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This is not "everything you wanted to know about codecs." In fact, 3ivx just released 3ivx 5.0 for encoding to MPEG4 a few days ago.

A bit of a bummer that an Australian website missed reviewing an Australian created codec.

FYI, here's the press release. And YES! It does do Linux!. Tux be praised.

http://www.3ivx.com/pr/pr20070607_50.html

Cheers

If a video codec installer told you to reboot, contact the developer immediately and tell him to take that out of the installer.

You do not need to reboot to use newly-installed QuickTime codecs.

You just need to relaunch any running QuickTime applications.

Telestream Inc. shows it is possible to add WMV codec to Quicktime on OS X. In fact, my Quicktime also have .ogg and those open video support via codecs too. It also validates people's claims that Microsoft does use WMV Technology to drive people to their OS. Why? While Telestream is a great company and their codec works, it can't be a replacement for MS Wmedia Player for OS X update which will NEVER ship.

There is open, documented and (only needing coders) MPEG-4 H264. It is already supported in some opensource programs I guess. The company matters.

If there was enough people wanting Quicktime , Apple could ship quicktime for Linux along with framework. The issue is: Will Linux/FreeBSD community accept getting closed source DRM? That was what Real Networks dared to mention and we have seen the result at Slashdot.

Apple will also keep some of Quicktime closed source. They have a technology in hand which is chosen by Industry giants like AVID Inc. to be used in their high profile applications. Some guys (MSFT) even spoke about "Knife the baby"
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-512634.html?leg acy=zdnn

Well, there is a good option if you ask me. 3ivx, one of the very advanced companies/coders in business explains at their download page:
http://www.3ivx.com/download/unix.html

Note that their codec is the choice for industry for mpeg 4.

You can put MPEG-2 into a transport- it's not QUITE as good as MPEG4, but it's better than MPEG-1. And better yet, MPEG4 decoders are VERY prevalent...

http://www.divx.com/
http://www.xvid.org/
http://www.3ivx.com/

Funny that, seems like we HAVE encoders/decoders out there for all the main platforms- and under almost all conditions, many of the mainline DVD players now have MPEG4 decode support (and EPIA motherboards, and...).

Oh, and about h.264...

Well, perhaps that's not prevalent yet (YET...), but there seems to be at least one FOSS implementation usable on all the main platforms:

http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html

Hm... Seems to me you missed the point that I was trying to make- there's no good reason for someone to have
pushed out a video of a Linux event's speaking session in a format that isn't fully supported on at least Liunx.
Technically, WMV isn't one of those sorts of things- MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-4/AVC are supported in at least a AVI transport wrapper- and it's supported pretty much everywhere else to boot.

here, you lazy fucker.

http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/playback/
http://n.ethz.ch/student/naegelic/
http://www.3ivx.com/download/index.html

all available as quicktime plugins.

Front Row plays anything Quicktime can. And there are codec plugins for Quicktime on the PowerPC side to handle pretty much everything. Below is a list of codecs I used on my PowerPC Mac Mini to play back pretty much everything I had except an occasional Real Media file. Keep in mind these have to be coded specifically for Intel to work on the new Mini properly.

Divx 6: http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/download/
XVid delegate: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~naegelic/download/
3vix: http://www.3ivx.com/download/macos.html
AC3/A52 decoder: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=83360
WMV Decoder for Quicktime: http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm
Quicktime MPEG2 decoder, $20: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/

Wow... ok, there's definitely something not right there, let's see if we can fix it...

FYI: I've got a 1.42GHz Mac Mini and a 500MHz G3 iMac (the old 'gum-drop' style). Even the G3 can handle most DivX's I throw at it, and the Mini's fine even with these DivX-HD trailers... both using QuickTime for playback.

Let's look at what codec you're using. QT codecs are kept in /Library/QuickTime. Looking in mine, I see I'm using 3ivX D4 4.5.1 for OS X which you can download from here.

Bear in mind that it's not too clever to have multiple codecs installed which can handle the same formats. So move any existing DivX codecs out of the above folder. You'll have to restart QuickTime (and any QT-using apps -- hell, a log-out/back in will do it for sure) for the new codecs to be used.

