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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."

21 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Yea but.... by Pharmboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    does it matter if the codec isn't used commercially? Odds are that commercial publishers are not going to want any new format that doesn't have some kind of DRM, like it or not.

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    1. Re:Yea but.... by agent+oranje · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Though modded as flamebait, I'd say this is pretty insightful.

      XViD doesn't exist to make money... it doesn't exist for companies to sell their digital media to us... it exists as a good, open format which developers on any platform can play with, and any platform can play XViD movies without having to deal with royalty fees, DRM, and the likes.

      Believe it or not, there are uses for mp3s other than stealing music, and there are uses for XViD other than stealing movies. I don't want the content _I_ produce to be bogged down with DRM crap, and I don't want to be locked into an officially-licensed player five years down the line that only exists on a platform I don't even want to use. So what if commercial publishers don't want to use XViD because it doesn't have DRM - not everything on the internet was put there by commercial publishers. XViD is for people, not companies.

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  2. The price of Bugatti's by Space_Soldier · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I believe that there was an article a few weeks ago on Slashdot where DIVX was on top. Great effort dudes! Congrats on reaching 1.0. The truth is that I downlad more XVID than DIVX files, but I use the DIVX codec to view them on the PC, since it supports both. On the XBOX, I use XBMC, which uses the XVID codec to play XVID files. I still do not understand why there is so much difference between all this MPEG4 codecs. MPEG4 should be MPEG4, just like pure water is pure water.

  3. whats keeping xvid from doing mainstream... by Squeezer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    no freaking win32 release on their webpage. you have to have a win32 compiler to compile and use it, or do like in the first comment and use that link, or get kazaalite codec pack or one of the many other codec packs that include xvid. if xvid wants to compete with divx, they will need to offer a win32 binary download.

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    1. Re:whats keeping xvid from doing mainstream... by cubic6 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's illegal to distribute binaries of an MPEG4 encoder without paying fees to the MPEG Licensing Authority. Distributing source is ok, though. Unless you can talk MPEG into granting some kind of exception for Xvid, you're not likely to get any kind of binaries soon.

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  4. Re:Just like DivX, except.... by Phosphor3k · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You do realize that you can get just the DivX codec, without any of the assocoated crappy spyware and media player, right?

    Click here and there is a link that says Standard DivX Codec(FREE). Nice, huh?

  5. Mod parent up by caitsith01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This codec is much better than the xvid.org one. I experienced constant crashing with the 'official' codec whenever I opened an xvid-encoded file or even browsed a folder containing said file in File Explorer; however, with the koepi codec it has been plain sailing all the way, and great image quality to boot. Should a video codec have the ability to crash whatever program is using it?

    Am I the only one who finds the lack of reliable and up-to-date codec info on the net very frustrating? It's always easy to find dozens of people with the same problem as you, virtually impossible to find anyone with an accurate answer.

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  6. Re:codec by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why use the unfinished mplayer port when you can use Videolan Client? ;)

    http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

  7. XVID.ORG ownz0red or ...? by Stavr0 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The site admin is trying to fight the slashdot effect by being funny...

    Guess we'll find out soon enough.

  8. Re:Macs by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not 'need' perhaps, but I think it's still somewhat common courtousy to not use QuickTime. Just for the fact that the majority are windows users, and only a small fraction of those are going to be using anything other than the terrible official player. It's the same reason I still release video encodes as avi, even though I both prefer mkv with libavcodec/vorbis and know that everyone else on linux can easily play it. Like quicktime, it'd be playable on windows, but a big pain for the majority of them.

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  9. Re:OK, how do I use this with Adobe Premiere? by Lord+Ender · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your use of the word 'stealing' shows that you don't understand copyright laws and fair use. You help perpetuate the corruption of IP law in America. Please educate yourself.

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  10. Re:ffmpeg is better... by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm astonished at all the Xvid fanboyism around here. Sure it produces better quality than Divx, but at the same time, it's damn slow.

    Why would you bother using an MPEG-4 codec if you don't care about quality?

    Yes, XviD encodes fairly slowly. But you only have to do it once, whereas you enjoy the better quality of the job every time you watch it. They call this "asymmetric" encoding for a reason. Encode takes forever, decode doesn't.

    If you only care about an encoding taking as little time as possible, hey, cool, not a problem. But if you care about quality results - Let it run overnight, and it makes little difference if it takes a half-hour or six hours.


    I've done side-by-side comparisons with Xvid and Lavc using mplayer, quite recently. The two are very close, but I found Lavc was just a bit better.

    I find that hard to believe. Without repeating your results, I have to suspect you've fallen for a "trick" Lavc uses, such as slightly boosting the gamma, or adding a blur-then-sharpen filter to give the illusion of clarity while actually removing quite a lot of detail.

    Basically, with modern PC hardware and MPEG-4 codecs, "you get what you wait for". More CPU time, with some tolerance for various optimizations, generally means better quality.


