I'm not making moral platitudes about a file format, just trying to understand why it's so popular considering it's such a pain the ass to deal with. But as far as those Simpsons and Seinfeld episodes and the like, are those legal releases?
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I believe it goes under the "Fair use" policy. Where any "Tom,dick,harry" with a vcr can do it. I'm sure there are some legal issues with this, but companies know that disrupting it will cost more then the benifit.
As for why? It's the best choice out there so far. Remember mp4 in it's final form is still new, and has some wacky licencing issues to boot.
This help tremendiously with the age of broadband when people thought, "it's 100 megs, I can download that!"
Hopefully mp4 will be adopted because divx is advancing towards unity at at snails pace. Luckly, it's at least simple enough for a regular user to go along with it.
Just wondering .... Does anyone know why the hell did this tricky codec become so popular in the first place ? why not some standard format like mpg or mov or something ?
<strong>Just wondering .... Does anyone know why the hell did this tricky codec become so popular in the first place ? why not some standard format like mpg or mov or something ?
From my experience with DivX, it's more a matter of size than quality. Quality is decent, some better than others and vice versa, but you can fit a whole movie on one CD usually rather than Disc spanning the movie on more than one Disc.
How are all these people here saying they can get DivX to work 'perfectly' & 'flawlessly' on OSX doing it. Cos I sure can't.
I lent a few CD's with DivX Avi's on them from my brother (he plays them perfectly on his PC) and I have tried evrything to get them playing on my Mac.
VideoLan = Nothing.
Playing them straight in QT6 = some play with no sound, some don't play at all.
Avi2Mov = Sound with no Video (sometimes green stripy fvckd up Video).
Extracting the Audio track then the Video track & fiting them back together in QT = Sort of works but after about 5 mins of Movie QT hard freeze's the entire Gui (buy, buy almost a month of uptime).
Changing that code thing in the Header = Green stripy fvckd up Video & no sound
All the verious QT DivX codecs = no change.
Unless some sort of DivX 'Wonder app' arives I have officialy 'given up' trying to play DivX's on mu Mac.
Divx is the best option out there with no close competition in size/quality. No matter how it is argued people can see the results. After all one just have to look at mp4 to see how good the results are[divx and mp4 are near family members].
Mediaman, you're basiclly naming every "worse case senerio" there is out there for mac divx people.
Unless you're really unlucky, you hitting the 3% on purpose for arguement.
Green screen with fickles: this is what happens when you change a M$ mpeg4v62 to modern divx3. This was a big problem until it was solved a week ago with the release of the codec[Look for it on versiontracker]. Download codec and don't change anything.
Crashes: This is a bug with Avi2mov, or rather just something it couldn't handle. In such a case I switch to DivxDoctor2 and use the 3divx codec.
No play: It's probably a currupted unfinish divx. There is a pc program called divxfix, and I forgot the mac version of it, it's part of the fourcc program for osx.
no sound: it'a most probably WMA. The most time consuming fix. you need the OLD divxplayer 1.0b11 to rencoded into audio.
Seriously you must be watching some seriouslly screwed up divxs. Most divx fall under the simple 30second avi2mov/divxdoctor2 fix. Nearly no one uses WMA/M$ mpeg4v62 anymore.
Even PC users have trouble with those, as codecs for PCs can screw up on these issues(just not as much).
Sorry if out of 97% you hit the 3% "accidently". It happens, just not to most people.
They arn't weird DIVX's, mainstream stuff. A certain film about someone getting bitten by a Spider & his resulting adventures on one disk and a film in which Kevin Spacy plays Kevin Spacy and begins with K on 2 disks. He has others but there is no point getting them unless I can something to play these.
*cough* I think I know what you mean, I encountered a simliar file.
And guess what, my PC can't play it either. Who ever encoded this seriously screwed up. I'm sure there is a decoder somewhere, just not anything in the 97%
You have misinterpreted "Mainstream". It's not the source that needs to be "mainstream" it's in encoder, who in this case seriously "botched".
There are serveral of the "near same" divx out there, that's wasn't "botched". I can tell you that.
This is the inherent problem with divx. Even if the format itself can be streamlined i.e. "divx5". People don't usually follow it. so far, divx 3 and divx 5 are the most popular, both of which plays fine.
What Mediaman has is something altogether an outcast(a bad one at that).
Don't download Quicktime 6, as VideoLAN won't work in 32-bit color if you do.
That is the ONLY problem I have had with VideoLAN, and on a PowerMac G4 400 DivXs run 1024x768 full-screen full-frame rate. Other DivXs solutions have worse problems with QT6 (I've heard).