Note that QuickTime sometimes chokes on the indexing in AVI files which use MP3 audio tracks. Symptoms include no or stuttering video, or perfect video but stuttering/no audio. This is purely a stream indexing problem -- there's a tool on the 3ivX download page above called DivX Doctor II which will create corrected files (and maintain PC compatibility). Note that there's no re-encoding going on, just a bit of tweaking to the indices -- takes a minute or two to fix a 2-hr long film. I've got a little Folder Action Script attached to my Movies folder which automatically runs any .avi's I copy in there through the Doctor, so the process can be made completely invisible.

Finally, if you're playing DivX's with AC3 audio, get the AC3 codec from here, and drop it in with the other QT components at /Library/QuickTime.

QuickTime Player itself has never been a performance slacker on my two Macs. Duff codecs are another story :)

Hope this helps! There's absolutely no reason at all you should be having problems with DivX files on your Mac.

Chris

Having done many dv projects, i find it nessisary to heavily compress my produce after i'm through editing. My best expierence to date was with quicktime-variable rate mp4 (plugin availible from http://www.3ivx.com/) which delivers superbe quality at obscenely low size (1mb/minute average at 640x480 30 fps in my experince) followed by avi-divx (avi divx format is highly portable) witch has slightly lower quality but sometimes better compression. if you want a run-of-the-mill format, try quicktime-fixed rate mp4, as it is built into the free quicktime player at apple's website. Players for these formats are redily availible for all OS's. Good luck with your efforts.

Try the following:

• 3ivx Codec
• DivX Codec
• Xvid Codec
• Real Export Plug-in

Enjoy!

Yaz.

heh.. no, he should get QuickTime, believe it or not. I was really amazed when these .avi files played with audio in qt player. It's good to make sure you have all the 3rd-party codecs, go to the qt prefs in the system prefs and choose update, then custom. get them all, they come in handy and are extremely small in terms of hd space. (don't know if it's the same in windows)

head to this page to grab it. it's free, and since it sounds like you're on Windows, you may as well get iTunes while you're there. iTunes

If it's possible to use quicktime player for a movie file, you usually should, even if it's with a cracked pro key. VLC is great for AVIs that are encoded badly or with some obscure codec (or just a crappy one like divx or wmv that won't play in qt player, 3ivx is better, or xvid).

VLC has saved some of my experiments with my own DVD backups. It's a handy tool, and deserving of praise. It's just worth noting that the built-in tools should be used whenever possible.

A better alternative to the official divx codec (better = no spyware + higher quality + plays xvid + full codec free for non-comercial use) is 3ivx (for mac or windows).

(Of course all linux users already know mplayer is great for them (also great for OS X by the way))

Hmm.. if a guy who's playing around with codec's for some time can't configure it "properly", you have to ask, how userfriendly it really is.
Yes, excellent point there. I was pretty contradictory there. Referring to my userfriendly statement, I meant that when you select "options" a nice options window, with each function explained, and the nice help on the web site. I was just repeating what others said, the discussion is here. This was a while back, but I remembered one person's rather rant-like item. You can ignore that part of my post if you want.

Apple's MPEG-4 has both a mediocre encoder and decoder. 3ivx is a much better choice, it both decodes MPEG4 (and Divx/XviD) with better postfilters (the best, argurably), even scaled to how much CPU time it can grab. Its encoder is extremely nice, and very userfriendly, and it's extremely high quality. (And before you point Doom9's tests, Doom9 has NOT been configuring 3ivx correctly, so he's shooting himself in the foot). It has a 'trial' codec free (no real restrictions, but only for 'trial use') available for both Windows, Mac, and even BeOS (older versions are available for Linux and other platforms).

Referring about Sorenson, keep in mind this is the FREE codec that comes with Quicktime Pro. Professionals use a several hundred dollar 'Developers Edition' with Cleaner (two pass VBR encoding, which makes Sorenson rock). I know this is a for-user comparison, but in the professional scene, Sorenson can be even better then third/second place in quality.

Apologies, my reply was a little brief (preview, dammit). Quicktime tracks have a 'high-quality' flag, which I guess is supposed to hint the relevant decoder that, if possible, spend a little extra time making the track look good.

I've never seen it used in practice. The 3ivx codec, for example, adjusts it's post processing according to the available CPU which seems more sensible.

QT6 didn't even have two pass mpeg4 encoding for a long time and even now the quality/features are a joke compared to Xvid/Divx (which make use of things like b-frames, qpel, gmc).

On Windows the QT browser plugin is terrible and doesn't even allow you to zoom or fullscreen from the right-click menu (and windows media player does) so I'm stuck digging the freaking URL out of the page just to watch the stream in something other than a miniscule box (I use high res and I'm not changing it for a video in a web page).

