New XviD (1.0) for Mac ?

[tonmischa]

Hi !

I got a feedback on my program: A user complained he couldn't watch an .avi he recently downloaded.
My program uses QuickTime to playback any movies, so I asked him to play the movie with the Quicktime Player, but also: no success.

We _think_, the movie has been encoded using the xvid codec (1.0 or 1.0.1). Divx and 3ivx 4.5.1 Codec don't work. And the XviD Delegate from insaneness.com can decode it, but needs loooots of CPU power (on my G4/533 I had a framerate of 4 pictures/second...).

Anyone know, if there's another codec for QuickTime to playback movies encoded with the new XviD codec ?

Thanks !
tonmischa

[TugBoat]

Man, that was awful nice of whoever encoded a movie with a brand new codec that has a limited distribution. Have you tried VLC? I looked around and found a few references;
http://forums.3ivx.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=12&topic=984

which leads to;
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~naegelic/xvid_qt_download.html
That apparently provides the source code to compile a Quicktime Xvid Component for Xvid 1.0.0 (Don't know, I'm not a coder), and an apparently new binary. This is all pretty new. Maybe you can try that new QuickTime Xvid Component (Option Click!) and see what it does

Hmmm, it seems that component works pretty good for making movies. The interface is a little strange. I used it to convert a 4 minute Sorenson 3 video clip to something called XviD dev-api-4, took about 10 minutes. The new clip is less than half the size and looks pretty close to the original. Interesting

[tonmischa]

Thanks for the link.
Didn't know that one.

It does pretty much the same as Xvid Delegate and VLC.
All three play the movie, but with a poor frame rate. (is my G4/533 really too slow for this ?)

[TugBoat]

is my G4/533 really too slow for this ?

How does your machine play the old XviD movies? I could try the suspect movie on my dual 1.25, if I knew where to find it Or, if you had someplace I could upload this 15 MB 'XviD dev-api-4' movie, you could see how it plays. On my machine it plays at 30fps using 20-25% processor. It's possible that this is still the older codec from looking at the creation date of the component and seeing as how new XviD 1.0x is.

[tonmischa]

Okay, I just created a movie using the XviD Component (the xvid-dev-api4-thing ) and it plays fine...

So maybe it's just that one file which is corrupt... *shrug*

[TugBoat]

Yep, something definitely strange with that movie 8)
It doesn't like the 'XVIDDelegate.component' ver. 1.3 created July 4, 03. When that .component is loaded, QT insists on using it over the other codecs. I get a normal movie with a black screen and colored blocks in the upper quarter of the screen.

VLC-0.7.2 and MPlayer OS X 2 (2.0) play it back great. No problems. If I remove the XVIDDelegate.component from the QT folder, then the 3ivx D4 4.5.1 for OSX codec takes over and QT plays the movie fine. It appears it's time for an XVIDDelegate.component ver. 1.3 update :P

[tonmischa]

Now I'm confused

XviD delegate is the one from insaneness.com (which uses the divx codec to decode xvids).
Xvid component is the one from the link you posted earlier...
right ?

FYI: I just got almost a heart attack, because I worked on my program (which uses QuickTime to playback the movies) and discovered a huge memory leak and couldn't figure out why that happened.

As it turned out, the Xvid Component (not the Delegate ) doesn't de-allocate itself after use.
You can confirm that by yourself: Install the Xvid Component. Open QT Player. Open Activity Monitor and get "Information" on QT Player.
Open and close an .avi (which uses the Xvid Component) several times. Memory consumption will grow and grow and grow.

[TugBoat]

Yeah, we're getting to much junk to keep track of. My QT folder contains the following;
DVCPROHDMuxer.component
FCP Uncompressed 422.component
DVCPROHDVideoDigitizer.component
PSIKey.shlb
MP3.component
DVCPROHDVideoOutput.component
KinomaExporter.component
DesktopVideoOut.component
Toast Video CD Support.qtx
OggVorbis.component
DVCPROHDVideoOutputClock.component
DivX Pro 5.component
lame 3.92.shlb
3ivx D4 4.5.1 for OSX
DVCPROHDVideoOutputCodec.component
DVCPROHDCodec.component
on2vp3.component
DivX MP3 Encoder.component
LiveType.component
AC3 Codec.component

And I have removed the XviD delegate from insaneness.com that was causing the problems with the new TV series movie. I have been using that 'plug-in' since day one and that was the first movie it had problems with. I have the DivX Pro 5.1.1 component installed.

I also removed the new XviD_Codec.component I had installed this morning after seeing the memory problem you described. I found that the problem only happens with certain AVIs one of which is the one encoded with that component. If you quit QT in between movies you don't have the problem. I really don't have a use for it and things are getting crowded.

I also found that you have the same memory problem with the 3ivx D4 4.5.1 plug-in. Same thing goes, it only happens with a few AVIs and can be avoided by restarting QT when you quit the movie.

What we need is for Apple to release a new QuickTime, with the H.264 and XviD codec incorporated...like yesterday. We don't need to wait over six months, and, some semblance of standards would be nice