What is the best Divx/Xvid codec? No spyware/virus version?

[DarrellS]

>>Last updated 5/21/03. <<

Sorry, I didn't mean to insinuate that it was the most up to date page I could find but the last page that I found. I knew that would be a problem after I sent it.

It's pretty hard to find any unbiased info on the subject. I found another site yesterday morning that compared all the popular codecs in use today that showed stills from each encode. There wasn't much difference between any of them to a trained eye and my eyes could see no difference at all.
These were all using high quality resolutions and bitrates.
It's not in my history so I'll have to see if I can't find it again on the internet.

[BJ_M]

doom9 has a good review

[BJ_M]

i also helped out a little on this one for some of the parts -- which is a guide and basic review (2 parts)

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=259731

[vitualis]

We might as well give up since this guy has it fixated that DivX3 is the best.

I already advised him to look at the superb and comprehensive (and up to date) reviews at doom9 but he "doesn't care".

As I stated before, the DivX certification program is designed so that there can be uniformity and standards in designing players to play back DivX clips. I don't even understand why you are arguing this since it is clear fact. Parts of DivX5 are designed the way they are so that it would be easy to decode in hardware.

This is not the case with DivX3 and any search of the net will yield that DivX3 compatibility is a clear problem with many players.

DivX4 was made by the same people who hacked DivX3. So what? DivX4 is a legal codec while DivX3 is not. DivX4 is really quite different from DivX3.

DivX4 was frankly not very good but DivX5 is excellent, especially the latest builds. XviD is probably better than DivX5 and reviews would suggest that it surpasses DivX3.

There are a number of newer more advanced codecs out now which are definitely better and you can read about them in the newest doom9 codec comparison. MPEG-4 based codec like DivX5/XviD still have the advantage of compatibility, especially on some hardware players.

Also, you obviously don't understand what AVI or MPEG are. AVI is simply the container format. It can use any sort of compression codec/format. You could conceivably create an MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 codec for use with AVI (and I'm pretty sure such implementations exist).

MPEG refers to the actual compression standard. MPEG-4 is a form of MPEG and you CAN create MPEG-4 video files without using the AVI container. Alternatively, you could create MPEG-4 compressed files in other containers (e.g., QT, Matroska).

Regards.

[BJ_M]

yep . mpeg2 wrapped in avi can exist and has been done .. of course no real purpose - but one security company was doing this for awhile ..

a lot of security companies use very high compression codecs now .

[Stormin Norman]

If its for playback only on your pc, all you need is the latest ffdshow filter. It will handle pretty much any mp4 stream.

p.s. Xvid is awsome, very customizable campared to DviX.

p.p.s. you cant knock both codecs (Dvix, Xvid), they both do very well for a highly compressed video.

[DarrellS]

Tell the moderators that, for the umpteenth time, I never said that DivX 3 was better than Xvid but was just giving my opinion of both codecs from MY experience.

I will try and keep my mouth shut on how I do video editing since I am definately no expert at it and never claimed to be. Even though it works for me it would never work for anyone else.

Since they are the experts, maybe you could do me a favor and ask them how to edit two 400 MB DivX 5.0.2 files that I got off of the internet and append them together to make one XviD file that will fit on a CD. Like I mentioned earlier, I cannot do anything with these files when I open them in my video editing programs and the only player on my machine that they will even play on is Media Player Classic. I know, I was told that it wasn't recommended to download files off of the internet because they were not very good files but I just can't help myself since I have highspeed internet. It's just too tempting not too.
I know there has to be a way to do it. Even though 5.0.2 seems like a proprietory file like RM, QT or WMV, there has to be a way around it. Does DivX.com offer a DivX editor that will join the files and encode them to XviD? I figured since the one moderator likes DivX 5.0.2 so much and knows everything about it that he might have an answer but since he ignored the question the first time and only wants to bad mouth me, I don't think he wants to give me the answer. Or maybe that was just his way of telling me he doesn't know without having to admit that he doesn't know.

[DarrellS]

Nevermind. Tell them that I uninstalled the DivX 5.0.2 Bundle (codec only) from my machine and everything works fine now.

Something told me that these two codecs couldn't reside on my machine at the same time since I had never noticed this problem before until I installed the XviD codec and I guess that something was right.

[DarrellS]

Tell them that those DivX 5.0.2 files have magically turned themselves into XviD files since I removed the 5.0.2 codec.

[DarrellS]

Well, according to Gspot, they're still DX50 / DivX 5.0

I guess they will have to stay DivX since, according to Virtualdub, trying to compress to Xvid with a lower quality MP3 audio is going to make a 1900 MB file and take almost three hours to encode. Encoding with DivX 3 would take 55 minutes and make a 900 MB file and direct stream copying the two DivX 5 files took 4 minutes and 47 seconds and made a 784 MB file.

[vitualis]

Learn how to change the bitrate controls.

If direct stream copying is an option for the type of editing you are doing, you should always use it.

Regards.

[celtic_druid]

The way VfW works is that it first checks if there is a codec for the fourCC. So DivX for DX50, if none is found then it checks if any other installed codec will accept the fourCC, which is where XviD comes in as it can handle DIVX and DX50.

So if you have XviD installed but not DivX you can still open DivX 5.x encodes with VDub.

[DarrellS]

>>So if you have XviD installed but not DivX you can still open DivX 5.x encodes with VDub.<<

That is what I am figuring out but the problem I've had the last couple of weeks was getting any program to do anything with a DivX 5.0.2 file with both the 5.0.2 codec and XviD installed at the same time. VDub and every other program would open the file but refused to do anything with them (including MPlayer2). Since I uninstalled the DivX 5.0.2 codec, everything is working fine.

Tell Vitualis thanks for the advice. Since the default setting for the codec was set to Target Quantizer and Not Target Bitrate, I didn't think that there was a way to set the bitrate (not sure why it was compressing my other files so well with the default setting and decided to try and compress this one so poorly). The file size would be slightly smaller but the time of encode would still be close to three hours. That seems to be the only major flaw with XviD. The time of encode. It's not as bad as WMV9 but it's close.
There are times when Direct Stream Copy is the best option and there are times when the only option is Full Processing Mode. When I append some XviD files that I have, they will definately be direct stream copies.

[celtic_druid]

If you are recompressing, I would suggest fast recompress. Only reason for full processing is to run filters and I would suggest using AVISynth for that anyway.

Probably if you had updated DivX to something more recent it would have worked to.

[DarrellS]

>>If you are recompressing, I would suggest fast recompress. Only reason for full processing is to run filters and I would suggest using AVISynth for that anyway.<<

Thanks for the advice. I'll give it a try next time.I had forgotten that there even was such a thing in VDub.
I would have too much trouble with a program like AVISynth. I'm no computer programmer.

>>Probably if you had updated DivX to something more recent it would have worked to.<<

I'm not sure how. I thought DivX 5 was supposed to be both backward and forward compatible. I installed the DivX 5 codec in September of 2004 so I'm not sure why it was showing up as 5.0.2 anyway.

I haven't seen this issue on other video forums but one poster on the VDub forum was told to change a setting in XviD to get Xvid to open all MPEG-4 files and although I saw that option when I installed XviD, I can't seem to find that option in the codec and I don't have a configuration file in program files\XviD where the other poster was told to look.

[celtic_druid]

That option is for the direct show decoder when VirtualDub uses VfW.