HandBrake Abandons DivX As an Output Format

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 It is obsolete.'"

Comments

I haven't used DIVX in years

[GilliamOS]

I stopped downloading it on the torrent sites because I never found a quality encode job that was worth the bandwidth. Meh, formats come and go in favor of better more modern solutions. I think the bigger note here is that HandBrake now supports 64-bit processor encoding.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[defireman]

There was a time when intel indeo and codecs like that were so widely used. I've come across them again recently and could only remark how obsolete they've become.

The future seems to be H264/AAC.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[jo42]

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

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[lambent]

for now. all of my encodes of late have been h264/aac. i'm really gonna be pissed when the next format bump comes along, tho; OCD is a bitch.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[ZackSchil]

I don't mind the actual .flv format as much as watching the videos with the crashy, memory-hungry CPU hog that is Flash. Playing back flv containers in VLC is perfectly fine. The video is mostly H.264 anyway.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Goldberg's Pants]

It's depressing to see x264 become so ubiquitous as it seems very fractured. I have devices that will play some videos, but not all.

Bitch all you want about Divx, but if I want something that will stream to my Xbox without fail, play on my DVD player... Divx/Xvid is the only option.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Oh god, I've downloaded shows without checking the filetype and have been nailed by shit encoded in REAL. Seriously, it's 2010, who's still encoding for realplayer?

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[DirePickle]

This is something I honestly don't understand: If VLC can play flv with 1% CPU usage, why can't we have a VLC plugin for a browser that'll do that on Youtube?

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[s0litaire]

You could just use "greasemonky" plugin in Firefox and install the "YouTube Without Flash" script and videos will play using your default media player...

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[nine-times]

When you visit Youtube, I believe that it tells the browser to load an .swf file, which is a Flash file and not a video file. This swf file is actually a video player (including the controls and everything) which has been written in Flash, and that player plays whatever video file it has been instructed to play.

Even if VLC could load that swf file correctly, it would then be running the YouTube Flash application which would in turn play the movie, and that's not what you want. You want direct access to the FLV file.

FLV itself isn't a terrible format, though. I think it's basically just h263, which... yeah, just like you'd think, was a precursor to h264. Youtube is encoding everything in h264 these days anyway, and Flash plays h264 files. In all cases, the problem isn't the video file encoding, but the Flash player that's used to play it.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Stormwatch]

That's as bad as the time when I downloaded an album in wma...

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[davester666]

I would say the primary reason is that the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) well, totally blows, particularly for video playback.

From when I looked at it (which was a couple of years ago), it appears that if a plugin wants to play a video, it basically has to ask the browser to execute a browser callback periodically for it to draw. It then is at the mercy of the browser to call back at a semi-regular rate (approximately whenever the browser feels like it) to draw another frame (which frame depends on how long it's been since it was last called). And other things on that page, like any executing JavaScript or other plugins, or animated jpgs (or things on other tabs) all can result in significant delays between callbacks to a plugin.

Now, you can get away from doing it this way, so the video is smoother, but then you wind up doing things behind the browsers back, and you start drawing over other parts of it's UI or after the page is closed or other crazy things.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[DigitAl56K]

The future seems to be H264/AAC.

DivX Plus is H.264/AAC/MKV. The DivX software bundles already include a free player and web player, and DivX Plus certified devices were announced at CES.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[DigitAl56K]

DivX Plus Web Player can play H.264/AAC/MKV (DivX Plus) or ASP/MP3/AVI (DivX) in your browser. We use Direct3D on Windows and OpenGL on Mac.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[iluvcapra]

If you're on a Mac, install ClickToFlash and on YouTube it'll give you the option of bypassing the Flash movie and playing the H.264 that Youtube serves up to their iPhone client, in a QuickTime viewer (which on Mac is a very good thing).

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[mister_playboy]

Lots of stuff from Japan, China, and Korea is still encoded in .rmvb for whatever reason.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[khellendros1984]

Based on the video id, the actual file location of the video itself can be found. My ipod will play the videos in its hardware decoder, since it doesn't have flash installed. It just connects directly to an mp4 video file. No reason that a browser script couldn't do the same thing.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[CAIMLAS]

Interesting. Does that work with stuff like Hulu as well? I barely visit youtube, but I tend to watch something on Hulu a couple times a week...

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[93 Escort Wagon]

Based on the video id, the actual file location of the video itself can be found. My ipod will play the videos in its hardware decoder, since it doesn't have flash installed. It just connects directly to an mp4 video file. No reason that a browser script couldn't do the same thing.

I believe the ClickToFlash plugin for Safari does exactly that (or, more exactly, provides a user-selectable option to do exactly that).

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Jesus_666]

That depends on how desperately you want to restart Firefox. Seeing that the script managed to crash mine (3.5.7 on Snow Leopard) twice within two minutes (introducing fun effects like "the video is overlaid every single tab" along the way), I'd recommend it only if you really want to see crash recovery in action.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Anonymous Coward]

There's another one called "YouTube Perfect" which provides similar functionality. Maybe you want to try that.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Briareos]

Last I checked the current Flash 10.1 beta plugin actually plays HD FLVs with minimal CPU usage thanks to using GPU acceleration for the video decoding...

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[imroy]

I have devices that will play some videos, but not all.

They're called profiles. You can't expect cheap, battery-powered devices to be able to decode High Profile content. It really gets the usable bitrate down, but boy does it use a lot of processing power to decode!

Oh, and to nitpick - x264 is VideoLAN's encoder. The codec is called MPEG-4 AVC in the MPEG world, and h.264 in the ITU world.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Goaway]

.flv is h.263 or VP6 only. For h.264, Flash uses .mp4 like everyone else.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[marcansoft]

There's no Flash 10.1 for 64-bit Linux. And the current 64-bit versions of 10.0 still suck in every possible way.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[nine-times]

Right, but such a browser script would need to be programmed on a site-by-site basis, and a lot of video sites go to some trouble to obscure the location of the video file or block access except through the flash player. Sites like Hulu basically use Flash as a form of DRM, so you couldn't simply make a plugin or browser script that would bypass Flash for all of these video sites.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[s0litaire]

Well I use Ubnuntu 9:10
Your milage may vary on other OS's with other media players

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[nine-times]

Unfortunately, that will probably only help you with Youtube. There isn't a universal way to bypass Flash for *all* video sites.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Jesus_666]

Nah. With a YouTube rehaul being around the corner I can deal with Flash for a little bit longer. Besides, I have an extension that lets me download the videos already so I can always just watch them with VLC.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[DJRumpy]

H.264 is simply newer, and supports a wider range of profiles and levels within those profiles, from iPods to far beyond 1080p (4096×2304 if I recall). DivX is also an old format. Your example is kind of like saying MP3 is awesome because your players all support it. It's supported because it's an old established standard.

Divx Profiles

H.264 Profiles

In time H.264 will have the same wide support, and moves like this bring that closer. It's a necessary step.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[zippthorne]

But can you explain what happens when you check "enable hardware acceleration" in the flash preferences?

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[jmello]

No hardware acceleration for OS X, either. And the beta plugin still sucks pretty hard.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Hes Nikke]

Based on the video id, the actual file location of the video itself can be found. My ipod will play the videos in its hardware decoder, since it doesn't have flash installed. It just connects directly to an mp4 video file. No reason that a browser script couldn't do the same thing.

I believe the ClickToFlash plugin for Safari does exactly that (or, more exactly, provides a user-selectable option to do exactly that).

but only on youtube, all other video sites still use flash and only flash for video playback...

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[welsh git]

I had this too. The only 'fix' I could find was to get it to launch mplayer in a seperate window rather than as a plugin

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[mariushm]

The decoding itself doesn't use much CPU,.

While VLC can upload each frame of the movie as a texture on the video card and then use the video card to resize the image and apply effects on it (like deinterlacing), in Flash this is not possible, because the Flash plugin has to keep be able to apply vector art, text, images, subtitles over the video frames, round corners, transparency on the video and so on and so forth... it has to be able to treat each video frame as a layer in a stack of layers on the screen, just in case user programs something needing those extra layers. So basically Flash isn't just video playback.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[mariushm]

The exact path to the video can be determined from the video ID.

HD and HQ versions are MP4 files with h264 (MPEG4-AVC) as video codec, AAC or MP3 as audio codec. Regular video versions are FLV files with VP6 as video codec and MP3 as audio codec. VP6 I believe is kept for some platforms that don't have hardware decoding for h264 (so decoding is too hard for those).

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[welsh git]

echo "noembed" >> ~/.mplayer/mplayerplug-in.conf

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[welsh git]

That doesn't matter - mplayer and just about everything else can play .flv

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Hes Nikke]

That doesn't matter - mplayer and just about everything else can play .flv

how do you get mplayer to run in safari instead of flash?

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[welsh git]

Well, the message you were replying to said:

"Based on the video id, the actual file location of the video itself can be found."

implying playing the video directly, or downloading it first, either of which
mplayer can do with mp4's or with flash files.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[0100010001010011]

*Windows Only.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Selivanow]

Because RAR is a better format. Seriously.
It has:
Better compression
Ability to lock archive from changes (Solid Archive)
Ability to add a recovery record. You can reliably repair damaged archives w/ ZERO data loss.
and the list goes on.

Why would anyone still use ZIP?

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[godefroi]

The point of "solid archive" isn't to "lock" it from "changes". It treats all the files as one big long file, and that's where most of the "better compression" comes from. You build a bigger dictionary and compress one big file instead of lots of little ones. 7zip uses this strategy as well.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[Selivanow]

You are correct, the "locking" of the archive is just a side effect :)

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

I love how people make 100 .rars for a 700 meg dvd torrent.

Re:I haven't used DIVX in years

[welsh git]

oops, I mean:

echo "noembed=1" >> ~/.mplayer/mplayerplug-in.conf

HandBrake?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another software I never heard of shoots itself in the foot for no reason whatsoever.
I guess I'll stick with DVDx and mencoder.

Re:HandBrake?

[nxtw]

HandBrake is the de-facto standard for creating h.264 files on Mac, Linux and Windows systems. You should get to know it; you won't miss that crappy, proprietary DivX.

It's hardly a de-facto standard; it's just another utility using ffmpeg and x264.

Re:HandBrake?

[unhooked]

No, handbrake is a front end for the de-facto standard for creating multimedia files... get to know them and you won't care which flavor of the month format is being used. Personally I stopped using handbrake years ago because the developers always seem to be dropping X for some lame reason.

Re:HandBrake?

[nxtw]

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.

Re:HandBrake?

[maestro371]

True enough. I've never tried using x264 and ffmpeg by themselves. HB makes using a bunch of different programs to accomplish a single task pretty easy.

Re:HandBrake?

[bemymonkey]

That doesn't change the fact that a device with divx support will play nearly every divx/xvid file, and h264/x264 players are SOL with the majority of the encodes I've seen so far. Many only work properly on a computer, and not on mobile devices or dedicated gear (even though changing two encoding options while leaving the bitrate/filesize the same makes the file play...).

If it weren't for the fact that Android doesn't seem to have implemented a divx/xvid codec at all, I'd probably still be using it (and be watching my TV rips without needing to transcode first).

Re:HandBrake?

[obarthelemy]

I smell a Linux guy :-p

More seriously, computers are used by everyone these days. This means they should be usable by anyone. That includes video files. So yes, .x264 is guilty: of not working reliably for ignorant users.

Hasn't Apple's success taught us anything ?

Re:HandBrake?

[nxtw]

I am definitely not a Linux guy. I primary use OS X and also Windows. I only use Linux (and only RHEL and derivatives) on servers.

Apple products make use of H.264 extensively, and they manage to have avoided issues by specifying the supported video types in the documentation and providing content specifically labelled as compatible with certain devices.

x264 is not a tool that ignorant users can use directly: it is a library or command line encoder.

In any case, one cannot expect out-of-spec video to play on a hardware decoder. DVD players can't decode high definition ATSC-specification video, for example.

Re:HandBrake?

[beelsebob]

Except Xvid has always been open and works just fine across multiple devices.
You mean Xvid is an open implementation of the proprietry MPEG 4 layer 2 closed standard.
You mean just like x264 is an open implementation of the proprietry MPEG 4 layer 10 closed standard?

X264 is a terrible standard, with various files and options breaking support on some devices and programs. Other files just won't play at all. It just creates tedious compatibility issues.
x264 is an open implementation of h264, which is exactly as well specified as MPEG 4 layer 2.

Of note, one of the major benefits of Handbrake is it has presets – one of them is called "universal", videos produced with it will play almost anywhere.

Also of note, MPEG 4 layer 2 had exactly the same problems with portability to devices, that is, devices can chose to implement only the low-power parts of the standard, or to put bandwidth or resolution limitaitons on what they can play. This hasn't changed with layer 10.

Re:HandBrake?

[duguk]

Try using WinFF - it's a very simple frontend to FFMpeg for Windows/Linux.

Useful to those that know FFMpeg but can't be arsed to remember the syntax, or just like to have lots of presets. Link: http://winff.org/html_new/

Re:HandBrake?

[SeaFox]

ROFL.

Maybe the de-facto standard on OSX, but this is the first time I even heard there is a Windows version of Handbrake. People are using ffmpeg and other programs that use the X264 library. Yeah, Handbrake is one of those programs that uses it, but Handbrake is not the front end folks are using on Windows.

Re:HandBrake?

[Stavr0]

Handbrake is not the front end folks are using on Windows.

Say what? When I got the iPod Touch, my MacHead friends recommended it to convert video to a format suitable for playback on iPods. I've been recommending this to anyone with a video-capable iPod.

It's got all the presets built-in for all types of iPods, so it's a 1-click no-brainer converter, and it does a good job too. Much easier than to learn some FFMPEG or Gordian Knot hairy alphabet soup.

Handbrake is not^H^H^H the front end iPod owning folks are using on Windows. FTFY.

Re:HandBrake?

[Fahrvergnuugen]

Video decoding is done with a dedicated chip built into the handset. Those chips are built to the different baseline profiles provided by the H.264 spec. At the moment, it's the only way to get acceptable playback and battery performance.

