:
- DVD burners were not available or only at VERY high prices (such as 6000 € !!!)
- CD-R were the relatively cheap medias we all used
- DivX was "the" way to store video material on Disc without having 3-4 disks per Movie

Would I have used something like AutoGK at this time ?
You can bet on !

Would I have paid money / donated for something like AutoGK if it supported AVI-input at this time ?
I possibly might have sold my grandma to get such an application.

...but as I said:
Times are changing.

Right now I own a DVD-burner (like many of us do). I capture my movies / series from TV using an external Hardware MPEG2 encoder. Afterwards I do a quick cut, master, burn with TMPEGDVD Author which just takes me 10 minutes manual work. For DVD-backups I normally just use DVDShrink (available for free) or for the larger movies DVD2SVCD (also free). Normally I only put one movie on a DVD-R. Hey, just cost me an € per movie. Mostly I either throw away the disk after watching the movie or I give it away to a friend. Would I go through the hassle again putting multiple movies (either MPEG2 or "DivX") to a single disk ?

No, definitely not because:
1) Generating a menu for MPEG2 files consumes too much of my time if I do it the way I think they should look
2) "DivX" doesn´t play back in my standalone

I wish len0x the very best with the new "donate2get features" route he has choosen for AutoGK but also only see a dark future for GK in terms of support for future codecs / container formats.

@len0x:
However I cannot afford making it commercial at this stage (it rather brings more work that I want to) and moreover I do not wish to make it a payable product in this form as it is now (I do consider a PRO version though). As far as I can go is make it more of a donate-ware (but definitely not like Fairuse does).
Yeah, that´s the direction I was pointing to in the other thread. May be I need to clarify:
<snip>
I have the strong opinion that even though every freeware developer has the right to charge the users for his hard work, he might be better of quiting the development and start a commercial project when he needs money for motivation or external circumstances require him to earn money.
<snip>

When I say "commercial project" that doesn´t neccessarily involves commercialising your freeware project. You can also get a job as developer (and I think you are skilled enough to get a job as dev). This is what I did. Although I never coded any big project such as DVD2SVCD or GK, I really liked coding all my rather small apps. Of course I needed to make a living. So I coded specialized application for text analysis for money. In my sparetime I continued coding on my freeware apps. Wouldn´t this be a much more valueable approach ?

Look, I don´t use GK or AutoGK anymore. I played around with AutoGK a bit because I wanted to automatically recompress my MPEG2 recordings to DivX in order to save some space. So getting AutoGK with new features for no money is not my driver. I just think you might quite easily "kill" the peoples interest on AutoGK. I don´t think that this many people will donate (although I hope so for you). Staggering donations will mean staggering features. Add a few new modifications to DivX and XVid themself you only will implement when sum XXX $ is reached and...kabooom...it might be possible that AutoGK is somewhat "dead".

As always: Just my 2cents and my very limited personal opinion

-D$

[stax76]

I noticed a decreased interest in DivX (and similar codecs) since the hardware and media prices were falling. Prices are really low now and therefore I hope the situation stabilizes. Until there aint't no possibility to compute, process, transmit and store data better by factor 10 I can't image myself not to recompress it for higher efficiency.

[len0x]

Originally posted by Darksoul71

When I say "commercial project" that doesn´t neccessarily involves commercialising your freeware project. You can also get a job as developer (and I think you are skilled enough to get a job as dev). This is what I did. Although I never coded any big project such as DVD2SVCD or GK, I really liked coding all my rather small apps. Of course I needed to make a living. So I coded specialized application for text analysis for money. In my sparetime I continued coding on my freeware apps. Wouldn´t this be a much more valueable approach ?


That's the most amuzing post I read in a while!
What do you think my day time job is???

[Darksoul71]

That's the most amuzing post I read in a while!
What do you think my day time job is???
Hm, don´t wanna sound unpolitely but....
Q: Do I know personally ?
A: No !

Q: Does a "hobby" development project imply that you do coding for a living ?
A: No ! In fact I know a few "developers" that do jobs where you wouldn´t even think they are coding. :)
I have a database dev as colleague who is scuba diving teachers and owns a fitness study as "other" jobs. So what´s your point ?

So, one final question: When you earn money with coding, then why do you want money as motivation ?
Don´t you earn enough ?
Do you want the work for AutoGK being payed ?

[len0x]

Originally posted by Darksoul71
So what´s your point ?


Exactly as your - that you should not make any assumptions about me unless you know me personally (or making personal advice while we at it).

Originally posted by Darksoul71
So, one final question: When you earn money with coding, then why do you want money as motivation ?


What other motivation can you have when you spend the whole day coding already for money? You just get used to it and don't wish to waste the time when its no longer your hobby.

P.S. There is a big difference between professional and non-professional coders that cannot be seen from outside unless you're not in this business for a while. These days too many ppl call themselves "developers" but I don't want to comment on that.

*Edit* I think the whole thread started as offtopic and now completely non-related to the forum discussion, so I'll close it.