Electronic Cosmo was a freeware MPEG layers 1/2/3 encoder created by two Norwegian programmers.

The encoder is distributed as part of a larger program called MPEG Suite. It is quite featureful, offering batch encoding, transcoding and decoding. Besides their own encoder, you can choose to encode using Blade (version 0.76) and Plugger (version 0.4) which are distributed in the same installation. The decoding routines are based on XAudio.

Now, their encoder... in the documentation the authors claim it is super fast, and that raises all kinds of red flags for me. So I started paying attention to the encoding process, it is indeed super fast, but if you set the encoder to run on idle priority and increase the CPU load in Windows, there is enough time to notice a process called codec.exe running on task manager. That executable appears on Electronic Cosmo's installation folder as soon as you start encoding, and disappears as soon as encoding is finished.

I copied the program (75kB) to another folder before it got deleted, and got to investigating. For starters, it is packed with ASpack - another red flag, but not a problem, I just unpacked it with AspackDie and generated a 360kB executable. Then I loaded it in an Hex editor and started looking for strings. The data starting at offset 204C8 is identical to the data starting at offset 1F0C8 in Xing tompg, except for the strings precisely expliciting that we're dealing with a Xing encoder.

Can it be a coincidence? Yes it can. But obviously isn't. Electronic Cosmo is another encoder stealing from Xing and the developers are not even decent enough to give credit where it is due (at least rJPa acknowledges Xing in their program).

The web site is surprisingly still availabe, here.

Thanks to Stefan for introducing me to this encoder.


Date: 2005-08-31
Version: 1.5.5
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: MPEGSuite.exe - 683kB