Re:HandBrake?

[bemymonkey]

Hmmm, that explains the halway decent performance... are you implying that these chips couldn't also be used for XviD/DivX?

Re:HandBrake?

[SeaFox]

Say what? When I got the iPod Touch, my MacHead friends recommended it to convert video to a format suitable for playback on iPods

Uh, yeah. Exactly. Your MacHead friends recommended it... because they're Mac people. They don't have the same choice the Windows users do. The vast majority h264 MKVs are being made for playback on computers, not iPods. If you want to know what the majority people use, talk to the DVD pirates on the torrents, talk to the anime fansubbers; they aint using Handbrake.

So the statement I was originally replying to "HandBrake is the de-facto standard for creating h.264 files on Mac, Linux and Windows systems" is false, because it's really not used that much on Windows. I question how much it's used on Linux as well.

Handbrake is not^H^H^H the front end iPod owning folks are using on Windows. FTFY.

What do you mean you "fixed" that for me? We're not talking about iPods, we're talking about the prevalence of a software program to convert DVDs to h264 encoded video files.

Do all Mac addicts nowadays change the topic of the discussion to suit their argument?

Re:HandBrake?

[DrXym]

HandBrake is the de-facto standard for creating h.264 files on Mac, Linux and Windows systems. You should get to know it; you won't miss that crappy, proprietary DivX.

More accurately, it's a popular front-end for converting DVD content to MPEG-4 ASP & MPEG-4 AVC output. If you have more general file creation needs, such as trying to convert which isn't on a DVD you probably wouldn't be using using it.

Re:HandBrake?

[Hal_Porter]

Spellink Nahtzee! Spellink Nahtzee! Spellink Nahtzee!

Re:HandBrake?

[Stavr0]

We're not talking about iPods, we're talking about the prevalence of a software program to convert DVDs to h264 encoded video files.

Really? Seems to me like Handbrake is very much tailored towards producing video files for Apple hardware.

I think the point is that there is NO defacto standard for ALL video production.

• DVD pirates will still use AVI/divx because they are targeting DIVX-capable applicances. Handbrake is not for them.
• Fansubbers prefer Matroshka for the ability to bundle several subtitle and audio streams in a single package. Handbrake is not for them.
• iPod owners need MP4/h.264 because it's what their iTunes supports by default. Handbrake is really good for that.

That's what's great about standards. So many of them to choose from. So, to come back to Maestro's original comment: HandBrake is the de-facto standard for creating h.264 files on Mac, Linux and Windows systems -- MOSTLY AGREE. You won't miss that crappy, proprietary DivX. -- DISAGREE; I would miss it. Most DVD players won't play MP4s, only AVI/DIVX/XVID

(I'm not a Mac addict, I can quit anytime I want.)

Re:HandBrake?

[maestro371]

From my perspective, I use it solely on Linux from the CLI. My main computer is a Mac, but I have more power in my Linux server (four cores, 8Gb RAM), I've used other programs, but none handle the task as simply as HandBrake. The developers can be a little snarky, but you take the good with the bad.

I do use it for Apple products (mainly Apple TV). But having used both DivX (in my pre-Mac days and for a bit into them) and h.264, I can't imagine switching back to DivX.

Re:HandBrake?

[maestro371]

Urk. I replied to the wrong comment - see my post to the grandparent.

Re:HandBrake?

[maestro371]

Maybe. It'll also convert from m2ts files (e.g., files remuxed from a Blu-Ray or HDDVD disk).

That's the extent of my knowledge as it's all I've seen it used for, but it could be more flexible than I realize.

Re:HandBrake?

[maestro371]

Despite the Troll rating on my above comment, I'm sticking by my statement. H.264 blows DivX away. I wasted too many years on DivX, XviD, etc. Once you move away from it (for encoding and playback) you absolutely will not miss it.

Heck, h.264 is what's used on many Blu-Ray disks (VC-1 on some).

Re:HandBrake?

[DrXym]

HD DVD uses evo format which is a different container format from m2ts. I think if you want to convert either HD DVD or Blu Ray content, you'd be better off using MeGUI since it has tools for extracting stream data and processing the content before output. MeGUI only works on Windows, but its virtually impossible to deal with HD content on other platforms anyway because of the crypto.

Re:HandBrake?

[maestro371]

eac3to breaks open the EVO and splits in to elementary streams. Tsremux allows you to recombine the streams into a m2ts file. Handbrake converts the intermediate m2ts to an h.264/ac3 file in an mp4 container.

Tsremux can also do some of this conversion without eac3to.

AnyDVD HD handles the HDDVD and Blu-Ray decryption.

Re:HandBrake?

[djrogers]

Actually, handbrake doesn't use ffmpeg...

Re:HandBrake?

[DrXym]

I realise all of that. MeGUI has a front end for most of those tools. The HD Streams extractor is sitting on top of eac3to for example.

Re:HandBrake?

[maestro371]

Some folks prefer to separate the tasks - rip on Windows, convert on Linux.

I haven't looked at megui in a while, but most windows apps I've seen integrate different utilities by passing command line parameters. As I understand it, HandBrake tries to avoid that by linking the libraries directly. As a result, the HB package comes with all of the necessary parts (for what it does) and compiles those dependent tools into the overall package.

Different strokes, I guess. My experience with other Windows utilities has always involved installing dubious codec packages and frontends that may or may not actually work with the versions of other tools that you have to install separately. I gave up on that nonsense a long time ago, though, so I suppose it could be better now.

Re:HandBrake?

[mattmatt]

Do all Mac addicts nowadays touch up little kiddies?

Fixed that for you. And no, of course we don't.

foot.shoot();

[TheSHAD0W]

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.

Re:foot.shoot();

[amiga3D]

How experienced do you need to be to use handbrake? For crying out loud, if you can't tie your shoes you don' t need to try and convert video files.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Unoti]

Windows users should install VLC. Windows users who can't be bothered to use anything other than Windows Media Player can suck it, seriously.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nine-times]

Windows doesn't play DivX or XviD files by default. To my knowledge, Handbrake never encoded files that Windows would play without installing an extra player or codec.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

Dropping all formats that Windows play by default is IMO a bad decision.

Only Windows 7 will decode XviD or H.264 without extra software. With AVI it would be possible to use this tool to create videos only Windows 7 could play without extra software. But AVI is an obsolete container (which is why Microsoft stopped using it).

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

Windows users should install VLC.

VLC is a poor choice. Media Player Classic Home Cinema supports Windows's DirectShow media playback system, and supports hardware accelerated decoding, hardware accelerated rendering, codecs other than those included with MPC-HC, etc.

Re:foot.shoot();

[HouseOfMisterE]

With the most recent MS-provided updates for Windows Media Player on Windows XP (and Windows 7), it does support playback of XviD and DivX without installing any third-party CODECS. This is a relatively new development.

Re:foot.shoot();

[je ne sais quoi]

In any case, handbrake started as an application for BeOS and didn't even have a windows gui until version 0.8.5. I was using it on macs way back in the day when 700 Mb was your practical limit because hard drive space was still more precious than blank CDs and writable DVDs were hugely expensive.

Why would they care about what windows does? It survived without windows before it was famous, it'll survive without divx -- h264 is so incredible you don't need divx anyway.

Re:foot.shoot();

[strstr]

Windows Media Player 12 (Win7) will play most MPEG4/AVC files, including XviD and DivX out of the box. I believe it's due out soon for previous versions of Windows.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

Good choice, but keep vlc around to play glitchy files that mpc wont play.

Hasn't happened to me; but I occasionally find myself using MPC-HC in VMware because I can't get VLC or any other Mac player to play a file.

Re:foot.shoot();

[VoltageX]

Windows 7 will play H.264 but does not natively recognise the Matroska container.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Mad Merlin]

Windows doesn't play anything by default. Who cares?

Re:foot.shoot();

[nine-times]

Windows 7 is supposed to also play h264 files out of the box. I assumed we were talking about previous versions of Windows.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nine-times]

If you want to talk about those updates, then you have to also acknowledge that h264 is supported out of the box, too:

A common annoyance with many media players, WMP included, is not having the right codec. WMP will try to detect which codecs are required and provide a location to download them, but this is hit-and-miss and less than convenient if all you want to do is play a video. In recognition of this, WMP12 includes support for H.264 video, AAC audio, and both Xvid and DivX video, in addition to all the formats supported by WMP11 in Vista (MPEG2, WMV, MP3, etc.). With these new codecs, WMP should support the majority of video found on the Internet out of the box.

Re:foot.shoot();

[poetmatt]

hahahaha if only I had mod points. I agree, and most people have h.264 support out the door on most pc's nowadays. Hell I hear more complaints about "it's not doing hardware h.264" than I do about whether or not people know what it is.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nine-times]

Why would they care about what windows does?

Well it is still the dominant desktop OS. I'm not even saying they shouldn't care about Windows, but rather that h264 is not any weirder or non-standard than DivX. The way some people talk about it, you'd think h264 and AAC are strange inventions from Apple and therefore others shouldn't be expected to support them. On the contrary, DivX was the weird proprietary format, and h264 and AAC were created by MPEG.

Both H264 and AAC were created to be industry standards, replacing old MPEG video formats and MP3. Apple happened to be early to jump on board with them, but they aren't proprietary Quicktime formats. In short: this is what is supposed to be happening. Everyone is lining up behind the most advanced industry standards and slowly dropping legacy support. Even Microsoft is supporting h264 and AAC these days, and they hate standards.

Re:foot.shoot();

[cynyr]

As a note last i knew VLC was required to rip dvd with hand brake on windows due it it needing VLC's libdvdcss.

Re:foot.shoot();

[JDeane]

If your running Windows you might try a program called Format Factory its free and it is amazing in that it can convert almost any format with very little loss in quality. (I say little because some formats look like there is some added artifacts after the conversion, most formats will convert perfectly)

I hope this helps a little, I know the feeling of fighting with something for hours on end.. Convert, try, then cry because you spent an hour converting the 20 short movies everyone shot only to find out the audio is out of sync after the conversion and now you need to start over from scratch...

The other one to try is Total Video Converter, its free too but I use it as a back up for the other one. It could be just my opinion but the output quality seems to be not quite as good as Format Factory, but on the plus side sometimes it will convert video that is harder to convert.

Best of Luck to you!

Re:foot.shoot();

[amiga3D]

Mac users should install VLC. I just upgraded vlc on my ibook G4 and the latest (leopard or above only) version of vlc made files play smoothly on my system that were choppy with vlc before and wouldn't play in anything else.

Re:foot.shoot();

[The Mighty Buzzard]

But AVI is an obsolete container (which is why Microsoft stopped using it).

Given that AVI is still the most widely used video container, either you don't understand the meaning of the word obsolete or you're engaging in some I reject your reality and substitute my own behavior as a disciple of Adam Savage.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

Given that AVI is still the most widely used video container

Bullshit. The most widely used video containers are the MPEG-2 containers: transport stream, used by DVB and ATSC (accounting for most digital TV broadcasts), and program stream, used by DVD.

AVI is infrequently used in other situations. Some cameras still create AVI files, and AVI is commonly used for low-quality pirated video. But more and more pirates are choosing modern containers like MKV. AVI is not used for video streaming (WMV, FLV are), and WMV and MP4 account for non-pirate video downloads.

you don't understand the meaning of the word obsolete

AVI is clearly obsolete. It is missing many important features required and implemented by modern video containers. Further development been more or less abandoned by its creator (Microsoft) in favor of newer containers like WMV.

Re:foot.shoot();

[jedidiah]

Based on how people actually use video containers, AVI isn't really obsolete yet. This is sad but true.

Sure you've got a fringe of people that push this stuff past the point where AVI falls over or where Quicktime falls over. Those people are few and far between. Apple itself really doesn't push the capabilities of container formats. So whining that AVI is obsolete is highly disengenous.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Wildclaw]

Why not ogg theora as default? With handbrake's support a free and open video codec could finally come to the fore.

If they are removing avi as inferior and problematic even though there is lots of hardware support. Why would you think that they would include an output codec that don't have hardware support, is used by pretty much no one and produces inferior quality compared to h264?

Re:foot.shoot();

[thenextstevejobs]

foot.shoot() isn't a very good function call. That would seem to me to imply that your foot shoots something to me.

Maybe gun.shoot(foot)

Re:foot.shoot();

[dosius]

I am under the impression that most encoders use MEGUI now.

I usually use Avidemux or Mencoder.

-uso.

Re:foot.shoot();

[complete loony]

And how many embedded devices are there that support avi files but not mp4 / mkv?

Re:foot.shoot();

[gandhi_2]

seeing as how a foot wouldn't usually do any shooting, it makes no sense for the foot object to have a shoot behavior. better composition would be gun.shoot('foot'); or something like that.

Re:foot.shoot();

[bemymonkey]

True, but the codec is slow as hell compared to CoreAVC... so for a lot of people, it's just bloat...

Re:foot.shoot();

[HouseOfMisterE]

If you want to talk about those updates, then you have to also acknowledge that h264 is supported out of the box, too

The post to which I was replying didn't mention h264, so why would I acknowledge it? ;)

Re:foot.shoot();

[ShieldW0lf]

foot.shoot() isn't a very good function call. That would seem to me to imply that your foot shoots something to me.

Maybe gun.shoot(foot)

gun.shoot(&foot);

Re:foot.shoot();

[md65536]

This news actually makes me want to check out and hopefully switch to handbrake. I didn't know anything about it before, but now I know it is something that doesn't support obsolete "rough beast" formats, which aligns well with my values.

All publicity is good publicity.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Heliologue]

And this bothers the developers how?

Re:foot.shoot();

[iluvcapra]

But AVI is an obsolete container (which is why Microsoft stopped using it).

