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XVID 1.0 Released
Freedom66 writes "The 1.0 version of XVID codec is available. XviD is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec like DIVX codec. It's an open source project which is developed and maintained by lots of people from all over the world. On the 31st December, Doom9 has made a codec comparison and XVID was at this time, one of the best codecs."
if you just want to download a codec so you can play movies (eg, with wmp) , go here.
(i use mplayer for win32 now, so i don't use this anymore)
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
For Windows users, grab a compiled binary of XviD 1.0 Final with a nice installer at Koepi's Media Development Homepage. A lot easier than going through xvid.org as due to copyright issues they only host the xvid source, which must be compiled manually.
DRM is normally done at the packet level, not the codec level. One could easily apply, say, Windows Media or Intertrust DRM with a file encoded with XVID. XVID doesn't have any meaningful effect on DRM pro or con.
Since XVID is a MPEG-4 Part 2 codec, any DRM system that can encrypt MPEG-4 can do XVID-encode files.
My video compression blog
DivX 5 was once Open DivX 4, but then they desided to go closed source again, and a fork of Open Divx 4 was made, which is what we now know as Xvid.
You briefly metioned OGG in the above and OGG itself isn't a codec, its a wrapper. OGG Vorbis is an audio codec that is quite good but a totally free video codec is still only in early development. That being said the OGG or OGM has some great features. A very interesting one is the ability to encode the differences in audio streams and therefore save sometimes considerable space. It is currently used most ofter with XVID but can be used with pretty much any video (or even audio) codec. http://www.doom9.org might be able to help you for with some of this stuff. As far as the What would i do with a clean slate, i would probably use OGG with vorbis as the audio and xvid as the video... there may actually be problems with xvid and the law but i don't really know about that. Good luck.
Burn Bright or Fade Away
I now see that we desperately need meta-moderation.
Divx and Xvid are two different implementations of the same standard. They are cross-compatibile.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
DiVX ;-) was first "project mayo" (codename) - mayo because its difficult to make, and pretty much hit or miss - divx was first a hacked mpeg-4 codec (m$ .asp actually - really ment for streaming high quality video over broadband, hacked to work offline and "standalone"), and contained "hot" code. so divx 3.11, the version that really first took off, was illegal. the codec really exploded with the file sharing boom namely morpheus and kazaa. next release , they got rid of the stolen code, and all was good, the codec had even better quality and many of the audio syncing problems had been taken care of. by this point i had ~150 gb of video at ~300 hrs.
then, with the next release (5.x), and even more popularity, divx went commercial, and at first, i was upset, but they were pretty good about it, they had 3 versions, the one with no ads, but "play only", one with adware + encoding, and then the full $30USD one that let you do everything without ads. i thought, well these guys deserve some money for all the work that went into this great codec.
with version 5, divx and project mayo split (actually it was somewhere inbetween 4.x-5.x) and divx.com was born to handle distribution and all that other good commercail stuff, projectmayo.com went opensource, and became the sandbox for many projects based on divx (3vix, opendivx, etc) also, the Playa, the favored player of the project and built by the team continued to be developed here. .xvid was one of the spinoffs from projectmayo, and has become my favorite codec since i started using it. it seems to have the best "feel" to it, and is really really really good for animated films (to be fair, divx and the rest are really really good at animated films too, most codecs do, easy lines for the encoder to pick up and even out between frames). there are two main developers for xvid (its open so there are different builds) kopei, and nic. they both have their pros and cons, but you would be hard pressed to find them "in real life."
most of this info can be gathered from the mentioned sites, with a little digging. if im wrong about any of this, meh. its pretty right on, though. some great resources for these codecs are the forementioned www.doom9.org is really one of the best collections of encoding how-tos and other doodads. should be required reading for any video DIY noobs. another great resource is www.divx-digest.com you can get all kinds of codecs and players there, try em all, its the best way to learn (divx-digest is a sister site to www.digital-digest.com) like i said, i really dig xvid, and divx's commercial ventures are really starting to pan out (featured in a couple of computer games/video games (lord of the rings pc maybe?), hopefully soon will be built in to dvd players- think 2+ movies in hi-res on one dvd!). please please please dont use wmv. i cant play wmv, as many non M$ people cant, and they take more cpu to decode (looks pretty and is easy though).
before divx was known as divx, there was another company that released a project by the same name, where you would rent this cd/dvd disc thing and buy it to unlock it and watch it whenever you wanted, neat idea, poor execution, i only knew one persone that used it. they came in these little cardboard jewel cases. (before dvd players were all over, you had to get one that could play this divx )
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