Xvid or Divx: Which is better?

[perdomot]

Not sure but I think that the only difference is one is open source. Has anyone compared the two formats and can offer an opinion on which is better? Thanks.

[DJRumpy]

Go with XviD. It's free. The quality appears to be the same.

[mats.hogberg]

Yes, general consensus seems to be that they produce the same quality. As one is free, and one is not, the choice is obvious (at least to me!) But judging by the amount of problems people seems to have playing/viewing XviDs, it all depends on your intended audience.

/Mats

[Gazorgan]

XviD!

The problem people have playing it is self inflicted. Most are using the year old version of the codec that comes with Nimo. Don't do that, get the latest build.

Also, XviD has problems with certain Video drivers when playing. VooDoo drivers do NOT work with xvid worth a dam(blocks and pixelization), and I'm sure there are others. Make sure your video drivers are up to date!

[DJRumpy]

I've never experienced a problem, but as you suggested, I always keep my drivers up to date, so that may be why. XviD (and MPEG-4 in general for that matter) is amazing in what it can do. I just finshed a 2-Pass XviD project, using 340kb/sec, at 480x360. The video is 3 hours, and 30 minutes long. The quality is exceptional, and the resulting avi is only 500MB

[Cheesemeister2000]

DivX for me

Got 2 Xvid Movies, got the latest version of Xvid codec from their website. Had audio sync trouble with one and major corruption trouble with the other one which crashed Media Player.

Xvid seems to have lots of different versions built by different people.
DivX has one version.

Both are free ( unless you want advanced features ).

Cheesemeister2000

[perdomot]

Thanks for the advice. I assume that if you burn a movie that's encoded with xvid to disc that it will only play on the computer. Most of what I'm doing is converting old vhs movies to vcd format to be played on my dvd player. I've been using the 1-Pass at the highest bitrate to capture but can I capture with 2-Pass also and what kind of difference does it make. I don't understand how the two pass technique works to improve image quality if I'm going to convert to mpeg when I burn the vcd. Thanks again.

[DJRumpy]

Think of it as cheating. If someone dropped a maze puzzle in front of you, and you had only one minute to get through it.

Same puzzle, but someone gave you a map. That's what multipass does. It gives the encoder a map, so it knows exactly what bitrate is required for each GOP (group of pictures). If a gop has bitrate that it doesn't use, it gets put in the 'available' bucket, to be used on other gops, who do need more bitrate.

In addition to bitrate allocation, it also maps motion in your video. Scene changes, fades, and rapid motion cause wasted bitrate in a 1-Pass MPEG. Because the encoder has advanced knowledge of these things using multipass, it can better allocate bitrate to these difficult scenes.

[perdomot]

Thanks DJ. That makes it a bit clearer. Are there any settings or guides for multi-pass encodings that you can recommend for Xvid? Should I capture with Huffy and then do a multi-pass encoding when I filter the video with avisynth? I'd like to give it a try.

[hustbaer]

yeah, but xvid/divx don't do GOPs.
(i wouldn't call 100+ frames a GOP)
i beleive bit-allocation is done per frame.
i could be wrong though.

nevertheless... - audio problems were mentioned:
i'd go with CBR mp3 for audio - VBR audio is not handled well within avi.
and that's no bug, it's a known limitation.
(try heavy seeking on a divx with VBR audio...)

bye,
--hustbaer

[perdomot]

I already had a problem trying to encode an Xvid movie with TMPEG. I'm going to try seperating the audio and video as one of the guides suggest and see if that helps. Still, the extra steps and time they take already have me thinking about going back to Divx. Didn't have this problem with that codec.

[mats.hogberg]

I already had a problem trying to encode an Xvid movie with TMPEG

...But wasn't your original q what codec was better, not which codec your system has least probs with?

/Mats

[DJRumpy]

You bring up a good point hustbaer. They do not use GOPs. It is allocated on a per frame basis.

In rergards to problems with Xvid, you can always encode in XviD, and use the FourCC changer to switch it to DivX can't you?

[Donny661]

I've always had problems encoding XviD to vcd/svcd with tmpg. The only solution i have found is frameserving. i hope that most of the problems will be gone when they come out with a final release. XviD is still in development and there is no official release so in essence when you encode and XviD video you are beta testing and problems arise with that. I think when XviD comes out with a final release it will be better than DivX5 because it is comprable now and I don't believe they have added some of the more advanced features in the MPEG-4 specifications like DivX5 has(i.e. B-frames, GMC and all that crap).

[perdomot]

DJ,
I read the How-To on converting Xvid to Divx but I didn't know you had to do that in order to encode to mpeg.

Mats,
Better in my book also includes easier and less trying to figure out what went wrong

[mats.hogberg]

Perdomot, you're right, sort of. "Best" can be defined in a whole lot of ways, possibly one per individual!

/Mats

[DJRumpy]

The XviD project I just finished invovled a 3 hour and 30 minute training video. To create it was rather easy, since the source was VOB. If you are capturing, I would capture to huffy, as you already suggested. I used VirtualDub, and NANDub to create my XviD. Just select it under the VIDEO | COMPRESSION menu. I selected 2 Pass - 1st Pass. In the codec options, make sure you choose to create the 'Hinted ME' option. I unselected 'Discard 1st Pass'. I also used 'Ultra High' for the motion detection. The speed difference didn't seem that drastically different between the Ultra High, and Very High motion detection settings. When you select FILE | SAVE AVI, make sure you select the 'Don't Run This Job Now' checkbox, before you click SAVE. Go back to your video compression menu, select the CONFIGURE button again, and set the DivX codec to 2 Pass - 2nd Pass Int. Put in the number of Kbytes for the desired output size (I know..I wish they would use MBytes), and select FILE | SAVE AVI again. Make sure you select 'Don't Run This Job Now' checkbox again, and click SAVE.
To start your job, select FILE | JOB CONTROL, and start your two batch jobs.

I used NANDub to merge my MP3 audio, with my new DivX video. The audio output was 200MB. The video portion was 485MB.