N.B. Microsoft WAVE files, upon which basically all professional sound recording is based, use the same container format as AVI files. There's been some movement in the professional sphere to start using Broadcast-WAV RF64, which is basically a QT Atom knockoff (the QT container format itself is standardized as the original MPEG-4 (.mp4) container), but standard 2 GiB RIFF WAV files are here to stay forevah.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Mista2]

Ive been using Handbrake just to make rips that will play properly on my iPhone, and my XBMC without lots of different versios. I've stopped encoding in DivX, but the fires are large for the same quality. Worse for downloads, but better portability for the devices I have, supports chapter marks, subtitles etc.

Re:foot.shoot();

[bertok]

Windows users should install VLC.

VLC is a poor choice. Media Player Classic Home Cinema supports Windows's DirectShow media playback system, and supports hardware accelerated decoding, hardware accelerated rendering, codecs other than those included with MPC-HC, etc.

Most importantly, I think it's the only video player out there that supports vsync to avoid horrible 'tearing' while playing video.

I just can't imagine why anyone would think it's a good idea to play a video with vsync off, but every other player seems to do it.

Re:foot.shoot();

[A Friendly Troll]

h264 is so incredible you don't need divx anyway.

My Pioneer DVD player doesn't play h.264. Neither does any other DVD player, except perhaps those that cost four figures (I haven't looked into that).

h.264 might be incredible, but I have no way of playing it on my TV.

Re:foot.shoot();

[cicatrix1]

But what am I supposed to do with all my foot copies :(

Re:foot.shoot();

[mambodog]

Based on your logic, IE6 is not obsolete and web developers should keep supporting it. Oh wait...

Re:foot.shoot();

[Toonol]

I greatly prefer MPC over VLC; it's cleaner, faster, lighter, more sensible ui... but VLC seems to have wider format support, so I keep it around as a backup.

Re:foot.shoot();

[wvmarle]

Personally I like AVI and DivX/XviD.

Why? Because I can download it, copy it to a USB stick, stick that in my DVD player, and watch the video on my TV. DivX is the only format supported by that DVD player. And it's for sure not an old model, I bought it maybe a year ago.

And before you start saying "just play it on your computer": my TV has a comfy sofa in front of it, is almost twice the diagonal of my monitor, and is in a room big enough to watch with more than one person at a time. Particularly important when watching something with my 3-year-old.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Boibo]

Windows doesn't play DivX or XviD files by default. To my knowledge, Handbrake never encoded files that Windows would play without installing an extra player or codec.

Windows 7 has support for divx/xvid now aswell as newer formats like mp4/h264 and even x264 but for mayority of those you need haali media splitter but the video in it self is supported AND accelerated (by the videocard if you got one that support DXVA)

Re:foot.shoot();

[Xiph1980]

Speak for yourself.

Maybe VLC is better in playing video with low CPU load, but that doesn't really concern me much, having a semi-recent processor. It definitely plays more file formats out of the box, which is really nice I admit, but ergonomically, it's (in my opinion) too unpolished. For example I love the way you can use your keyboard to make small/medium/big jumps in Windows Media Player using [SHIFT]+[R.Arrow], [R.Arrow] and [CTRL]+[R.Arrow] respectively. I love the fact that you don't have to open a seperate window for the playlist, and you can add a whole season of show X from the explorer window by right-clicking.
There are a few more nuisances in VLC on the usage front, but those are the major ones, and that's enough for me to prefer WMP, even though that means I have to go out of my way to install a few codecs here and there.

Ofcourse that doesn't mean I don't have any gripes with Windows Media Player. I do, but just less than with VLC, and I also have VLC installed, because there are some things WMP even with the right codecs just refuses to play which doesn't seem to bother VLC that much. I just don't have it set up as the default player.

Re:foot.shoot();

[93 Escort Wagon]

The way some people talk about it, you'd think h264 and AAC are strange inventions from Apple and therefore others shouldn't be expected to support them.

There have been many instances right here on Slashdot where people have claimed exactly that. It's been especially frequent with regards to AAC - just check most any story about iTunes and/or DRM.

Re:foot.shoot();

[defireman]

delete foot;

or

free(&foot);

Re:foot.shoot();

[that this is not und]

Why would they care about what windows does?

Well, sure. You've got a point. Maybe they should just go back to only making the version for BeOS.

Re:foot.shoot();

[that this is not und]

Maybe the foot shoots back.

Re:foot.shoot();

[stephanruby]

vsync? Tearing?? Do you have a screenshot of what you mean?

Re:foot.shoot();

[The Mighty Buzzard]

obsolete -adjective
no longer in general use; fallen into disuse: an obsolete expression.

Guess it was ignorance of the meaning of the word then. Like it or not, AVI is still widely used. Until it isn't, it will not be obsolete. You need a new word. Might I suggest one of the following: anachronous, antiquated, antique, archaic, behind the times, dated, old-hat, out, outdated, outmoded, passé, unfashionable

Judging from the vehemence of your response though, I'd probably go with unfashionable. You clearly have an emotional stake in video container formats for some reason, so that would be the most honest.

Re:foot.shoot();

[genik76]

Here's an explanation of the phenomenom: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=928593

Re:foot.shoot();

[cheekyboy]

but every $30 dvd player out there supports avi, not mk4/mp4.

Not every person can afford to upgrade every 2 years.

Forcing new formats by default and NO CHOICE is a microsoft thing, besides ffmpeg supports it, so HB should too.

Give us choice, not forced crap. By all means default it to mp4, but dont remove avi.

IDIOTS.

Re:foot.shoot();

[segwonk]

"vsync? Tearing?? Do you have a screenshot of what you mean?"

It's difficult to get a screenshot of this since it's only visible while
playing video. Imagine a camera panning across a group of people.
When you watch the resulting video from this shot, a person's legs
and waist might appear offset from their torso and head -- like if
you took scissors to a photo and cut it in half horizontally, then
slid the two pieces relative to each other.

It's very annoying to the eye once you start to notice it. I'm sorry
if your viewing is ruined from here on out... ;-)

- jw

Re:foot.shoot();

[bheer]

I could be wrong, but afaik Windows 7 has DivX built-in. It also plays most Quicktime .MOV files out of the box.

Re:foot.shoot();

[TheEvilOverlord]

For example I love the way you can use your keyboard to make small/medium/big jumps in Windows Media Player using [SHIFT]+[R.Arrow], [R.Arrow] and [CTRL]+[R.Arrow] respectively.

VLC does that...

CTRL + L/R arrow, ALT + L/R arrow and SHIFT + L/R arrow for big, medium and small jumps forwards and back.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Bert64]

Your DVD player doesn't play VHS either...
Old formats die, new formats replace them and this usually requires getting new equipment.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Anonymous Coward]

Software that handles AVI files generally can't handle multiple audio or video streams, even if they are possible. There's no standard way to do subtitles. There's no standard way to do either B-frames or variable bit rate audio - both can be done, with decreased file compatibility and some extra overhead. There's pretty much no error handling or recovery - the ability to play corrupt AVI files depends entirely on how much effort the decoder goes through. Same goes for partial or truncated AVI files. It's possible, with a carefully arranged AVI file, to stream them over a network, but the interleaving is too coarse for this to work very well.

The stuff Apple do, DRM aside, is well beyond the capabilities of the AVI container. It simply couldn't do what Apple use it for.

Ditto for Microsoft - there's a reason they ditched AVI, and moved over to ASF.

Re:foot.shoot();

[FelixNematt]

Judging from the vehemence of your response though, I'd probably go with unfashionable. You clearly have an emotional stake in video container formats for some reason, so that would be the most honest.

Haha, nice troll. High fives all round.

Re:foot.shoot();

[gkhan1]

You should really try acutally using VLC for a while, then you'd know that it does, in fact, do exactly that. Try shift, alt or ctrl plus an arrow key for a small, medium or large jump, respectively. The fact is that VLC can do so much more useful stuff than any other video player that you're crazy not to use it. One obvious feature that you can't live without is that you can modify the syncing between the audio and video on the fly with the j/k keys. So if your video is out of sync, you can easily fix that. Another thing is that it can crop the video on the fly, so if you have a 16:9 video on a 16:10 screen, you can just crop it to the right aspect ratio so you don't get any black bars. And it can do so, so much more. Really, it's insanity to use anything else.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Hognoxious]

Maybe he's from Soviet Russia.

Re:foot.shoot();

[cbhacking]

You're out of date. Win7 supports DivX, XviD, h264, AAC, and a number of other formats right out of the box. I've used WMP (on a clean install) to play .mov files that were recorded by a digital camera and encoded as "QuickTime movies" in some MPEG 4 variant.

Perhaps the Handbrake folks just decided that the time to drop support for a format is when Microsoft includes support for it out of the box?

Re:foot.shoot();

[Bert64]

To counter your example:

I have a Dreambox DM800, it can do h.264 and MPEG2 in hardware, it can theoretically do divx/xvid in software but the cpu isn't fast enough. I can plug in a USB stick containing h.264 video (including high definition content) and it will play just fine on my TV.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Bert64]

Probably less than there are embedded devices which support h.264 but don't support divx/xvid...

Re:foot.shoot();

[SwabTheDeck]

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.

A quick look at the Windows Media Player 12 Wikipedia page indicates that h.264 in an MP4 container (and by extension, a renamed M4V) plays fine in the current version of WMP that ships with Win 7. However, the post says that Handbrake dropped DivX and XviD, which were only given support in the latest version of WMP as well. So really, Handbrake has never supported native WMP formats before WMP 12, unless more was dropped than just DivX and XviD (I'm too lazy to do the research).

Re:foot.shoot();

[dingen]

You're just saying you like your DVD player. There isn't a single argument for liking AVI or DivX/XviD in your post.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Lumpy]

And it sucks for theater playback. It's why I encode to H264 and AC3 passthrough. far better audio than using the crappy AAC.

I use handbrake to make my own http://www.kaleidescape.com/products/ setup for a fraction of the cost using XBMC. I even have a automatic DVD ripper using Handbrake CLI and a bash script to watch the dvd drive on the content server.

I tried ripping the audio to AAC, it destroys the movie sound in a real theater setup. AC3 passthrough preserves it completely.

Re:foot.shoot();

[redmund]

obsolete adj 1 no longer in use or in practice. 2 out of date; outmoded. 3 biol said of organs, etc: vestigial; no longer functional or fully developed.


Way to be selective with the definition you supply.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Malc]

AVC is far less weird and far more standard than DivX ever was. I remember installing the DivX codecs years ago when it first became popular, but found them to be buggy and made Windows crash. I uninstalled them and haven't had to touch them since. I don't download pirated material, and everywhere else AVC has become one of the main codecs if not the most important one. Ditching DivX is no loss.

Re:foot.shoot();

[TorKlingberg]

I always thought the main point of VLC is that it does not rely on the often broken collection of installed codecs. It "just works" even if the rest of the system is messed up in all kinds of ways.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Malc]

I should also add that although Microsoft tried to push VC-1 as their next generation codec, few people are using it these days. For Blu-ray, all the high-end people are using AVC. For those who want a cheaper encoder, MPEG-2 is still popular. In other areas, AVC is king too or getting there. It's a million times better than DivX, although probably requires more processor for encoding.

Re:foot.shoot();

[MukiMuki]

BS. The latest version of Windows Media Player that Windows going as far back as XP can run is capable of playing H.264 MP4 files just fine. Hell, if you have a DXVA-capable card (Every Radeon since the 2000 series and every Geforce since the 8000 series, with the sole exceptions of the 2900 and 8800 cards, respectively (8800GS is a go tho)), it'll even play accelerated with next-to-nil CPU usage.

In fact, it's probably more likely to play an H.264 MP4 file than it is a DivX/XviD-encoded Avi file w/o any codecs installed.

Re:foot.shoot();

[rident]

Last I knew MKV was a container, not a codec. You can put divx, h264, wmv or whatever you prefer for a video format inside it. Or all of them together at once in parallel tracks. Same goes for audio and subtitle tracks. One more feature MKV preserves from a VOB is chaptering. It really is sweet and the best direction for digital video to go. But the commitment to use one codec should be remembered as Handbrake's decision as just about any audio/video/subtitle formats work inside the MKV container. In h264 vs DIVX, h264 wins outright. I'm also always a fan of wasting a few extra megs on better audio so AC3 is the way I'd go.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Registered Coward v2]

obsolete -adjective no longer in general use; fallen into disuse: an obsolete expression.

Guess it was ignorance of the meaning of the word then. Like it or not, AVI is still widely used. Until it isn't, it will not be obsolete. You need a new word. Might I suggest one of the following: anachronous, antiquated, antique, archaic, behind the times, dated, old-hat, out, outdated, outmoded, passé, unfashionable.

Actually, it make sense in the context it was used - English usages morphs and changes, that's part of being a living language. It may nott be the choice you'd make, but then again I dislike "small minority," "large majority," and the ever - popular "proactive." Still, enough people use them that they have become acceptable usage.

Also, if you want to play the dictionary game:

b : of a kind or style no longer current : old-fashioned

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/OBSOLETE

Re:foot.shoot();

[Carewolf]

Guess it was ignorance of the meaning of the word then. Like it or not, AVI is still widely used. Until it
isn't, it will not be obsolete. You need a new word. Might I suggest one of the following: anachronous, antiquated, antique, archaic, behind the times, dated, old-hat, out, outdated, outmoded, passé, unfashionable

The word is deprecated. Like obsolete, except people are still using it, but you wish they weren't.

Re:foot.shoot();

[TheRaven64]

VLC doesn't do as much postprocessing of H.264 as QuickTime. It uses less CPU (than QuickTime 7, I've not tested it against QuickTime X), but the picture is noticeably worse. For example, if you get something from iPlayer and watch it with QuickTime, you see a crisp BBC logo in the corner. With VLC, there are artefacts all around and you can only just make out the fact that it says BBC.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Fex303]

h.264 might be incredible, but I have no way of playing it on my TV.

Cough.

Sorry, but there's plenty of other options out there that are extremely affordable and will happily play h.264.

Re:foot.shoot();

[TheRaven64]

More standard depends on what you mean. DivX is an implementation of MPEG-4 Part 2, Advanced Simple Profile, which defines a subset of MPEG-4 Part 2. If something claims to play DivX, that's what it implements.