    Personally, I care only about the quality of the end product. I look forward to a functioning H.264 implementation, even if it means encoding 90 minutes of source material takes two full days.

  11. Re:DRM doesn't happen at the codec level by Dwonis · · Score: 2, Insightful
    So I still wonder how accepted an open sourced codec will be in the short run, since 95% of desktop users run Windows, without requiring someone to manually install a codec.

    It'll be the same as it always has been: WinZip, ICQ, WinAmp, and DivX ;-) never came pre-installed on people's computers; it was the early-adopters (computer geeks who aren't programmers) that adopted them.

    We needn't worry about 95% of desktop user, since they tend to follow whatever the friendly neighbourgood computer whiz shows them how to do.

  12. Re:ffmpeg is better... by evilviper · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Yeah I'm surprised it took so long to mention lavc.

    So am I. I'm even more surprised that baseless anti-lavc sentiment gets modded up.

    Have all the real-deals left /.?

    You're probably correct, sadly. All the devs I happen to know have left /., some even announcing that they can't stand it here anymore.

    I also happen to think it's too much of a forum where the blind moderate the blind. Too much bad info gets moderated up, just because it echos a popular sentiment, or tries to sound 'official', and mods fall for it.

    More and more lately, I've been considering leaving. It's getting too difficult to try and argue against people with the IQs of brick walls. It seems to be fewer and further between that I come across anybody that is intelligent and/or knowledgable.
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  13. Re:ffmpeg is better... by bogie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "I'm astonished at all the Xvid fanboyism around here. Sure it produces better quality than Divx, but at the same time, it's damn slow."

    Why are you astonished? Its a really nice video codec that's open source and happens to perform very well compared to the competition. How is acknowledging this "fanboyism"? Its certainly not "damn slow", especially compared to the dog that is divx. Its also been tested and found to perform well both speed-wise and quality-wise by some of the most knowledgable people around.

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  14. Re:DRM doesn't happen at the codec level by The+Evil+Couch · · Score: 3, Insightful
    amazingly enough, XVID's popularity is pretty high up there. anyone doing high-quality video with the intention of releasing it online is virtually guaranteed to do it in either XVID or DIVX. with the miserable DIVX 5 release, I've become an XVID convert.

    I do music videos and various odd things and I have a good number of friends that also work with video on a frequent basis, with varying levels of seriousness; from a recreational video maker to a professional lighting tech. there's not a single one that doesn't use DIVX, XVID or WMV9, and those that use WMV9 and DIVX are rapidly dropping off in favor of XVID.

    In my personal expierience, it encodes a little faster than DIVX and significantly faster than WMV9, as well as providing better quality (less blockiness than either) when set side-by-side.

    There are only a few good mpeg4 codecs out there and DIVX and XVID are at the top. factor in that the DIVX site is misleading and seemingly does not give the option to install without spyware, many people are turning to XVID. that it's open-source is a plus for me, but the big reason I use it is because it's simply the best out there for my needs. and judging from the amount of times I see XVID in video release groups online, other people think so, too.

  15. Problem: by Phil+John · · Score: 2, Insightful

    IIRC the reason they do not offer binaries is for legal/IP reasons. There are so many patents covering every part of MPEG 4, by sticking to source code only they seem to have stayed "under the radar" so to speak.

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  16. Re:ffmpeg is better... by ymgve · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Xvid needs to be able to produce streams that a p133 can decode using only >50% system resources.

    Why should Xvid need to do this when no other MPEG4 codecs are able to do it? MPEG4 is CPU-intensive. It will aiways be.

  17. update 17/05/04 14:00 GMT by real_smiff · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Currently the site carries this message:
    2004/05/17 -- XVID site cracked. Unfortunately, right after we released the long-awaited XviD 1.0 final, the XviD web server got cracked and many files were deleted. Whoever did this, we actually don't find this funny at all. We're currently working hard to recover from this attack. However it will take us (at least) a couple of days to be back. Meanwhile, we've mirrored the 1.0 final announcement below and you can still download all the XviD 1.0 final source code packages from the files section at the bottom of this page. We're very sorry for this inconvenience! The XVID team

    I find this very sad and pointless. (I hope it doesn't do the Xvid credibility any harm). What a shame after all that work they've put in to get to v1.0, to have someone **** all over them like that. Not only did they replace the front page, they messed about in there, making it hard to get it back online. Thumbs down to the cracker, shame on you. Pick on some org that's not using its own free time to run a project for everyone else's benefit.

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  18. I'm still at a loss... by Valkyre · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is anyone bothering to work on a LOSSLESS compression codec? I can't describe how much I hate watching some of these movies, even in High-Bandwidth MPEG-2, and watching walls move at 1fps because they're not changing much, or the lack of detail whenever sand blows into the air. Come on, I've got 3ghz that I don't use 1/3rd of to play video and a graphics card that sucks more power than my desk lamp, I'd like to see them used and get some REAL quality improvement.

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  19. stop making more codecs! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    just make one for all and keep using it, I dont see much improvement over so many ****ing versions.