The few professionals doing DVD work I've ever talked to used Maestro and Scenarist, both PC apps. IME the parent is right on about macs having lost their spot re encoding.

According to this and this, AAC/AC3 support is part of the newer versions of mplayer.

3ivx is the only mpeg4 codec (apart from Apple's own probably, but I don't know how well it compares to the others) that is properly optimized for PPC, both with and without altivec. Its image quality is somewhat lacking compared to DivX though (don't know about XviD).

This is not correct. Just get the 3ivx codec which is currently $free (but not free as in speech) that plays DivX, XvID and 3ivx flavours of MPEG-4 encoded video and has no spyware. It's available on windows, mac, linux, beos and amiga. Get it - it includes both encoder and decoder, and on windows it installs an AAC (advanded audio coding) directshow filter so you can watch those MPEG-4 compliant videos with MPEG-4 compliant AAC audio streams in WMP. I never installed DivX on my machine but watch DivX video all the time thanks to this.

And I have seen comparisons showing that the post-filtering if 3ivx actually shows divx and xvid videos better than their own native codecs. YMMV.

(Note: Please don't quote the doom9.org comparison that said 3ivx encoding was terrible. This is only because the tester used terrible settings for the encoder since the 3ivx team did not respond to their request for good settings.)

The music for the film is recorded in a completely different set of recording sessions than the music for the soundtrack album. The acoustics of the studio are different, and the placement of microphones is changed to record for a two-channel mix versus a six-channel mix.

The fact that it doesn't increase anymore after a certain size, may also be similar to the way 3ivx works (see the comment by Stux in that thread)

The fact that it doesn't increase anymore after a certain size, may also be similar to the way 3ivx works (see the comment by Stux in that thread)

Oh yeah, and for everybody who's been bitching about what Apple introduced today, you're insane. I've spent the last few hours trying out the service and it rocks! I don't think 99 cents is too expensive when I can assemble the equivalent of a CD single for less than the price of buying one or when the full album price is less than or equal to what I'd pay for the physical copy. Add to that tracks that you CAN'T get on CD from bands like U2 and other popular acts and I'd say you have a winner. The service is easy to use and provides a good balance between fair use and content owner concerns. My guess is that Apple has a big hit on their hands. Just wait for Steve to announce the first week, month or whatever numbers.

Finally, everyone knows AAC is lossy, but if you can't hear what's lost (like with those --r3mix LAME MP3's) who cares? If you can't distinguish it from a CD in a double blind test then it's as good as the CD. So, like I asked in the beginning, any info on this? Here's some intelligent discussion on the topic, but no answers.

For the unenlightened, click here to find out about r3mix.

Thanks!

Actually, although version 4 and higher of DivX are not rips, they are not actually compliant MPEG-4 implementations either. If you want the benefits of compliance like proper synch, responsive seeks and all that, then check out 3ivx or XviD. The latter is open source and fragmented and thus there are often compatibility problems, while the former is very unified but not open source.

you need the 3ivx codec

The simple way: download VLC for Mac OS X. It's small, it's fast and hassle free.

If you want to use QuickTime you have two options. You could download the codec from DivX, which I do not recommend, or you could download 3ivx, a nicer codec which does a very good job at playing divx encoded files. Be warned, depending on the way audio is encoded in the video file you may have to use other tools to have a proper playback

I use OS X and don't have much of a problem with DivX;). You need to get yourself a copy of DivX Doctor II to convert from DivX .avi videos to 3ivx QuickTime (.mov) videos.

Or, if you prefer such things, one could go with 3ivx. Think DivX in a Quicktime container, but better.

Contrary to popular perception, the primary problem with DivX support on macs is not lack of the proper codecs. There are actually three different DivX codecs for mac (the 3ivx, DivX, and ffmpeg projects - however windows media audio, which some files use, is only indirectly supported via DivX doctor). The real problem is quicktime's inability to read AVI files with variable bitrate audio encoded into them (vbr support was not part of the original official spec, and microsoft has since declared the format "obsolete" in favor of windows media). This has been a problem with quicktime for years, and they STILL haven't fixed it in QT6 preview, despite rumors to the contrary. The only solution is to extract the audio and video tracks and stick them together in quicktime format, using one of a variety of tools (see the sites above). DivX.com claims to have come up with an elegant hack around the issue, but they have yet to release it. Video LAN client claims to be able to play back DivX avis without doctoring, but doesn't work well at all yet.