AVC, on the other hand, has a large number of optional bits. Some are supported by all players, some are supported only by a few. You can quite easily pick an AVC subset that will work anywhere, but you can also pick one that is unlikely to work for 90% of people.

Both are parts of the MPEG-4 standard.

Re:foot.shoot();

[quadrox]

uh wtf? VLC allows you to de the same, at least with [SHIFT]+[R.Arrow] and [R.Arrow] - I never tried with control, but I bet it works the same.

Re:foot.shoot();

[jack2000]

So can VLC, infact it's kinda the same: ctrl, shift and alt + the arrows do the same You can even set up how far it seeks with those keys from the preferences...

Re:foot.shoot();

[TheRaven64]

WAVE files are RIFF files. RIFF is IFF (from Amiga, later picked up by Apple) with the byte order reversed. AVI (and Windows .bmp files) are RIFF files, but that's about where the similarity ends. All that defines is how the metadata is stored, not what the metadata is.

Re:foot.shoot();

[jones_supa]

Small judder is also quite common video problem these days.

Re:foot.shoot();

[jones_supa]

The graphics card draws the material in video memory from top to down, then it takes a short pause (vsync) and starts over. Ideally you should write new contents to video memory during this short period to keep things synchronized. If you don't care about vsync you might end up writing a new frame while the graphics card is still drawing the previous one, ending up with an image which has the upper and lower part of two frames.

Re:foot.shoot();

[dave420]

+4, Insightful? Et tu, Slashdot?

Re:foot.shoot();

[CubicleView]

I use vlc mostly just to play iso images, and i agree the UI seems a bit unpolished, but I find it refreshing that it does not try to create some craptacular media library any time I just want to create a playlist. My mp3's etc have shitty incomplete tags, there are too many and they are too crap for me to bother with attempting to correct them now. They are arranged by folder and that suits me just fine. I'm sure I've missed some settings in wmp, but out of the box at least it constantly wants me to let it trawl through hundreds of gigs worth of data looking for media to catalog by shitty mp3 tag.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Rockoon]

My beef with VLC is that there are many H264 shoutcast video streams that it fails to play correctly. Specifically the stream will pause/skip every few seconds and no amount of tweaking seems to be able to fix it, and its not a bandwidth/buffering issue because WinAmp plays these same streams just fine for hours without even a single instance of the phenomena.

For awhile I was suspecting that maybe my computers clock ran slow or fast or something, causing the issue.. I tried to produce experimental evidence to support this theory but failed to do so. Specifically the PIT, HPET, and RDTSC (on each core) all agreed about the time to well within a tolerance that made the theory implausible.

So my conclusion is that there is something fundamentally wrong with VLC's shoutcast+H264 streaming playback.

Re:foot.shoot();

[jedidiah]

Of course that's the point.

Divx is pretty much gauranteed to play. It's certainly FAR more likely of this than h264.

It's just like mp3 in this respect.

Some pretentious digerati would like to kill the format. It probably won't happen.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nine-times]

I was always under the impression that DivX wasn't 100% MPEG4 compliant, and had some unknown proprietary stuff in there. Is that not the case? If not, why then did people pay licensing fees to DivX?

Re:foot.shoot();

[TheRaven64]

The licensing fee is for the trademark. Anything that can play MPEG-4 bytestreams can play DivX, but if you want to put DivX Supported on your player then you need to pay them a license fee.

Re:foot.shoot();

[mrboyd]

Windows 7 does. It was long overdue but now it's "out of the box".

Re:foot.shoot();

[jgtg32a]

No use CCCP like GGP said, Media Player Classic is what CCCP uses to actually play the files, but the CCCP comes with codices to play anything

Re:foot.shoot();

[nine-times]

Depends on where you get your definition for "obsolete", I suppose. According to Dictionary.com:

no longer in general use; fallen into disuse

So according to that, AVI is not yet obsolete. However, according to Google:

Something that is obsolete is no longer needed because something better has been invented.

Well... AVI is no longer needed because something better has been invented. I guess the question is whether you think the Google definition is a valid one, but I use the word "obsolete" that way.

I've argued that the reason the record industry is struggling is that their business model is "obsolete". When I argued that, I wasn't claiming that their business model was no longer in use, but that it should be thought of as antiquated, as a thing of the past which, for the most part, continues to exist out of inertia. If it didn't already exist and people weren't already invested in it, we wouldn't invent it now because it's not a sensible way to go about things given the current state of technology.

In that sense, AVI and DivX are also obsolete.

Re:foot.shoot();

[jgtg32a]

I have to say I love using MPC that comes in the CCCP, but I still keep VLC around because it can do fast playing better than MPC can.
 
I sound a bit crazy whenever I say this but I enjoy watching shows at 1.75x speed, and some shows like Farscape I was able to get up to 2.5x. I really wish CCCP could do that but oh well.

Re:foot.shoot();

[mrboyd]

Since it is still widely used I believe the terms unfashionable, outmoded, passé, outdated, out and anachronous would not be better than the term used by the parent poster since they all connote a lack of usage of the format.

Guess it was ignorance of the meaning of the word then

erm...

Re:foot.shoot();

[dingen]

It really depends on your hardware. Besides my computers, I have two devices capable of playing video. One is my iPhone, the other is my XBOX360. Both handle H264 fine.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

No use CCCP like GGP said, Media Player Classic is what CCCP uses to actually play the files, but the CCCP comes with codices to play anything

MPC-HC has built-in decoders for the most important formats (including hardware-accelerated DXVA decoders), does not require installation, and does not install system-wide codecs.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

It has all the features of VLC, but is missing quite a bit more.

VLC and any non-DirectShow players on Windows are missing many features - MPC-HC only targets Windows, so it supports Windows-only hardware acceleration, renderers, DirectShow filters, etc.

I don't think MPC-HC has all of the encoding/streaming features VLC does.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Duradin]

Take a look at a popcorn hour network media tank. They play just about anything, including h.264.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

I always thought the main point of VLC is that it does not rely on the often broken collection of installed codecs. It "just works" even if the rest of the system is messed up in all kinds of ways.

MPC-HC has built-in decoders which it uses by default, but it will use Windows DirectShow filters for anything unsupported or disabled.

Re:foot.shoot();

[spearway]

You should look harder: http://www.apple.com/appletv/

Re:foot.shoot();

[Floody]

Claiming that AVI is obsolete is like claiming that the plain old telephone line is obsolete. Sure, there's been heaps of advancements made, and you could probably get by without it, but its still in wide use and is still almost as useful as its replacements.

That depends to a great deal on your community. In my area, neither I nor my friends have had POTS for years, and we get by just fine.

Obviously, other communities will differ.

Re:foot.shoot();

[audiofree]

Windows 7 plays almost everything by defualt, h264, divx, xvid and even some types of movs out of the box.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Anonymous Coward]

DivX and XviD were implementations of MPEG-4 Part 2 - ASP (Advanced Simple Profile).

Yes, the video portions of the datastream are implementations of MPEG-4 Part 2. But pairing that up with mp3 audio and tossing them into an AVI container (which is what this is all about) is totally non-standard, and is quite frankly an ugly hack.

Re:foot.shoot();

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Bingo. Well deserving of all the Informative mods you got.

Re:foot.shoot();

[brouski]

What about when you only have one hand free?

Re:foot.shoot();

[Idiomatick]

Who would set it up as foot.shoot() instead of shoot(foot), that's just silly.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Grizzley9]

Why not just play the original DVD?

If you are ripping to h.264 you don't need to be using a DVD player. Otherwise, use another program to make a copy of your DVD.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Khyber]

"Most importantly, I think it's the only video player out there that supports vsync to avoid horrible 'tearing' while playing video."

Zoom Player does full vsync, at least in the top-notch version. Lower versions I am not sure of.

Zoom Player knocks most anything else out. Zoom Player + CCCP = everything works FAST. VLC has gotten SLOW and clunky.

Re:foot.shoot();

[mariushm]

AVI is used in digital camers because it's extremely easy to program a very basic writer for it. Most digital cameras create videos compressed in Motion-JPEG and uncompressed audio.

When it only has some basic settings like changing frame rate and resolution, the code inside the digital camera just reads about 2 KB of data from memory, changes the values for resolution and framerate in the bytes, writes the bytes to card at the beginning of the file and then alternates a frame of video and a frame of audio until the end of the recording, where it writes an index with the positions of each video and audio frame in the file.

So it's all about minimum processor usage - the motion jpeg frames come already prepared from the hardware chip and dumped in memory, from where they're just dumped to the SD card, and there's no library required to be included in the digital camera software.

Keep in mind that a regular 100$ camera has about 1-4 MB of flash for firmware and software and up to 64 MB of ram for processing images so sometimes you don't have 100-300 KB of space to include libraries that add support for MKV or MP4 containers.

Regular Virtualdub and Avisynth have no problems processing these AVI files with Motion-JPEG compressed frames.

Re:foot.shoot();

[jfredric]

You could instead use foot.shot() to inform all your foot copies of their fate.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Hurricane78]

Sure you have.

First: A player that plays H.264 may be available for less that 100 bucks. (Tip: The cheaper ones usually can do more, because the companies are not tied to any media industry pessure. They all use the same chips anyway.)

Or: You do what I do and use your computer for it. Every recent laptop can play H.264 in full HD. Just plug that into your TV. If you have to, put it where your DVD player stands now. It will even look nearly the same.
And my guess is, that your laptop also supports spdif and analog audio out.

But maybe I’m just out of the TV+player world for too long. A projector costs practically the same as a good TV, you usually have an amplifier and speakers, and a PC does the rest. BitTorrent (and perhaps Hulu) is the replacement for the receiver card and TiVo. That’s my setup for years now. Can’t imagine going back. It would be like going back to Windows...

Re:foot.shoot();

[geminidomino]

I hear you. The good news is you don't actually have to lose anything but a little bit of time. Handbrake is just a frontend to ffmpeg and x264, so if you want to keep making DivX files for your DVD player, you can do it with a command line (or another frontend for ffmpeg) secure in the knowledge that it's using the exact same tool you're used to.

I'm not flaming you, I agree with you that this Mozilla-like, "We're the center of the universe"-style feature alteration sucks.

Re:foot.shoot();

[ShieldW0lf]

But what am I supposed to do with all my foot copies :(

Keep them off the carpet...

Re:foot.shoot();

[Hurricane78]

Doesn’t make it right or better. In fact the AVI cancer should have died long ago!

Also, no modern move is distributed in AVI anymore. If you need any of:
- stereo (aka 3d) video
- multichannel audio (better than stereo)
- chapters
- integrated subtitles
- streamability
- multiple audio or video streams/languages ...there is just no choice: You use MKV.

And if you look on EZTV, all HD shows are also usually uploaded as MKV.
Only the lazy and the dim still upload AVIs.
It’s the standard now. People are used to seeing it. And those who got no clue will not know the difference either.
They will do what they did back then: Install the “codec thingy” and be done with it.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Hurricane78]

I raise you by...

Well, my (second) PC is a laptop, and my screen is a 3 x 2 meter projector. With a comfy sofa in front of it. And 6 speakers around it.

What is a TV?

Re:foot.shoot();

[metamatic]

And it sucks for theater playback. It's why I encode to H264 and AC3 passthrough. far better audio than using the crappy AAC.

I tend to take the default, which includes both, and let the device I'm playing back on decide which is appropriate.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Hurricane78]

And I just can’t imagine what that “horrible tearing” is, of which you speak.

I looked for it. I really did. Checked if it is really off. But I just can’t see it.

So I can just as well jump into my very own ultra-egocentric bubble, and say that I just can’t imagine why anyone would think there is a point to vsync.

To me, vsync makes as much sense, as this: http://www.audio-consulting.ch/?Parts:Woodlenses

Re:foot.shoot();

[Hurricane78]

I also think that there isn’t a player out there that doesn’t have these functions. Players where I know it’s build in:
- mplayer
- vlc
- media player classic
- bsplayer
- my xine frontend

Re:foot.shoot();

[FlopEJoe]

We /finally/ (as in the past couple years) get stand alone DVD boxes that play a common compressed format and they want to take that away??!? I'm not against progress but the reasons given seem lame to me. Especially when I have three DVD players bought expressly because they play AVIs

"It is obsolete. It does not support modern container features like chapters..."

My answer is, "so, the fuck, what?" Looks like 0.9.3 is my last upgrade until I change my DVD players.

Re:foot.shoot();

[metamatic]

My Pioneer DVD player doesn't play h.264. Neither does any other DVD player, except perhaps those that cost four figures (I haven't looked into that).

h.264 might be incredible, but I have no way of playing it on my TV.

Got an Xbox 360 or a PS3? Problem solved.

Otherwise, $80 will get you a Blu-ray player that handles h.264 and upscales DVDs to 1080p.

Or there's AppleTV. Or Popcorn Hour. Or MviX boxes. Or various $90 media players that access any USB hard drive you have hanging around. (That one even supports ext3.)

I mean, yeah, I have a DVD player that supports DivX that I used a few years ago. But frankly, it's a hell of a lot more convenient to pull stuff across my network or stick it on a hard drive than to mess with burning DVDs, even ignoring the h.264 issue. Spend the $100, you'll thank yourself.

Re:foot.shoot();

[A Friendly Troll]

I don't have an Xbox 360 or a PS3, they cost half my monthly salary. So does the cheapest Blu Ray player I can find (and that one craps out with non-ASCII subtitles). Apple TV doesn't accept discs and costs more than Xbox/PS3, I've never heard about Popcorn or MviX, I don't have any USB hard drives, and the TV is far from any available computer network.

Things will improve over the years regarding h.264 player prices, but they are still unavailable to me because they cost four figures in my local currency ;)

Re:foot.shoot();

[The Mighty Buzzard]

In fact the AVI cancer should have died long ago!

Yeah, um... how's telling people how they should use their computer working out for you? You should apply for a job at Apple, that's the kind of thinking that Steve loves.

Also, no modern move is distributed in AVI anymore.

You're talking official channels? Must be because that's patently false for anything else.

And if you look on EZTV, all HD shows are also usually uploaded as MKV.