Quicktime is fugly as you have to convert movies to .mov first (due to mp3 audio in .avi using Quicktime), and some DivXs (such as my copy of American Beauty) don't work after doing this.
Also, this is not Apples fault. DivX is a QnD hack of .avi. PLEASE anyone here who rips movies, use .mp4.
Comments
I'm not making moral platitudes about a file format, just trying to understand why it's so popular considering it's such a pain the ass to deal with. But as far as those Simpsons and Seinfeld episodes and the like, are those legal releases?
<hr></blockquote>
I believe it goes under the "Fair use" policy. Where any "Tom,dick,harry" with a vcr can do it. I'm sure there are some legal issues with this, but companies know that disrupting it will cost more then the benifit.
As for why? It's the best choice out there so far. Remember mp4 in it's final form is still new, and has some wacky licencing issues to boot.
This help tremendiously with the age of broadband when people thought, "it's 100 megs, I can download that!"
Hopefully mp4 will be adopted because divx is advancing towards unity at at snails pace. Luckly, it's at least simple enough for a regular user to go along with it.
.
~Kuku
Is it better quality ?
i'm confused <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
<strong>Just wondering .... Does anyone know why the hell did this tricky codec become so popular in the first place ? why not some standard format like mpg or mov or something ?
Is it better quality ?
i'm confused <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
From my experience with DivX, it's more a matter of size than quality. Quality is decent, some better than others and vice versa, but you can fit a whole movie on one CD usually rather than Disc spanning the movie on more than one Disc.
I lent a few CD's with DivX Avi's on them from my brother (he plays them perfectly on his PC) and I have tried evrything to get them playing on my Mac.
VideoLan = Nothing.
Playing them straight in QT6 = some play with no sound, some don't play at all.
Avi2Mov = Sound with no Video (sometimes green stripy fvckd up Video).
Extracting the Audio track then the Video track & fiting them back together in QT = Sort of works but after about 5 mins of Movie QT hard freeze's the entire Gui (buy, buy almost a month of uptime).
Changing that code thing in the Header = Green stripy fvckd up Video & no sound
All the verious QT DivX codecs = no change.
Unless some sort of DivX 'Wonder app' arives I have officialy 'given up' trying to play DivX's on mu Mac.
[ 06-14-2002: Message edited by: Mediaman ]</p>
Mediaman, you're basiclly naming every "worse case senerio" there is out there for mac divx people.
Unless you're really unlucky, you hitting the 3% on purpose for arguement.
Green screen with fickles: this is what happens when you change a M$ mpeg4v62 to modern divx3. This was a big problem until it was solved a week ago with the release of the codec[Look for it on versiontracker]. Download codec and don't change anything.
Crashes: This is a bug with Avi2mov, or rather just something it couldn't handle. In such a case I switch to DivxDoctor2 and use the 3divx codec.
No play: It's probably a currupted unfinish divx. There is a pc program called divxfix, and I forgot the mac version of it, it's part of the fourcc program for osx.
no sound: it'a most probably WMA. The most time consuming fix. you need the OLD divxplayer 1.0b11 to rencoded into audio.
Seriously you must be watching some seriouslly screwed up divxs. Most divx fall under the simple 30second avi2mov/divxdoctor2 fix. Nearly no one uses WMA/M$ mpeg4v62 anymore.
Even PC users have trouble with those, as codecs for PCs can screw up on these issues(just not as much).
Sorry if out of 97% you hit the 3% "accidently". It happens, just not to most people.
~Kuku
[ 06-14-2002: Message edited by: Mediaman ]</p>
And guess what, my PC can't play it either. Who ever encoded this seriously screwed up. I'm sure there is a decoder somewhere, just not anything in the 97%
You have misinterpreted "Mainstream". It's not the source that needs to be "mainstream" it's in encoder, who in this case seriously "botched".
There are serveral of the "near same" divx out there, that's wasn't "botched". I can tell you that.
This is the inherent problem with divx. Even if the format itself can be streamlined i.e. "divx5". People don't usually follow it. so far, divx 3 and divx 5 are the most popular, both of which plays fine.
What Mediaman has is something altogether an outcast(a bad one at that).
~Kuku
Don't download Quicktime 6, as VideoLAN won't work in 32-bit color if you do.
That is the ONLY problem I have had with VideoLAN, and on a PowerMac G4 400 DivXs run 1024x768 full-screen full-frame rate. Other DivXs solutions have worse problems with QT6 (I've heard).
Quicktime is fugly as you have to convert movies to .mov first (due to mp3 audio in .avi using Quicktime), and some DivXs (such as my copy of American Beauty) don't work after doing this.
Also, this is not Apples fault. DivX is a QnD hack of .avi. PLEASE anyone here who rips movies, use .mp4.
Barto