The good news is you can play back just about any DivX file out there. The bad news is you're going to have to do a little more work than just downloading Quicktime and expecting it to play - You have to go get and install the DivX codecs yourself, and turn all your DivX AVIs into MOVs with the proper tools. I can only assume the Quicktime crew could have fixed this vbr AVI problem if they wanted to a long time ago, and possibly did - but for undisclosed reasons, they choose not to or aren't allowed to release or work on it.

Contrary to popular perception, the primary problem with DivX support on macs is not lack of the proper codecs. There are actually three different DivX codecs for mac (the 3ivx, DivX, and ffmpeg projects - however windows media audio, which some files use, is only indirectly supported via DivX doctor). The real problem is quicktime's inability to read AVI files with variable bitrate audio encoded into them (vbr support was not part of the original official spec, and microsoft has since declared the format "obsolete" in favor of windows media). This has been a problem with quicktime for years, and they STILL haven't fixed it in QT6 preview, despite rumors to the contrary. The only solution is to extract the audio and video tracks and stick them together in quicktime format, using one of a variety of tools (see the sites above). DivX.com claims to have come up with an elegant hack around the issue, but they have yet to release it. Video LAN client claims to be able to play back DivX avis without doctoring, but doesn't work well at all yet.

The good news is you can play back just about any DivX file out there. The bad news is you're going to have to do a little more work than just downloading Quicktime and expecting it to play - You have to go get and install the DivX codecs yourself, and turn all your DivX AVIs into MOVs with the proper tools. I can only assume the Quicktime crew could have fixed this vbr AVI problem if they wanted to a long time ago, and possibly did - but for undisclosed reasons, they choose not to or aren't allowed to release or work on it.

I'm trying to find ways to stream video, without relying on the wine library. I am looking for video players that run on linux, ideally embedded linux with framebuffer (without XFree86).

XINE: I saw that Xine should do that, but when I run it, the open menu cannot open anything besides local files. here is the link for Xine's MMS plugin: MajorMMS

OGG TARKIN is not even started yet.
3iVX: anyone using their protocol/codec?
AVIFILE and MPLAYER - do you know if they can play back video streams aside from crazy ideas such as this asfrecorder-mplayer hack?
And any users of linux4TV codecs?
Thanks for any help - gigi

Well, despite the fact that the article was a flaming pile of twice-digested horse feces...

An Amiga (of 'classic' vintage) can play 3ivx files. I seem to recall a 68060 was reccommended (only available on accellerator cards), but I have a feeling playback could be tolerable (&GT 1FPS) on an '040, and it just might survive enough to show a Realplayer-on-a-Pentium-75-esque rendition on an '020, for severely small framesizes... We're talking MPEG-4, here, too.

So yes, it's indeed feasible, although perhaps not altogether practical.

You're welcome to have a look at Amiga.org or ANN to see some of the latest developments in the Amiga scene- ANN may be worse than JonKatz's postings, but the ATX PPC board is for real, and the lesser-specced, Amiga Inc.-sponsored board just might appear by next July..

one reason really... bitrate

DV is about 22mbps or so

using an MPEG4 based video compression you can get about 220kbps for stationary footage...

which is 100x compression over DV, which is already a good bit over uncompressed...

you could use 3ivx
;)

Ummmm,

3ivx MPEG4 has a two frame latency... that oughta be good enough.

http://www.3ivx.com

Its actually fairly easy to decode MPEG4... well... relative to encoding it in realtime in the field :)

http://www.3ivx.com (the mpeg4 video codec that I wrote ;) )

No, the MPEG4 encoder would be implemented as a custom ASIC (chip) and would more or less have the same power requirements as the H263 encoder.

"http://www.3ivx.com" (the mpeg4 video codec that I wrote ;) )

Ahem,

I design and write an MPEG4 video codec... its called 3ivx... you *might* have heard of it :)

Anywho,

We can realtime encode CIF type video on a PBG4 (Titanium)

With a 1 frame latency.

:)

MPEG4 is based on H263... so its perfect for this type of application.

http://www.3ivx.com

We're currently working on a next generation "VideoPhone" system using our 3ivx video compression :)

Essentially you get more video in the same bitrate ;)

Its pretty cool...

http://www.3ivx.com

I've been following 3ivX, which its creators say is more compact, stable, multiplatform and legal (created from scratch, compared to DivX which was ripped off from Microsoft) than DivX;). But it's less popular. How come? If 3ivX is so much better, people should use it the most. I've heard that it will become a standard part of Quicktime soon.