Just went and did a quick count on EZTV's front page. I show about 3-4:1 AVI:MKV. Maybe you're using some kind of math I'm unfamiliar with. Or maybe you're only counting the 720p episodes, in which case they're far less downloaded and seeded than their lower res counterparts as well as being less common.

It’s the standard now.

Says you. End of debunking.

I'm not an AVI champion here. I honestly don't care about moving to mkv/mp4/etc... or not. I simply get annoyed by people vehemently saying things that are demonstrably false.

Re:foot.shoot();

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Yup, I was letting someone else say it to share the karma around though.

Re:foot.shoot();

[0100010001010011]

"Fraction of the cost of using XBMC".

Explain how that one works. I can't find any prices on the Kaleidescape, but I've made some very cheap XBMC setups. I don't count my NAS in the cost because it acts as my ZFS server for my house.

Re:foot.shoot();

[m509272]

Perhaps you should take a look at what the bulk of say TV shows are available in for download from "fill in your source" here. AVI

"Obsolete" is a word that is used by someone or some company that wants you to buy their new product or buy into their mantra. Back in the mainframe days a company insured their multi-million dollar mainframe against becoming obsolete. At some point they claimed it was obsolete. The insurance company said prove it. They said it runs your programs properly, blah, blah, blah. The insurance company won and rightfully so.

Is a standard definition TV set obsolete? Certainly not yet. Cable/Satellite/Converter boxes still provide signals that can be watched in either the old aspect ratio or in letterbox. Of course every HD TV mfr wants you to believe that and every provider wants you to get an HD box.

Am I supposed to throw out my DVD players that can play AVI out and buy new ones because the Handbrake guys say so. Not going to happen. I'll just not use their software if I have any conversion tasks. In my opinion this is just a foolish move and plenty of others think so too.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nine-times]

Perhaps you should take a look at what the bulk of say TV shows are available in for download from "fill in your source" here. AVI

Ok, I'm going to "fill in my source" with the only source I can think of that provides legal purchasing of TV shows: iTunes. Whoa, look what happens; turns out the bulk of the TV shows are h264.

We shouldn't be stuck with legacy formats just because pirates don't know what they're doing.

Is a standard definition TV set obsolete?

I certainly wouldn't buy a new standard definition TV from Best Buy. Flat panel HDTVs are much better and plenty cheap enough.

Am I supposed to throw out my DVD players that can play AVI out and buy new ones because the Handbrake guys say so.

No, but if you're writing movies to DVD in AVI format in order to play them on your TV, then you're already behind the curve. Sure, if you want to stick with old ways of doing things, you're free to do that. No one is going to complain if you want to watch TV on a black and white TV from 1970 or if you want to listen to vinyl on a record player. Hell, you can play your old 8 track tapes for as long as they'll hold up. I don't mind. Just don't expect the rest of society to stop progress in its tracks in order to support that old stuff.

Re:foot.shoot();

[caitsith01]

You're out of date. Win7 supports DivX, XviD, h264, AAC, and a number of other formats right out of the box. I've used WMP (on a clean install) to play .mov files that were recorded by a digital camera and encoded as "QuickTime movies" in some MPEG 4 variant.

Perhaps the Handbrake folks just decided that the time to drop support for a format is when Microsoft includes support for it out of the box?

Great, good for them. Meanwhile just thinking through my various devices at home I have... 4 that will play DivX/XviD but will not play h264.

I wonder how many other people who aren't iDrones have devices that don't support it? E.g. DVD players, media streaming devices, non-Apple PMPs, mobile phones...

Seems like a pretty silly way to go. Kill off support for the majority of people who choose not to use Apple products.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Trogre]

I fully agree that no one should have to watch videos with vsync off, but IMO that's not the players job but that of the video driver.

Example:

My HTPC is a dual-head linux box with proprietary nVidia driver. One tweak in nvoptions and my TV never exhibits any tearing with any player.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Trogre]

Correction:

My HTPC is a dual-head linux box with proprietary nVidia driver. One tweak in nvidia-settings and my TV never exhibits any tearing with any player.

I should have said nvidia-settings, not nvoptions.

Re:foot.shoot();

[wvmarle]

I don't create files, I just download them. I have never transcoded a video file yet. Most of the stuff is available in XviD already.

Re:foot.shoot();

[bertok]

And I just can’t imagine what that “horrible tearing” is, of which you speak.

I looked for it. I really did. Checked if it is really off. But I just can’t see it.

So I can just as well jump into my very own ultra-egocentric bubble, and say that I just can’t imagine why anyone would think there is a point to vsync.

To me, vsync makes as much sense, as this: http://www.audio-consulting.ch/?Parts:Woodlenses

If it doesn't occur on your setup, it doesn't mean it doesn't occur for other people.

It certainly doesn't mean you should be rude, or imply that others are just imagining things. Vsync tearing issues are very visible when they do occur, try google:

vsync tearing

Re:foot.shoot();

[bill_mcgonigle]

I even have a automatic DVD ripper using Handbrake CLI and a bash script to watch the dvd drive on the content server.

C'mon, now, even the Handbrake developers tell you to use a different ripper. Handbrake won't rip almost everything manufactured in the past half decade.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Ol Olsoc]

I call Bullshit on your Bullshit.

Yes AVI is obsolete and pretty awful. But depending on the application, its the only game in town.

So let's try a little experiment. Make a PowerPoint presentation on your computer. Insert a video made with the latest and greatest video and compression format. Give the resulting Powerpoint to ten different people, and tell us how that's working out for ya!

The only way to ensure that the video will play on everyone's computer is to make it AVI, and make it Cinepak compression. I don't like it either, but that's how it is.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

The only way to ensure that the video will play on everyone's computer is to make it AVI, and make it Cinepak compression. I don't like it either, but that's how it is.

Every Windows XP or newer system supports WMV. Furthermore, this doesn't change that MPEG-2 containers are still more popular than any other format.

Re:foot.shoot();

[poetmatt]

news flash: anon doesn't know what they're talking about. Why wouldn't someone want a library of DVD's on their computer? Do I want to simply hunt down a disc buried in a pile in my collection? Or do you have a problem with legally backing up cd's?

either way, bad anon, bad.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Taibhsear]

So THAT's why there's a second set of shift, alt, and ctrl keys next to the arrow keys on the keyboard...

Re:foot.shoot();

[Taibhsear]

Personally I like mkv.

Why? Because I can download it, [unnecessary steps removed] and watch the video on my TV.

And before you start asking "How?" My computer(s) are connected to my TV in the room with the comfy sofa, and a screen almost 3 times the diagonal of my monitor. However, it is very important to me that 3-year-olds stay the hell away from the expensive toys in my man-cave.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Ol Olsoc]

You didn't try my little experiment, did you? It isn't necessarily the OS - but the Program. PowerPoint - for one example - really really likes AVI's, despite Microsoft "not supporting the format. WMV's, mpg's?. Not so much.

Take that WMV and pop it into a PowerPoint presentation. Now give the presentation to 10 different people. Watch what happens......

I'll spare everyone the suspense. What will likely happen is that when it comes time to play the video, you will be kicked out of PowerPoint, taken into Windows Media Player, then the screen will resize to the video's dimension, and the projector will go blank, or act weird in some other way as it adjusts to the new image. Then when you want to go back to PowerPoint, you just do the reverse. That's if you are lucky.

Thing is, the presentation machine and the playback machine better have the same codec. Even then, I've seen PowerPoint kick the video . Some times video settings might be th e culprit, but it's a PITA that you don't know about until the presentation fails. Willing to bet your job that everyone's machine does have the same codec's and settings? We're not talking the wonderful world of nerds where everyone has all the drivers and the latest and greatest of everything, and it's kinda fun to poke around anyhow? We're talking about a room full of 6 and 7 figure heavy hitters who don't know nor care about the codec, they just want to see the presentation.

So you can either make it AVI with Cinepak, or something that won't work. Good luck with telling them about the great new codec you know about that is sooo much better than AVI. And if it's popular, too, I'm sure they will think that's just great...

Re:foot.shoot();

[Ol Olsoc]

Seriously man, we all know AVI is not as advanced as other formats.

But some of us, especially those who use PowerPoint, are pretty much constrained to it.

It's what PowerPoint and every Windows machine will handle. I spend a lot of time converting the "good" format videos to AVI so that all machines will play them. BTW, how awesome is a format if the machine won't play it? And "Installing the codec thingy" is a little awkward in the middle of a meeting.

So just relax, take a deep breath, and if you don't need to use AVI, then at least feel sorry for those of us who have to.

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

You didn't try my little experiment, did you?

You didn't read my post, did you? Windows XP supports the WMV container and codecs out of the box.

PowerPoint - for one example - really really likes AVI's, despite Microsoft "not supporting the format.

Plays WMVs just fine.

What will likely happen is that when it comes time to play the video, you will be kicked out of PowerPoint, taken into Windows Media Player, then the screen will resize to the video's dimension, and the projector will go blank, or act weird in some other way as it adjusts to the new image.

No. This isn't how playback in PowerPoint works - and the output mode should only change if someone has changed their video output settings to theater mode/etc.

Thing is, the presentation machine and the playback machine better have the same codec.

Everyone's machine really does have WMP and therefore supports WMV as long as they have Windows XP or newer. And they do, since this is 2010 and not 2002.

So you can either make it AVI with Cinepak, or something that won't work.

And then you can choose having a small poor-quality file or a huge file. And that's after you get software to create an AVI file.

Good luck with telling them about the great new codec you know about that is sooo much better than AVI.

WMV is not a "great new codec"; the container and decoders have been supported in Windows for almost (if not over) a decade. AVI is not a codec.

Re:foot.shoot();

[jedidiah]

I dunno. "truncated" files seem to work much better with AVI than mp4 and streaming doesn't seem to be terribly troublesome either.

Perhaps these were problems that were more apparent in the Net of 10 years ago.

OTOH, I don't see any real indication at the Apple store itself that they are using any of these advanced features of quicktime.

Like I said: it seems to be the Anime freaks pushing the state of the art and not Apple.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Ol Olsoc]

Thanks for telling me how PowerPoint works.

Most respectfully, you are living in a dream world. I regularly get 20 or 30 PowerPoint presentations for a meeting, with nearly as many formats, wrappers, containers, and resolutions as you could want. To top it off, often made with different versions of PowerPoint.

They simply will not all work correctly.

The most consistent thing is that the presentation owners come in with your attitude. Neither your attitude nor theirs will make it work.

Fact is, it needs to work on the presentation computer. If not, you've failed. It does not matter if it worked on your computer, it's still a fail.

Large file or low quality?

So what if the file is big? A small file that doesn't play correctly is a big failure. And do you find it difficult to find software to create avi's? I can make them directly from all my Video software. I don't want to sound snarky, but with your knowledge of Powerpoint and video, you should already know that.

Fact is, you can put an AVI with Cinepak compression into an PowerPoint presentation, and it will play from within the presentation. Scale up, or down within the presentation, it will maintain the same resolution you were at to start with. If there is major scaling and multiple videos per screen, I usually do scale those down to save processor power. But it will play on any computer that has enough oomph to play the video in the first place.

And once again, just so you know, I fully understand that the Windows OS supports WMV. So what? If the program doesn't support WMV in the form I need it, then I have to use something else. I have a program that I have to use, and it works a certain way. I need to make the parts of it in that way in order for it to work. And if a WMV kicks me out of the program and changes the resolution, I need to use something that doesn't do that.

Finally, are you available as a consultant? My job could be made several hours shorter each day if I didn't have to convert what are obviously non functioning presentations to ones that function. Your saying that the OS supports WMV does not mean that PowerPoint on another machine will play it correctly. Thing is though, your solution has to work, not just be a Slashdot reply. I need ground truth, not platitudes about what every computer that uses XP OS and above "support". I need someone to make every presentation actually work without modifying the original files.

Then the show would have to work on as many other computers of varying vintage and setup as possible. XP and above would be reasonable. But they would be computers that I have no control over. We've found a solution that works. It takes some labor, and has some limitations, but it doesn't fail. Up to the task?

Re:foot.shoot();

[nxtw]

Most respectfully, you are living in a dream world. I regularly get 20 or 30 PowerPoint presentations for a meeting, with nearly as many formats, wrappers, containers, and resolutions as you could want. To top it off, often made with different versions of PowerPoint.

They simply will not all work correctly.

I am talking about one container and its codecs: WMV.

So what if the file is big? A small file that doesn't play correctly is a big failure.

It can take a long time to send large files over a WAN or Internet connection.

And do you find it difficult to find software to create avi's? I can make them directly from all my Video software.

I don't have a problem with creating AVIs. But users have software that will create WMV files. There's even such a program in Windows XP.

Your saying that the OS supports WMV does not mean that PowerPoint on another machine will play it correctly.

Indeed; that's why I also said that WMV is supported by PowerPoint.

Re:foot.shoot();

[Ol Olsoc]

I see you are going to persist.

No problem. Your answer to the suit who wonders why his presentation doesn't work is that it does work.

Good luck with that.

Um.

[headkase]

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.

Re:Um.

[binaryspiral]

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.

I don't want to take the air out of your argument... but... your Xbox 360 never had the ability to play divx/xvid videos until Microsoft released an update. They can release another to accept mpeg4 - but they won't. That's a great feature for the next Microsoft gaming console.

Re:Um.

[mstahl]

As of last year or so the Xbox 360 plays MPEG-4 files just fine. I have mine play them over the network from my server.

Re:Um.

[nine-times]

XBox 360 can't decode h264? I thought it could. If not, then maybe they ought to get on board, since it looks like h264 is the current de facto standard.

Re:Um.

[maxume]

Microsoft implies that the format support is quite a bit broader than that:

http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/GamesandMedia/Movies/VideoFAQ/ViewVideoPlaybackFAQ.aspx

Is there something they aren't saying that makes DivX better than other stuff?

Re:Um.

[MistrBlank]

I don't know the format specifically, but I do know that the current version of handbrake rips my DVDs well for playback on the Xbox and my iPhone. I love it.

