DivX DVD Player questions

[MasterRoshi]

I have some questions about a dvd player that supports divx. So by reading some threads I think no divx player can support mkv/ogm files? Will they soon? Can you put dual audio episodes and a soft sub in an avi container without losing quality? If so, how much of a hassle it that? Assuming its not that hard isn't it much much better to just put movies/episodes on a dvd as a data disc instead of burning them as dvd?

The major advantages I see are smaller size, so you can put more episodes and no loss in quality? I also see divx players aren't that expensive. Is there a reason why people are actually still burning to dvd's? Anyone have a list of advantages/disadvantages?

[Baldrick]

Maybe mkv and mp4 will be supported in some years. If you want to play such now just get a media center like the popcorn hour instead, www.popcornhour.com .

You can make .divx files(see under Authoring(DivX) in our Tools list) that supports switchable subtitles and dual audio and it works on most divx certified players.

[TBoneit]

Opinion:

Whether it makes sense to go to Standard DVD vs Divx depends on the source.

If you are capturing to DV AVI then converting that is one thing. If you are going from a Standard DVD to divx then you've lost quality since you've taken a lossy source and recompressed it further.

At the cost of good blank media I can not see any reason to squeeze the size down and lose compatibility.

If you want to be able to play anything then you need to forget about a standalone player and look into something such as Baldrick suggests. Keeping in mind that those devices depend on updates from the maker to handle new things and even then they may not be able to be upgraded to newer things that the chipset doesn't support. Whereas DVD is likely to be supported longer than any other format such as mkv, divx, OGM, wmv etc.

[MasterRoshi]

Which one is the best to use? I was trying divxmediabuilder since it is trialware, but I don't really know how to use it.

I use mkvextract to take out the video,audio and subs. Then I went to a new file and selected the video and it always says none when I try to select audio from the default audio and subs, and wouldn't that mean it only supports one audio.

Opinion:

Whether it makes sense to go to Standard DVD vs Divx depends on the source.

If you are capturing to DV AVI then converting that is one thing. If you are going from a Standard DVD to divx then you've lost quality since you've taken a lossy source and recompressed it further.

At the cost of good blank media I can not see any reason to squeeze the size down and lose compatibility.

If you want to be able to play anything then you need to forget about a standalone player and look into something such as Baldrick suggests. Keeping in mind that those devices depend on updates from the maker to handle new things and even then they may not be able to be upgraded to newer things that the chipset doesn't support. Whereas DVD is likely to be supported longer than any other format such as mkv, divx, OGM, wmv etc.

I thought you don't need to recompress the file? I heard you can take the files from a MKV/OGM file and move them to an AVI container without losing any quality and then just burn it to a data disc. Is it much more complicated then that?

edit: Yea, how come I need to make them to divx files? I was googling and many people say you can just extract the video, which is usually avi, slap it on a disc and it should play. The audio's and subs might need to be converted though right?

[Ai Haibara]

On my Philips DVP-642, I can create an AVI with two (maybe more, but I haven't tried it) audio streams and an external .srt subtitle file with the same name as the video. The player allows me to switch between the audio streams with the remote, but to have the subtitles running, I have to highlight them in the player's menu before selecting the AVI and hit the Subtitle button on the remote to activate them.

I'd imagine the newer Philips Divx-capable players should be able to do the same, and I believe they handle subtitles better than the above - at least, I think you don't have to go through the same method to activate the subtitles.

OGM videos are - in my experience - usually a container with the following:
AVI video stream, compressed with Xvid
One or more .ogg (Vorbis) audio streams
...plus possibly a subtitle stream.
You can usually convert it to an AVI without any video quality loss by simply demuxing everything, converting the .ogg audio streams to MP3, and mux the audio streams into the AVI.

MKVs, on the other hand, can be a little more difficult to convert. Especially when it comes to h264/VFR video.