Should I captured video from DVD as Divx or Xvid??

[yunakokimama]

I don't understand how different between Divx and Xvid and Avi. I want to captured video from DVD with caption as MPEG-4 and burn to DVD for my favorite collection. Or convert to Flash video and put on website.
In this case, should I need FairUse software??

[gll99]

I don't understand how different between Divx and Xvid and Avi. I want to captured video from DVD with caption as MPEG-4 and burn to DVD for my favorite collection. Or convert to Flash video and put on website.
In this case, should I need FairUse software??

The simple explanation (I hope) is that todays AVI is an evolved standardised structured container that holds video and audio streams and other information such as subtitles, codec identifiers, stream structure such as interleaving, key frames etc. Those streams are often compressed to save space and this is where codecs come in.

Divx and xvid are video codecs (compressor/de-compressor) initially based on the simple profile mpeg4 standard codec. They too have evolved since their inception and have more advanced capabilities using newer compression algorithms. In our example the compressor is applied to the video stream and then it is placed into an avi container. When a program extracts the video stream it needs a translator to be able to read the video stream. That's what the corresponding divx / xvid de-compressor does. We mention those 2 but there are many other codecs these are just popular ones in use today. Also the audio can and is often compressed also in the avi container.

So again, to create an avi, you could compress an uncompressed video stream (or re-compress it from DVD mpeg2 or other source) using a xvid or divx codec and then place the new compressed stream inside an avi container along with an audio stream which may also be compressed if you want one also. This will form an avi that software players and divx capable players will recognize and play. The software tools do all the work for you so most of us, unless we are software developers, don't need to know the details of how it is done.

btw) Unless you are sure that it's a public domain video, I wouldn't post video obtained from a DVD on a website even as a flash animation without written permission from the distributor.