It should also be noted, it took PCauthority 2 months on the latest release to come to this realization? Authority they are not, clearly.

Re:Um.

[TrancePhreak]

They already released an update that plays mpeg4. In fact, I played a handbrake'd mp4 just yesterday.

Re:Um.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd say that, if anything, this is an atypical OSS developer mindset. The OSS world is bulging at the seams with projects for hacking linux onto obsolete embedded devices, and manipulating old filesystems, and supporting m68K, and so on and so forth. Hardly ever does a major project give the past the finger without provoking at least the threat of a leaner, less bloated, fork to continue supporting the good old days. Handbrake is OSS; but its heart is in Mac-land. Dropping support for something whose elegance has been found wanting in favour of the Ordained New and Shiny, is the order of the day over there.

Re:Um.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

DivX's main area of survival, to the best of my knowledge, is a huge percentage of DVD players(ah, how ironic that the "DIVX" psuedo-DVD died; but most DVD players now play DivX...".

The early ones, even the expensive gear, generally didn't support it; but these days even the cheap, nasty, $25-$50 ones you can pick up in pharmacies and grocery stores generally do. All the cool kids these days have media center PCs, or at least networked STB appliances; but a bottom-of-the-barrel DVD player and a stack of CD-Rs is still fairly compelling for the technophobe or cheapskate. Of course, that doesn't describe the sort of people who write OSS, so they have no reason to care.

Re:Um.

[hairyfeet]

Personally I prefer the aptly named All To Avi. It is free, supports most of the popular formats, and most importantly for me outputs .Avi files that even my cheapskate family members with the el cheapo DVDs can play just beautifully. Also supports keeping the subtitles if you so desire.

As for handbrake? well considering the one format that just about every DVD players seems to support nowadays is DivX, that just gives me a really good reason to avoid and not recommend their software. Maybe in a couple of years when every player supports .Mkv, but that day isn't upon us yet.

Re:Um.

[DigiShaman]

*sniff*

What, no version for Windows???

Re:Um.

[msimm]

On your legacy Xbox you should be able to stream .mp4, so just remux. You could do that with Avidemux or just use something simple like XenonMKV. Remuxing will give you the container format you need without requiring a (lossy) re-encode although depending on the audio format you might sometimes need to recode AC3->AAC.

Here's a cool list of container formats in case anyone's not see it.

Re:Um.

[headkase]

Thank you.

Re:Um.

[Boibo]

It can, but the deffenition of supported h264 formats is tiny, you have better luck just running divx/xvid. The ps3 has better defined rules for h264 and thuss even support 95% of the mkv files on the net (but you need to remux the header and perhaps audio, but that thats max 5 min on a 300$ system).

Re:Um.

[paulhar]

Unfortunately the mp4 playback on the XBOX doesn't have 5.1 stereo. If you want 5.1 then you have to use AVI.

http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/xbox360/gamesandmedia/movies/videofaq/viewvideoplaybackfaq.aspx

Re:Um.

[Bert64]

Cheap players are more likely to support it, for the same reason cheap dvd players tend to have more support for vcd formats especially the extended vcd formats popular in china...
Most of these players and/or their components are made in china, for the chinese market.

Re:Um.

[drinkypoo]

DivX is just MPEG4, so is XviD, most players which will play one will play the other, but in my experience more play XviD than DivX!

Re:Um.

[phorm]

Hmm. From what I remember of trying to get my 360 to play networked video: it isn't so simple as "connect to a network share and play file", but rather connect to a machine running XP MCE, Vista, or (assumedly) 7, which would then transcode the file over the network into a format the 360 can receive.

So it's not actually "playing an MPEG-4", but rather it's playing a file that your PC has re-encoded to a 360-compatible format. Of course something may have changed, but that was my experience last time I checked

Re:Um.

[subsolar2]

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.

I stream h.264 encoded M4V files to my Xbox 360 using windows Media Player 11 without any issues. Now there is a "media update" on the Xbox required to do it, but as long as you have a valid Xbox Live account it should happen automatically.

Re:Um.

[DavidTC]

All the cool kids these days have media center PCs, or at least networked STB appliances; but a bottom-of-the-barrel DVD player and a stack of CD-Rs is still fairly compelling for the technophobe or cheapskate.

Hey, I'm a cool kid! That can't be right.

But, yeah, I'm reading this in bemusement. People actually burn downloaded stuff onto a CD-R to watch it? (Presumably actually a CD-RW.) Is this 2002 or something?

Pretty much anyone with technical skills a) bought a dedicated appliance to play stuff off the network, or b) slapped together a PC, threw linux + XBMC on it, maybe hooked in a remote or just a wireless keyboard, or c) ran a cable from the S-video out of their PC, along with a audio splitter or extra sound card, and uses their TV as a second screen, either using XMBC or whatnot, or just telling MPC to launch on the other screen and running to another room.

Even the poorest sap can do (c). Granted, it requires your PC be reasonable close to your TV, unless you can spring for one of those 'wireless video card' they came out with recently. (Also, you have to have a video card with S-Video out, but if you can't afford one of those, you can't afford a DVD player that can play video files on CD.)

Now, I can see why people living with technophobes wouldn't want to do (c)...but that's what XMBC or an appliance is for. Seriously, if you're a geek, even a poor geek, pull together enough dedicated computer to stick Linux+XMBC to hook it to your TV.(1) You don't need a lot for video playback. And if you absolutely cannot afford that, run an S-Video cable from your main computer.

Having to actually put stuff on a physical medium and carry it to your entertainment center...ugh. If you want to watch something, you either have to have already burned to CD, wasting a lot of CD-Rs, or you have run over and burn it at the time. Likewise, you can't start things downloading and come back and have them done, you've still got another step.

1) And someone is about to leap in claiming something else is better than XMBC. Whatever, that's not the point.

Re:Um.

[jo_ham]

Did you read the reason why AVI containers were dropped?

From the site:

AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete. It does not support modern container features like chapters, muxed-in subtitles, variable framerate video, or out of order frame display. Furthermore, HandBrake's AVI muxer is vanilla AVI 1.0 that doesn't even support large files. The code has not been actively maintained since 2005. Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read and maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance.

It has been removed for development reasons, not for any "Mac developer newest tech or bust" conspiracy. As it stands, they always welcome new developers, although VLC is really crying out for Mac developers (desperately), and the lack of Mac devs on that project is affecting DVD ripping/encoding in Handbrake, which relies on VLC for reading encrypted DVDs. This is broken for me right now in 10.6, unfortunately.

I think you need to reassess the "mindsets" that you are applying to people writing and developing these OSS projects. What suddenly makes them bad guys because they are writing for OS X, other than your own prejudice?

Re:Um.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The most common use case I've heard is the "parents with children".

Y'know, kiddo absolutely loves Disney Kiddie Pablum vol. 5, and wants to load and play it himself; but has the demonstrated ability to murder a $20 DVD in under a week. So, when you first get the disk, you toss it into your PC, handbrake it to a 700MB DivX and burn a CD.

Kiddo then gets the CD, the DVD goes into storage, and you are out $.05 and 5 minutes to make a new one when he kills it.

For just about anybody else, this is obsolete; but being able to produce a disk playable by anybody(most of the time, there isn't even a menu, you just insert and it goes, VHS style) on any DVD player has its uses. Probably handy for the more retro brand of older relatives, as well.

Re:Um.

[Draek]

Yes, I did read them, I was merely commenting that the viewpoint of calling a format still in widespread use such as AVI and DivX "obsolete" and using it as one of the reasons for not supporting it is more typical among Mac developers than OSS ones, which is a fact.

Their announcement would've been taken far nicer had they simply said "the code is stagnant and there's nobody left to maintain it, so we're dropping it" rather than trying to justify themselves with their "obsolete" BS.

Re:Um.

[jo_ham]

But "obsolete" in this context means "outdated and unfit for current purpose" not "no one is using it".

They explained why, and the context is clear from that.

Windows XP is "obsolete" in this context too, despite still being in widespread use.

Re:Um.

[hairyfeet]

Mark me troll ALL you want, you codec nazis can't change reality and nobody uses "container" grammar bullshit! When is the last time you saw a QT or WMV or RMB file in an avi? Never? Well guess what clueless, that's because NOBODY uses those formats in an avi container! Duh.

Why /., normally a haven of libertarian common sense, would fall for grammar nazi bullshit is beyond me. NOBODY uses WMV or RMB in a MKV "container, just as NOBODY uses the above in an avi container. Avi is DivX or Xvid MP4, and Mkv is H26x + AAC. Is that REALLY so hard to grasp? Nobody cares if you theoretically can put those in an avi or mkv, because the odds of actually coming across a file made that way is effectively 0.0%. Sure you can do it theoretically, and theoretically you can put mini pancakes in your DVD drive, but that don't make it a toaster.

So please, insane codec nazis, won't you come on down from mount clueless and smell the reality? an avi is an MP4 file, an mkv is H26x+aac. Is that really so hard for you to accept? Do you honestly think that someone is just gonna change that tomorrow, so that RMV is now mkv and WMV is now avi? Not gonna happen, so come on down to reality street. Things make more sense here.

Re:Um.

[mstahl]

Nah it's a pretty standard UPnP system with well-documented open source programs you can run it on, like ushare (http://ushare.geexbox.org/). Like I said: pretty simple.

Re:Um.

[Draek]

No they didn't. They explained why AVI doesn't support most of the features they do, but that doesn't mean they can't support it nor why they'd refuse to support DivX in the future as well (they can't do it now since the code is lacking a maintainer, so that is understandable, but refusing under any circumstance to add support for it again is mere arrogance).

And yes, if somebody refused to support Windows XP for being "obsolete", I'd call him an arrogant prick as well.

Re:Um.

[DavidTC]

Ironically, right after I posted this, I was talking to my mother, who mentioned that my grandmother wanted some specific show and was there a way for me to download and get it to her, on her DVD player. (My mother has a Linux+XMBC+hellanzb system I set up that automatically downloads TV shows. So she knows about all this downloading stuff, even if she has no idea what's going on behind the scene.)

I was forced to admit I didn't actually know how to make CDs or DVDs that could play in a DVD player from downloaded video. Or, rather, I could figure out how to do it if I knew what actual format I needed to convert to, but I don't.

But, yeah, I know about the people who actually want backup DVDs. That makes a limited amount of sense, and a good deal of sense for people with children. (Especially those people with DVD players in cars. I can just imagine how roughly DVDs in cars get treated by kids.)

I'm not quite sure why people would be using CD-Rs instead of DVD, though.

But there are a lot of people here talking about downloading stuff and putting it on DVD, it seems to me. Maybe I'm crazy and just confusing the two different conversations.

Re:Um.

[Beardo the Bearded]

You've never tried to get an ATI card working under Ubuntu, have you?

"lol get a different card"

Re:Um.

[jo_ham]

They support the MKV container. So does DivX themselves.

It's a transcoder that is maintained as an OSS project and given away for free. They are not putting AVI back in for all the reasons mentioned - it just doesn't fit with the goals of the project and is a major pain to manage with the rest of the code - with a ton of conditionals and exceptions and convoluted workflows. It was too much of a hassle for something that doesn't really work as needed.
They are not refusing to support DivX ever again - DivX is a codec, not a container.

It's not arrogance to drop something that adds more hassle than it is worth from a project, especially if you are not being paid for it. If you specifically need an AVI container-producing app you can roll your own, or find someone else who is still making one.

Hell, fork Handbrake if you really want.

Re:Um.

[hairyfeet]

/bashes head on desk/ You Do realize you just answered a post complaining about codec nazis by actually posting a codec nazi post, yes? We ALL KNOW that the MP4 group have set the standards of MP4, of which DivX and Xvid and H26x is ALL a part of okay? That was NOT the point!

The POINT was pedantic bullshit, which is what grammar nazis and by extensions codec nazis seem to love to get their little pink panties in a wad over, which for some reason while my haven from the stupid /. don't put up with grammar nazi bullshit does put up with codec nazi bullshit, which guess what? Is STILL bullshit!

If someone comes to you and says "I am having trouble playing avi files" are you gonna think "Hmmmm..well are they WMV avi files, or RMV avi files, or maybe they are made with the Indeo codec?" FUCK NO! You are gonna think they have a problem playing bog standard DivX/Xvid MP4 files. Why do you think that? It is because THAT IS WHAT AN AVI IS! Sure you could put something else in there, the point is you don't, I don't, and nobody else does either.

And just now, when we finally killed the "avi is a container" bullshit, because everyone and their dog knows that avi is bog standard DivX/Xvid MP4, along comes Mkv and the same total bullshit all over again. Have you EVER seen an RMV file in a Mkv? How about a Wmv? Me neither, because just as avi is DivX/Xvid MP4, so is Mkv equal H26x+aac.

So for all the home users, that just want to know how to get their damned files to play, I stand here on my little soapbox and try to drive a stake through the heart of pedantic bullshit. Every. single. post. I have seen asking for help with mkv has that same stupid, dumbass, totally fucking pointless "mkv is a container" bullshit, and who are you helping? Not a God damned single person on the planet, that's who. The user doesn't give a wet monkey fart that you CAN put a RMV in a Mkv container, because that ain't what they've got. So can we PLEASE let the "x is a container" pedantic bullshit DIAF already? It helps nobody, and adding it to a post is simply class a douchebag behavior. You know what they mean, I know what they mean, so why do we have to pretend it means something else,huh?

They don't like supporting it

[phantomfive]

Basically, from the article:

The [Handbrake DivX] code has not been actively maintained since 2005. Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read and maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance."

They go on to explain that DivX quality isn't as good either. I am not sure if that is true or not, but I think the major reason they are dropping it is because they didn't want to be bothered. Which is as valid a reason as any, I suppose.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, from the article:

The [Handbrake DivX] code has not been actively maintained since 2005. Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read and maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance."

They go on to explain that DivX quality isn't as good either. I am not sure if that is true or not, but I think the major reason they are dropping it is because they didn't want to be bothered. Which is as valid a reason as any, I suppose.

