Your eyes don't deceive you: yes, it's really a new Vidsquish update!

This one was much longer in coming than I had hoped due to real life issues getting in the way, but you can thank quarantine for temporarily putting those on hold. Fingers crossed, the next update will not be so delayed now that one of the biggest obstacles is out of the way.

Not real-life obstacle, I mean. I'm talking about "Unpacking libraries.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................". Until now, Vidsquish has relied on a built-in Windows utility for managing external dependencies, and I've gotten MANY messages over the years about the headaches that has caused.

Well, no more. Over the past couple of months, I've written a completely new archive format with Vidsquish in mind from the ground up. In fact, once I got started, I realized I had something so useful on my hands that I could spin off the new archive format into its own commercial product. Fear not, though--Vidsquish will always remain free to use. Monetizing certain aspects of the code behind it simply allows me to justify time invested into further developments, and make them better than they could ever be as weekend projects only.

As such, I was able to take the new libraries system much farther than originally planned. Not only will libraries reliably unpack from now on, but once complete, a faster verification process will be used instead to get you into the main Vidsquish interface faster than before. If any changes are detected, one attempt will be made at self-correcting errors. And if they're still not fixed, you'll be able to launch Vidsquish anyway. Not all profiles require all external libraries, so you can still use any working profiles while troubleshooting the rest. But really, this is all edge case stuff anyhow. The goal is for everyone to have zero issues in the first place, and I'm confident the new system will deliver!

But that's not all: with the recent addition of Halo 2 Anniversary in the PC port of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, we've got a high-profile new release with pre-rendered cutscenes to modify! For Halo 2, Microsoft hired Studio Blur to create almost one full hour of film-quality CGI story sequences, and the results are simply incredible. Unfortunately, they're also letterboxed by default. This is fine on 16:9, 4:3, and every aspect ratio in-between, but frustrating for 21:9 users who could see them the way they're meant to be seen!

The new Halo MCC profile for Vidsquish solves this problem with a 21:9 crop mode, but that's not all. It also offers fullscreen crop modes for other aspect ratios, as well as frame interpolation to 60 or 72 FPS, so 144 Hz monitor users can get perfectly smooth playback at a native multiple of their refresh rate. The Vidsquish profile is also special as the first to offer "profiles within a profile"--as a collection of games, Halo MCC uses slightly different formats and settings for each title, which you can easily select within the Vidsquish GUI for best results.


As of this writing, the MCC is not yet complete, so stay tuned for further updates to this profile for Halo 3, ODST, and Halo 4 as they are released!

In the same vein, the full potential of the new libraries system has not been unlocked yet! In the next update, you'll be able to add and remove libraries of your own for truly custom profiles. See you then!