But as for the technical side, how does it actually compare? I haven't done tests.

The point about sorenson video not being licensed is tragic, but in case you didn't know, Sorenson doesn't even measure up to DivX. Despite its popularity, DivX is not a very good codec, playing it on macs is barely possible due to microsoft crippling, and there is no encoding option.

Fortunately, besides the new Sorenson 3 codec which should be improved, and an MPEG4 codec which should become available sometime soon for QT5, there are also several 3rd party codecs coming out which have much better performance. On2's VP3 codec is already available for multiple platforms, and there VP4 codec is due soon. VP3 is an excellent codec. Better yet, the folks who made the mac DivX player are now working on their own codec called 3ivx, which so far is already more advanced than many commercial codecs. They even are working on the OpenQuicktime project, which is meant for all *nix environments, and are developing the codec for as many platforms as they can, even the PS2! Beyond that there is also Project Mayo's open source OpenDivX, FastVDO's Allstream technology, and probably dozens of others.

Quicktime is the best multimedia file architecture which unfortunately has been hampered by slow codecs and a late start to streaming media. But don't assume sorenson is the only codec out there.

cryptochrome

There is an effort to make Mpeg4 for compact and streamable. Go take a look at 3ivx. I am keeping a close eye on this development group. :o)

I managed to get all of the project Mayo files last night and test it on a flick. I tried it on a misc DVD I had lying around... All I have to say is WOW!

The new DivX is awesome! What's amazing about it is that it has support for automatic insertion of I-frames! To do a quality rip with old codec, you'd have to cut your media into low and fast changing scenes and recombine them at the end. Now, that's automatic. VKI is something that was missing before and we got numerous promises that it's gonna be in there and now it's finally reality.

The second thing that's amazing is better overall image quality without post-processing! That's right, no post-processing. This was one of the bottlenecks in the old design and now it's gone!

Specks say that new decoder decodes around 80fps on a PIII 700. Well, I have an Athlon 800 and I'm seeing frames whiz by me so fast that I actually believe them.

After a big flop of 3ivX, I can say that these guys have delivered... and delivered big.

As a side note, M$ released their WM8 Encoder Beta 2. Check it here.

Let the battle begin!

3. Of all the groups working on a nice MPEG-4 codec, we have seen many die, fizzle, or simply lie. OpenCodex.com is pretty much off the face of the planet and now their website is just some virtual hosting site. 3ivx has said they have a supperior product, and that it will be open source, so far both have been false. That leaves it to ProjectMayo -- the group started by the creator of DivX. They haven't released anything yet but they sure seem to be the most professional. Perhaps we can appeal to them to become open source.

You seem to have missed Heroine Virtual as an opensource alternative. They are the programmers behind XMovie, Broadcast 2000, and a new MPEG library that rivals MPEG-4 in it's bitrates and quality. Currently they are only supporting *nix OSes, but the program and lib sources are there if anyone wants to port them to other desktop dominant systems.

Ok, lets see here

1. What we want is a REAL open source codec. We don't want an open source player, API, or "framework" -- we want a true MPEG-4 open source codec.

2. The 3ivx website has released a closed source codec that integrates into quicktime but from what they have released so far, it doesn't compete with Windows Media Format or Sorenson AT ALL. I sure hope that they will release something of decent quality soon.

3. Of all the groups working on a nice MPEG-4 codec, we have seen many die, fizzle, or simply lie. OpenCodex.com is pretty much off the face of the planet and now their website is just some virtual hosting site. 3ivx has said they have a supperior product, and that it will be open source, so far both have been false. That leaves it to ProjectMayo -- the group started by the creator of DivX. They haven't released anything yet but they sure seem to be the most professional. Perhaps we can appeal to them to become open source.

No matter what happens, the community is ready for a REAL MPEG-4 codec that does not just have some open player, it needs to be fully open so that it can be ported to all OS's, optimized, and hacked to be even better than a small group of developers could imagine.

just my $.02,

-Davidu

From their website:
http://lambda.3ivx.com/stuff/3ivx.mov

3ivX claims that they will release a beta of their MPEG-4 codec for QuickTime on the 15th; that might give them a good shot at winning the contest. That is, if the contest was still open.

Did OpenCodex split as soon as it looked like someone might win the contest?