Yeah, but the developers are kinda douchey as it is. For one thing, try downloading an older release -- they delete them all.

  I can't get the latest to compile, on two different linux boxes (one Debian, one Ubuntu), so I've been using my older copy on the Debian machine. My binary won't run on the Ubuntu box, though so I needed an older version. I had to grab an svn snapshot of a previous release to get the older source code, and then their manky build system tries to download certain packages from a handbrake-run ftp in order to get specific versions of certain libraries, which fails to work since they've removed those files specific to the older version of handbrake. *sigh*

  While googling for older releases I saw that other people have had persistent bugs in the last couple of releases which result in the devs basically giving a "works for me" response, leaving those wanting the older releases, too.

  Their answer they give to anyone asking about an older version is "use the latest version, it has the most features." Which is a kinda jerky answer.

  And did I mention their build system sucks? Sure, autotools is a bitch for a dev to set up, but at least it's never given me weird, inexplicable failures like jam and especially scons. (Damn you to hell, scons! I want those two afternoons back!)

Re:They don't like supporting it

[nxtw]

They go on to explain that DivX quality isn't as good either. I am not sure if that is true or not

The program never supported DivX to begin with; it used XviD. And MPEG-4 Part 2 (the standard XviD implements) is known to be inferior to H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10. H.264 is much more widely used than MPEG-4 Part 2 - in satellite TV, videoconferencing, Blu-ray, etc.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[kestasjk]

As a user nothing pisses me off like reporting, say, a MySQL bug and getting the response "oh that's in 5.x.y not 5.x.(y+1)? Sorry but we only fix bugs in the latest release"

As a developer nothing pisses me off like a user expecting me to have every version of my code installed on every conceivable platform ready to be debugged and rereleased with fixes, it's just not practical (especially for FOSS projects).

So yes it's annoying as hell, but having around all the old code and dependencies when you want to keep moving to code forward is equally annoying; it's either you or them getting frustrated, and since it's their choice and there's no money involved to force their hand you're out of luck.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but it wouldn't rxactly be a terrible burden on them to leave the older releases on the server, maybe with a "we don't support these anymore" notice.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[mr_stinky_britches]

Sure, it's an annoyance, but when you are the premiere open-source solution for something as like video encoding, I think there is (or at least should be) a duty to at least keep the older releases around. Especially if they are a dropping features that were supported in the older versions. If the developers arrangement is so cluttered that they can't be bothered to keep the old releases available, then that points to ineptitude and makes for poor relations with the user-base. File management is not that hard compared to the groundbreaking features these developers are implementing. If they can't be reasonable and/or nice about things, perhaps someone else will step up to the plate and fork the project, because that's probably what it would take to get things into a sane state of being.

Annoying the users just opens the window for someone else to step in.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[cynyr]

The real problem here is that it uses bundled libs. Those are a HUGE!!!! security nightmare waiting to happen.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[DigitAl56K]

Without commenting on why Handbrake has dropped support for AVI (I'm sure they have their reasons), it is a simply bit of a shame for users looking to make highly portable content. DivX is one of the most widely supported formats on devices ranging from portable media players, DVD and Blu-Ray players, digital TV's, set-top boxes, and even mobile phones. It's always been a major goal to make it extremely easy for people to take content from their computer and move it into their living room or take it with them on the go, and there are now over 250 million DivX devices out there.

There is of course now also DivX Plus, which uses H.264/AAC/MKV, and Handbrake can still output that. You can actually already find a preset for Handbrake here. Devices certified for DivX Plus will be arriving this year, with announcements already covering Philips and Seagate. DivX Plus Web Player already supports these files so you can upload your DivX or DivX Plus file to any standard HTTP server and embed it directly in your web pages. It enables viewers to watch these files in embedded, windowed, or full-screen modes and save them for device transfer later. DivX Player provides free playback on Windows and Mac, and we also include an MKV splitter for Microsoft Media Foundation in Windows 7. By consequence of that, you can watch DivX Plus files with hardware acceleration and already stream them to Windows Media Center Extender and UPNP devices.

So again, for so many people who own DivX devices, it's unfortunate, but there are also many other tools out there that will do the job. It's at least nice to see them supporting MKV, which will work in DivX Plus devices in future.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[eqisow]

And just try telling them this. The fun part starts at the bottom with 0x100, a packager for Fedora's rmfusion.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[itslifejimbutnotaswe]

So step up instead of whining about it. What is stopping you? I'm sure they'd welcome the assistance. Instead you're just gonna whine about it though, right?

Re:They don't like supporting it

[Sir_Lewk]

Calling people that give you software for fucking free "douchey", is well, pretty douchey.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[mwolfe38]

Installed no problem for me on kubuntu kludgy 9.10 x86. Took all of two clicks to get working. What kind of ubuntu user are you anways, trying to compile crap. Stay with what you are familiar with. You're making the community look bad when you fail. This isn't gentoo man.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[kestasjk]

Perhaps, I've been threatened with this myself by a user who wanted a feature I wasn't prepared to implement, but some things you should bear in mind:

• Forking the code would be hard work, over a long period beyond that of an idle threat. It really isn't intimidating, especially if you mainly want to maintain legacy code and not add new features.
  There's no threat from that at all, and if it turns out there is it's easy to implement legacy support and destroy all momentum the fork has at any moment.
• You might think this or that task is surely easy compared to this or that feature that they have implemented, but whatever this or that feature was chances are they wanted it implemented themselves, and had fun coding it, whereas the thing you have in mind is probably mundane and of no usefulness to them.
  This is really common, the boring fixes and maintenance really do just weigh you down and sap your enthusiasm, even while you're busy working on something that is much more difficult

Again I also hate being on the receiving end of this, I'm not saying it's good, but this is the reality of it. It's not out of spite but just because hobby projects can't survive if you need to maintain multiple versions and support legacy standards you're not interested in.

If you think Handbrake has a "duty" you should see hobby projects like SQLite, which are just the same. I submitted a pretty serious bug report regarding SQLite 2.x (the latest 2.x) and drh told me I should use 3.x instead, and SQLite 2.x has a lot more installations than Handbrake.
That's just the nature of a hobby project; if you want to tap into all that free work you've got to go with it, because no-one is going to maintain a fork with the dedication of the hobbyist themselves

Re:They don't like supporting it

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

If someone gave me a free paper (btw, in the UK there's a free paper called the Metro) and then proceeded to punch me in the eye or insulted me I'd be pretty entitled to call them douchey. Without being douchey myself.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[bheer]

Mark parent +1 insightful. Most DVD player imports from Asia support DivX (in fact, the only ones who don't support it are the big-brand names like Sony). I've taken random .avi files, burnt 'em on a DVD-R and these have played on a $30 DVD player. Yeah, I know it's not very high-tech, but it works.

I do hope they'll keep the old version (which supported Xvid/Divx) around for download.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[FooBarWidget]

Of course you can still criticize him for being an all-round jerk. But if you tell him "wtf, Pepsi? I want coca cola, of the most expensive kind" then that *is* douchy of you.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[FooBarWidget]

But if he insulted you because you told him "wtf, Metro? no I want *that* newspaper over there not this piece of shit" then you entirely deserves to be insulted.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[Jesus_666]

And did I mention their build system sucks? Sure, autotools is a bitch for a dev to set up, but at least it's never given me weird, inexplicable failures like jam and especially scons. (Damn you to hell, scons! I want those two afternoons back!)

Until you run into a program the developer of which didn't manage to properly set up the autotools, leading to, yes, inexplicable failures and having to rewrite files written in an antique macro language. Attempting to build SDL_sound and its weird dependency SMPEG by hand is one of the more grueling experiences I've had with *nix.

Using autotools only protects the user from a quirky and nerve-grating build process if the developer has an understanding of the autotools package, its associated programs and files and the M4 macro language. Otherwise you just usually end up lucky that the copypasted code happens to work as expected.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[Anonymous Coward]

There are also plenty of not DivX Plus certified devices that can play H.264/AAC/MKV perfectly. The WD TV and other cheap media players like Popcornhour and Xstreamer support it.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[drinkypoo]

Of course you can still criticize him for being an all-round jerk. But if you tell him "wtf, Pepsi? I want coca cola, of the most expensive kind" then that *is* douchy of you.

Pepsi makes me want to puke, but I will drink Coke. In fact I just fan'd on failbook ``"Can I have a coke?" Is pepsi alright? "Uh, Is monopoly money alright?"'' And trust me, it's not brand loyalty, it's just that Pepsi is repugnant.

Knowing what you like and don't like doesn't make you a douche. I wonder why you think it does?

Re:They don't like supporting it

[Tim C]

If the developers arrangement is so cluttered that they can't be bothered to keep the old releases available

That's just it - surely deleting the old version takes more effort than simply leaving it there, and adding a link to the latest version?

Re:They don't like supporting it

[zippthorne]

Isn't ffmpeg the "premiere" open source video encoder?

Re:They don't like supporting it

[someones1]

Was going to say the same thing. SO many cheapo DVD players support DivX... seems like a silly move. Why NOT support a format?

Re:They don't like supporting it

[FooBarWidget]

Alright, next time your girlfriend/wife/whatever makes breakfast in bed for you, complain about that she didn't make the right food or that it's not hot enough or that there's not enough salt in it, etc. Then figure out for yourself why she gets mad.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[Sir_Lewk]

No shit, "punching someone in the eye" is physical assault. If you are honestly trying to compare "dropping divx/avi support" to "physical assault", then you have some issues.

This is more akin to someone giving you a free paper (btw, there are free papers just about everywhere, not really a UK phenomenon), and not publishing articles that are of interest to you. If you called the newspaper douchey because they didn't publish enough articles about, say cats, then you would indeed be rather douchey.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[mr_stinky_britches]

Ffmpeg doesn't appear to be as "user friendly" as ffmpeg.

From what I understand, Handbrake is super easy to use, with a bloated interface that people love.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[mr_stinky_britches]

whoops, that should have been:

  as "user friendly" as Handbrake.

cheers.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[Sir_Lewk]

They are not "burning all copies they've already printed", they are just not distributing those copies themselves anymore. Nobody is forcing you to upgrade.

Get a fucking grip.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Yeah, but the developers are kinda douchey as it is. For one thing, try downloading an older release -- they delete them all.

This is especially annoying because they are so cavalier about dropping major features. They felt that supporting the PS3 was too hard so they removed PS3 support. Now divx support follows...

Re:They don't like supporting it

[sandmaninator]

I use handbrake to create videos for PSP. The PSP presets were broken in Handbrake 9.3 and they completely removed them in 9.4. I can't find any online posting indicating that anyone can create PSP-compatible vids using 9.4 so, on my new Windows 7 system, I need to run handbrake 9.3 in XP compatibility mode in order to create PSP-ready vids.
Handbrake devs cited the fact that none of the devs owned a PSP and that it was just too much work to ship presets for it in version 9.4.
You get what you pay for...

Re:They don't like supporting it

[donovansmith]

I was trying to do this a little while back and found this thread on the Handbrake forums which helped: http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=13354.

The easiest way I found to encode a video for the PSP in 0.9.4 was select the iPhone preset and go to the Advanced tab and under Current Advanced x264 Option String, delete whatever was there, and paste this:

cabac=0:ref=2:me=umh:bframes=0:8x8dct=0:subq=6:weightb=0

I'm using the Mac version, though, so not sure if the Windows version has an equivalent space for a custom advanced x264 options string. If it doesn't, using that same string on the command-line should work fine too. Saving it as a new preset in the GUI seemed to work fine. Also, check the picture options to make sure that the dimensions don't exceed 480x272.

Re:They don't like supporting it

[drinkypoo]

Alright, next time your girlfriend/wife/whatever makes breakfast in bed for you, complain

My girlfriend knows better than to give me a Pepsi. Stop trying to change the fucking subject.

Talking about apples and oranges.

[Rob from RPI]

DivX is a CODEC, AVI is a CONTAINER. Just because you don't support AVI doesn't mean you don't support DivX.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[Telvin_3d]

DivX is a CODEC, AVI is a CONTAINER. Just because you don't support AVI doesn't mean you don't support DivX

While technically true, that's functionally meaningless. If your program supports limited codecs that work with a particular container (for example... AVI) ditching one is the same as ditching the other.

For all intents and purposes DIVX is AVI as far as popular support goes. I'm not sure I can name another codec that I've seen used in the last few years as more than a intermediate step.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I had this same thought but I think the overall point was that the DivX codec in the AVI container is a piece of shit. MKV and MP4 are the future.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[tepples]

I own a Magnavox DVD player with a DivX logo. The criteria for this logo include not only the MPEG-4 Part 2 codec but also the AVI container.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[Grey Ninja]

so I can only assume that a DivX encoded video in an MKV container is not a piece of shit? Sweet. I'm going to convert all my video library from AVI to MKV, and it's going to rule.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[biryokumaru]

I just renamed all my AVI files to MKV. It's, like, the same thing, right?

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[omnichad]

Well, if it was HD video and you are having problems with A/V sync, it might just help you.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[JDeane]

I have a DVD player that plays Divx disks too, while it might not be the best quality it seems good enough. If you encode your DVD's to something like 1.2GB's its very hard to tell them apart from the actual DVD when its playing.

I like it since I can put a collection of movies on one disk and sit and watch them on a relaxed Sunday. I probably have 20 or 30 of these disks put in a book that I can pick from. I do own the originals but I guess this still makes me a pirate? (especially since I had to use DVD Shrink to rip them in the first place...)

When it comes to HD content then Divx, it seems is not quite as good as H264, and it shows if you have a PS3 and a H264 encoded DVD (HD movies take up a full DVD or even a DVD DL disk) Although to be honest I haven't tried Divx HD and all this requires a HD TV.

Anyway I will be probably sad the day my Divx player dies, I know my PS3 does the same exact thing but I like the idea of it lol

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[Anonymous Coward]

mkv is also a container...which can contain DIVX. All modern players (at least those based on widely available open source libraries) can play any number of codecs out of any number of container formats. They're dropping DIVX, period, otherwise they could plop it into a MKV container and be done with it.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[jedidiah]

The key benefit of divx is that it doesn't take bloody supercomputer in order to decode HD content in software.

