What's Wrong With This Picture? Divx4 Faster Than Divx6

[GrayStrickland]

I own the Divx6 Pro Codec, Divx Converter app and CloneDVD Mobile. The latter has an option to create a file using the Divx4 codec, but not Divx5 or Divx6. It is my experience that CloneDVD Mobile will create a Divx4 avi at slightly faster than realtime on my system, but Divx Converter 6.2.1 takes about 3x realtime to create a Divx6 avi using the Divx6.5 Pro dodec on the same pc using identical source material.

WHY?

I thought encoding speed was a factor of the codec, not the app using/calling it. The folks at Divx claim faster performance with each subsequent iteration of their stuff, so why isn't Divx Converter using Divx 6.5 Pro codec not at least as fast as Clone DVD Mobile using the Divx 4 dodec?

[celtic_druid]

They actually compiled mencoder with OpenDivX enabled or they are just calling libavcodec's MPEG-4 encoder DivX 4? I'd say that it is just libavcodec with the fourCC "DIVX".

Fact is that DivX 4 was SP. Encoding with only SP features in DivX6 should still be faster though.

[GrayStrickland]

They actually compiled mencoder with OpenDivX enabled or they are just calling libavcodec's MPEG-4 encoder DivX 4? I'd say that it is just libavcodec with the fourCC "DIVX".

Sorry, but I don't follow what you're saying. Yes, the makers of CloneDVD Mobile are using the mencoder engine, but that's the end of my knowledge about how CloneDVD Mobile encodes a Divx file. AviCodec analyzes the end result as vcodec = "OpenDivx v4" and FourCC = "Divx" so I assumed that meant that CloneDVD Mobile was using the Divx 4 codec for encoding.

Fact is that DivX 4 was SP. Encoding with only SP features in DivX6 should still be faster though.

Again I'm confused. What do you mean by "SP"?

[jiminma50]

I'm just taking a guess... I believe that celtic_druid was refering to SinglePass when he used the term SP.

I'm still new to all this myself =)

[celtic_druid]

Simple Profile. No bframes, etc. Easier to decode and faster to encode. Comparing ASP (Advanced Simple Profile) to SP isn't fair.

They would most likely be using libavcodec for encoding. So it is libavcodec vs. DivX, not DivX vs. DivX. The speed of LAVC's MPEG-4 encoder varies greatly depending on the settings. Default settings with 2 threads I get over 200fps here depending on the source. mencoder can also encode via Xvid though and you can set the FourCC to whatever you want. For Xvid you would probably leave it though. The default for lavc is I think FMP4, so people change it.