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HandBrake Abandons DivX As an Output Format

Posted by timothy on from the so-2003 dept.

An anonymous reader writes "DivX was the first digital video format to really win mainstream acceptance, doing for movies what MP3 did for music (both good and bad). Eventually even Sony, the king of proprietary formats, caved into pressure and added DivX support to its DVD players and the PlayStation 3. Now HandBrake's developers have made an interesting choice for version 0.9.4 — they ditched support for AVI files using DivX and XviD. Your only option now is to convert DVDs and other media to MKV or MP4 files, with the option to save as Apple-friendly M4V files. So why is HandBrake ditching AVI and XviD support when it's a format that's won such widespread acceptance? In the words of the developers, 'AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete.'"

4 of 619 comments (clear)

  1. foot.shoot(); by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dropping all formats that Windows play by default is IMO a bad decision. It may make the CCCP Project more popular and spur more people to install Quicktime (yuck), but it'll also drive away lots of inexperienced users.

  2. Um. by headkase · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Streaming to my legacy device which cannot be easily reprogrammed such as my Xbox 360 really relies on XVid. So, for now, I guess Handbrake is the rough beast. Oh well, I use dvd::rip anyway and avidemux when I need to do some transcoding. Computers can be easily upgraded, devices not so much: that is something to keep in mind too.

    --
    Shh.
  3. Re:I haven't used DIVX in years by jo42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All we need now is for .flv to dry up and blow away...

  4. Re:HandBrake? by nxtw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is not informative.

    Except Xvid has always been open

    XviD is an MPEG-4 Part 2 implementation; it is one of many.

    X264 is a terrible standard

    x264 is not a standard at all; it is an encoder for the H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 standard, which is just as open as MPEG-4 Part 2.

    with various files and options breaking support on some devices and programs

    This is a necessity; H.264 is suitable for encoding low-bitrate, low-resolution video or high-bitrate, high-resolution video. It is useful for 20 mbit/sec high definition streams, or 256 kbit/sec videoconferencing.
    The standard defines various levels that various hardware decoders implement.

    Other files just won't play at all.

    Possibly because they were out-of-spec, or not in a container the player supports. x264 isn't responsible for the user's ignorance.