AVI/DivX vs Div3 vs Div4 vs DX50 vs Xvid

[jgombos]

What are the basic differences between these formats? I've noticed DX50s appear to have better quality than DivXs - but that could be related to generation process as opposed to format: I created the DivXs with gui4ffmpeg, and the DX50s were handed to me.

[celtic_druid]

ffmpeg would most likely mean libavcodec ASP MPEG4 and not DivX. Just I guess DIVX was used as the fourCC instead of FMP4.

DivX3 = MS MPEG4 V3, which isn't actually MPEG4.
DivX 4 was not as good as DivX 3.
DIVX is just the fourCC of DivX 4/Open DivX. So DivX = DivX 4.x.

DivX 5 I would say is capable of better quality than DivX3.

XviD is definatly capable of the best picture quality due in main to custom quant matrix support. DivX only recently I think got support for MPEG. Previously it was only h.263, which tends to blur more, which is why some people still prefered DivX 3.

If you are encoding for hardware though h.263 is still the only allowed matrix under the DXN HT profiles.

[jimmalenko]

I've done my own tests between DX50 and XviD and I prefer XviD.

[junkmalle]

If you are encoding for hardware though h.263 is still the only allowed matrix under the DXN HT profiles.

The Liteon 2002 and Philips 642 have no problems with the XVID's MPEG matrix.

[celtic_druid]

Sure. Most players handle numerous CQM's to. However what I said is that DXN HT profiles only allow for h.263. So strickly speaking if you are encoding for DivX certified devices, that is what you should use. Plus with standard XviD builds, if you want to use DXN VBV settings, then you have to use the DXN profiles, which means h.263 quants. Now the player might handle MPEG quants, but it might not like the bitrate spikes that result without VBV enabled.

I have however done numerous builds with extra MTK profiles. These allow you to select other quant matricies and enable qpel whilst maintaining the VBV settings.

[RabidDog]

The format with the best picture quality is ;

(for the same size output file) xvid generally ??
but on very highly compressed stuff ??

[jgombos]

It's interesting that Xvid is the winner here, considering how much press and attention DivX gets. There's also standalone boxes that will decode DivX, and capture hardware that will support the encoding. Does anyone foresee Xvid emerging in more hardware?

[celtic_druid]

DivX = ASP MPEG4. XviD = ASP MPEG4.
If something supports DivX then it also supports XviD and vice versa.

Nero Digital also has an ASP MPEG4 encoder, as does libavcodec, 3ivX, HDX4, etc.

ASP MPEG4 = ASP MPEG4, especially when in an mp4 container. But even with avi it should just mean a fourCC change if the codec uses a fourCC that is not supported.