#AVpres Newsletter 2025-11-24

LTO
FireWire Interface
Software Releases
Swiss Film and Video Directory

1. LTO

1.1. Generation 10 (LTO-10)

Unfortunately, with Generation 10 launched on the market this summer, the promise of backward compatibility across two generations of LTO was completely broken: LTO-10 drives can read neither LTO-8 nor LTO-9 cartridges, but only LTO-10 cartridges. Furthermore, the upgrade from generation 8 to 10 offers approximately 38% less storage capacity than promised.

1.2. Generation 5 (LTO-5)

The migration of the remaining LTO-5 cartridges should be carried out now, because no more LTO-5 drives are being manufactured or serviced.

2. FireWire Interface

macOS 26.0 “Tahoe” was released on 2025-09-15 (and the current version 26.0.1 on 2025-09-29). It no longer supports the IEEE 1394a (“FireWire 400”) and IEEE 1394b (“FireWire 800”) interfaces. Therefore, it will no longer be possible in the foreseeable future to read all metadata from DV tapes using Apple computers. This affects software such as vrecord and DVRescue.

Linux distributions are also removing support for FireWire.

3. Software Releases

AEO-Light: Version 2.4 has has been released on 2025-07-23:
https://github.com/usc-imi/aeo-light/releases/tag/v2.4
The issue reported on Windows 11 with this version is actually the same also for previous version such as 2.3.3: The filename of the generated sound must be ASCII only, not UTF-8.
This is a piece of software for optical sound extraction form movie film digitisations.
Audacity: Version 3.7.5 has been released on 2025-08-05:
https://www.audacityteam.org/
Bash: Version 5.3.3 has been released on 2025-07-23:
https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/
DCP-o-matic: Version 2.18.32 has been released on 2025-11-17:
https://dcpomatic.com/
If you find this open-source software useful, you could financially support its developer, Carl Hetherington.
Unfortunately, this software can no longer be installed via Homebrew due to Cloudflare.
HandBrake: Version 1.10.2 has been released on 2025-09-06:
https://handbrake.fr/
MediaInfo: Version 25.10 has been released on 2025-11-05:
https://mediaarea.net/MediaInfo
MKVToolNix: Version 96.0 has been released on 2025-11-08:
https://mkvtoolnix.download/index.html
Unfortunately, due to Cloudflare, this software will soon no longer be installable via Homebrew.
Nano: Version 8.7 has been released on 2025-11-12:
https://www.nano-editor.org/
OpenEXR: Version 3.4.4 has has been released on 2025-11-19:
https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr/releases/tag/v3.4.4
Shutter Encoder: Version 19.6: has been released in 2025-11:
https://github.com/paulpacifico/shutter-encoder/releases/tag/19.6

4. Swiss Film and Video Directory

Although we had planned to discontinue this activity at the end of June 2023, another major update of our Swiss Film and Video Directory took place.
https://reto.ch/directory/

Best regards from Joshua, Michal and Reto

2025-12-27