You can get a nice amount of compression when compared to MPEG2 without requiring a beefy CPU or dedicated GPU hardware to handle it.

It's clearly inferior in terms of quality. That might be relevant to your particular requirements, or not.

It's nice to be able to choose for yourself rather than some Mac mindset weenies removing the option.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[JDeane]

All very true points.

For HD VS SD is an odd thing.... I love HD TV but I can watch normal TV just fine it does not make me go "eeewww who could watch that" Could be from all the years of using the Internet before video was good quality and that has hardened me to watching things at less then realistic resolutions lol (Hell I remember when 640X480 was considered uber hi res and most games ran at about half that....)

The thing to remember is that the story is whats important not the media!!!

At least with books no one complains about how good it looks... lol

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[dosius]

Don't forget, guys...the same compression format that DivX and XviD uses is also still compatible with the mp4 format using the "mp4v" fourcc.

I use x264 mostly these days (reserving xvid for quickies), but I still consider xvid perfectly sufficient for most uses if configured right. Use what works for you. I think most people are blinded by the leet and that's why we see files that break various players (hell, until recently mplayer didn't even have very good SSA subtitle support; now it works great for the majority of scripts). - I hate Matroska and only use it when I absolutely cannot get the functionality I need from avi or mp4. Do all of its features even work yet outside of Windows-based demuxers?

-uso.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[zmollusc]

Seconded! Eeh, back in t'day I was trying to play dvd-res video fullscreen on a 600MHz PII and divx + VLC could do it with clock cycles to spare while Windows media player saturated the cpu with its lameness.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[Carewolf]

While technically true, that's functionally meaningless. If your program supports limited codecs that work with a particular container (for example... AVI) ditching one is the same as ditching the other.

It is not even technically true. The first version of DiVX was the MSMPEG4 codec in an AVI-container. This was special because the MSMPEG4 was limited by Microsoft to only be used in ASF-containers. So the entire point, what defined DiVX ;) is that it is contained in AVI.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[cheekyboy]

Dont drop old stuff, thats a MS taktic , Linux still supports .txt files right and thats old hat.
Linux still supports GIF and 100 other old picture formats.

We cannot update those cheap chineese dvd players or portable viewers etc... dropping support is stupid as stupid does forrest.

I considered moving to mp4/mkv, but decided not to yet, too many old devices wont accept it.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[Ltap]

The advantage of h.264 is that it can have comparable video quality at a lower bitrate than DivX or XviD - this results in smaller filesizes (which was the whole point of using it for blu-ray in the first place) but requires more processing power to decode. This is attractive for people like Sony because the PS3 is already a monstrously powerful machine (at least by consumer standards) but has very little hard drive space and depends on accessing content stored on optical media. With more powerful players, h.264 will definitely become the way to go, as it stores data more efficiently.

Basically, to sum it up, h.264 is the pirate's wet dream - most people who watch lots of movies will find HDMI-out directly to their HDTV easier and more efficient anyway, and it's ideal for minimizing the space taken up on your hard drive(s). I can make a virtually lossless rip of a DVD9 with 1.5-2.0gb, keeping the original resolution and video quality. They basically beat the hell out of the those 700mb AVIs that release groups seem to love so much.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[FreonTrip]

By modern standards I wouldn't say that a supercomputer is needed to decode h.264 content. Even using Handbrake 0.9.4's High Profile preset (outputting to mkv), there haven't been any issues on my Frankenputer media server - a misbegotten Celeron e1500 with 2 gigs of DDR400 RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro, running 32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate.

That being said, the decision to abruptly remove DiVX ;-) support reeks of high-minded elitism at the expense of user choice, and I don't blame anyone for keeping Handbrake 0.9.3.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[jedidiah]

If you want to decode HD h264 content besides Apple trailers you will either need a fast core CPU or a GPU with special decoding features.

There's really no getting around that.

Then there's ENCODE speed. I didn't even touch on that but that's
even a bigger problem. If something is going to be tricky to decode
then it's going to be slow as h*ll encoding it. Even taking over the
entire box through multi-threading might not even help.

Divx encoding OTOH is relatively easy on a system.

divx represents a different set of tradeoffs. It's not "simply obsolete".

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[FreonTrip]

I'm in agreement with you. Note my encouragement that people keep using 0.9.3 if they wish to use DiVX. h.264 decoders are moving forward - ffmpeg-mt is a major boon, even allowing my Celeron e1500 to decode 1080i video in software - but taking the presumptuous stance that DiVX simply doesn't matter because it's not technically "pure" and in spite of its very large presence in the marketplace is arrogant wishful thinking.

And yeah, even in standard definition h.264 encode times are a bitch. My systems grind through the high-profile preset at a pinch slower than real-time; the saving grace is Handbrake's ability to queue multiple encodes, so I can set up a batch job and then leave it to work overnight. The GPU-accelerated solutions haven't impressed me that much: so far Badaboom only outputs the mp4 container format, and it doesn't support queueing of multiple encodes. Ultimately movie format choices are down to individual preference and need: use the right tool for you.

Re:Talking about apples and oranges.

[toddestan]

A Celeron E1500 isn't all that bad. I built a new computer last summer when I found that my Sempron 3000 with a 9600 Pro couldn't hack HD resolution mkv files (though granted, it almost could do it, it was only slightly choppy). Other than that I was happy with the performance of the computer. Funny thing is I built that computer back when I found my K6-2 couldn't handle DVD resolution DiVX files.

Time synch

[exabrial]

I may be off my base here, but I believe one of the big drawbacks from AVI (I didn't RTFA) is synching audio with video. You'll be watching a movie and suddenly it's dubbed worse than "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge." I am extremely impressed with AAC + h.264. Mp3 has left me very disappointed in movies so far. (probably the extreme dynamic range compression)

Re:Time synch

[scdeimos]

AV-sync is still an issue for modern containers, like MKV, it's just that most GUI front ends automatically handle the parameters when encoding for you - command line pilots still need a calculator.

The biggest drawbacks of the dinosaur AVI container format include: it doesn't support chapters (ah, the hacks in Encarta to work around that); it doesn't support included subtitle streams; it doesn't support alternative video tracks; it doesn't support alternative audio tracks. Heck, in it's 1.0 version it didn't even support multi-gigabyte files. I'm all for covering it with another shovel-full of dirt.

If killing-off support for the AVI container means a few casualties like DivX/XviD codecs (and it doesn't, except for embedded solutions that don't have firmware upgrade paths) there'll be no tears here - there have been much better quality and higher efficiency codecs to replace them for a number of years.

Re:Time synch

[poopdeville]

AV-sync is still an issue for modern containers, like MKV, it's just that most GUI front ends automatically handle the parameters when encoding for you - command line pilots still need a calculator

It works just fine with the HandBrakeCLI program.

Re:Time synch

[nabsltd]

The biggest drawbacks of the dinosaur AVI container format include: it doesn't support chapters (ah, the hacks in Encarta to work around that); it doesn't support included subtitle streams; it doesn't support alternative video tracks; it doesn't support alternative audio tracks.

I have no problem using multiple audio tracks in my AVI files.

I rip my DVDs by converting the video to DivX and keep the original audio (AC3 or DTS). If there are multiple audio tracks (like commentary), they all get added to the AVI file, and although mplayer can't seem to switch audio tracks without a stop and restart, my networked DVD player and PMP don't seem to have any problems.

For non-HD sources, the only problem I have with AVI containing DivX+AC3/DTS is the 2GB file size limit. I have a few DTS DVDs with 1.5Mbps DTS, and those absolutely have to be split into multiple files to keep the video bitrate around 2Mbps.

Re:Time synch

[Chetwood]

Of course it supports alternative audio tracks, all my files are encoded with two audio streams. Maybe you should read up on AVI myths.

Re:Time synch

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I do find MKV's that often have sync errors in them. Its sad really because dealing with MKV is often hard due to the lack of real software support.

MKV is a pretty good format from a feature perspective. I'm not sure its the most efficient way of doing what it does, it does appear to be a pretty damn good container format that does just about everything with the ability to do more thanks to its open source nature.

AVI seems to really be at its end.

Today's video needs embedded subtitles, multiple audio tracks, chapters etc... MKV does it pretty well and while it took some time.. MKV has certainly won over a lot of people.

Re:Time synch

[cheekyboy]

tar up 4 avis, and 4 .mp3 files, and 12 .sub files, and include a .info file. .avi.tar

its just a software problem really.

Re:Time synch

[Ltap]

Yes, Matroska has really simplified things for everybody, from standard release groups to the guys who dub anime. Instead of releasing separate versions of their rip with different language tracks for audio, now you can combine the whole thing into one - subtitles, alternate audio tracks, the works. Simple, clean, and efficient. So, this means none of the hair-pulling that resulted in the days when you spent hours downloading a dvdrip, only to find out that it was in Spanish.

Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg4.

[stevetures]

I was surprised when this happened, but I can appreciate that, ultimately, it's a legacy format. Apparently, the AVI implementation is very convoluted to keep up with new features. Here's a selected quote from their release blog: "It does not support modern container features like chapters, muxed-in subtitles, variable framerate video, or out of order frame display....The code has not been actively maintained since 2005. Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read and maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance." (sadly there didnt seem to be a permalink to the whole article - here's the current news page).

As such, I've moved on and figured out which flavor of mpeg-4 works best for me; and I'm happier with the improved picture quality as a result.

Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[JakFrost]

Because H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is Mature! We have availability of fast and reliable open source x264 H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC encoder and the wide spread usage of Matroska (MKV) container files and MPEG 4 (MP4) container files. Even some set-top boxes support playback of video and audio from both containers now and more are announced for this year. There is also a demand now for HD content in both 720p an and 1080i/p formats H.264 is required to give reasonable file sizes versus XviD/DivX (MPEG-4 ASP).

Also Audio Video Interleave (AVI) container files are problematic and have limitations since they don't allow the inclusion of chapters or subtitles, are not compatible with newer audio encoding formats such as AAC and lossless Dolby Digital or DTS audio formats, and don't work really well with some of the newer video formats.

It is time to move on from this old container format and also move away from older DivX and XviD (MPEG-4 ASP) formats onto the newer H.264 / MPEG-4 (x264) video encoding formats.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

DivX was always a bastard format anyway, from what I recall, it is MPEG 4 video with MPEG 2 audio in a way-obsolete Microsoft-designed container.

If there really is a big demand for it, some other software will support it, or there will be a fork.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[fermion]

I also like the fact that MKV containers can store multiple subtitles. I have only used m4v and mrkv containers of late.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Pentium100]

A lot of DivX DVD players do not support h264 or mkv. Recently I was looking for a DVD player that supported h264, but I only could find Bluray players (very expensive) and "media centers" (also very expensive) that supported a lot of formats, had an ethernet or WiFi capability and no DVD drive. And I don;t see people buying a new DVD player just because it supports this new codec. Those who need a DVD player should look for one with most capabilities, but those who already have one will continue using it.

I have never used chapters (not on Laserdisc, DVD or mkv files) and I have seen some .avi files with AC3 (which is Dolby digital) audio on them.

I agree about the subtitles, but, unless you are watching anime, you will have to find the subtitles yourself, they will be contained in a separate file and you will be able to watch the movie with subtitles no matter what container it is in. (I prefer hard subs though).

Don't get me wrong - I like h264, I usually download anime in this codec, unless it is not available. But that is because I watch anime on my computer, so I don't have to worry about compatibility problems.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Snaller]

But we don't have any proper tools to work with them, only a few ultra nerdware ports. Until then naff off with your weird formats.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[poopdeville]

I agree about the subtitles, but, unless you are watching anime, you will have to find the subtitles yourself, they will be contained in a separate file and you will be able to watch the movie with subtitles no matter what container it is in. (I prefer hard subs though).

No, that's the point. Your dvd rip can include the dvd's subtitle streams, in the MKV container itself. You don't need to search for subtitles matching whatever you just downloaded. ;-)

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[cynyr]

Now if only i could get my PS3 to play a MKV. I'm stck with MP4's because of it.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[CronoCloud]

A PS3 is what you need, and H.264 isn't new. I've had an H.264 playing device since 2005! (PSP).

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Pentium100]

And how much does that cost? More or less that the ~200EUR "media center" or blu ray player?

I bought the DivX DVD player for ~30EUR.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[DigitAl56K]

Protip: DivX Plus is H.264/AAC/MKV, and DivX desktop software has been playing and creating it for the past year. DivX Plus Web Player lets you embed it in your web pages and serve it from any HTTP server, and the first DivX Plus certified devices were announced at CES. You can even find DivX Plus presets for Handbrake here!

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Draek]

We have availability of fast and reliable open source x264 H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC encoder and the wide spread usage of Matroska (MKV) container files and MPEG 4 (MP4) container files. Even some set-top boxes support playback of video and audio from both containers now and more are announced for this year.

All of which are priced so insanely high as to make the prospect of buying a PS3 just to watch movies a reasonable proposition. Whereas my DivX-compatible DVD player cost me what? $60? and that was about 4 years ago, I'm guessing they're even cheaper now.

Until you fix *THAT* little problem and lower prices to a reasonable level, no, it won't be time to move anywhere else yet.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[otis wildflower]

As long as it can produce files that will play on my PS3 properly without reencoding/transcoding, that's OK with me.

My Xtreamer actually handles MKVs properly, PS3 not so much, alas.

I just wonder if/when there'll be an opensource project that isn't as antagonistic to its user community, I haven't seen developer crankiness like that since friggin OpenBSD. I wonder if the devs are plants from Slysoft that drive 'normal' users into buying paid copies of AnyDVD?

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Bender Unit 22]

No but the WD TV player http://www.wdc.com/en/products/WDTV/ can play h.264 mkv etc in 1080p. I consider it to be cheap, just make sure to get the version with networking.

I am not sure if it can do different framerate directly to the tv properly(if the TV supports them).

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[MemoryDragon]

There are problems with mpeg4 as well, the licensing forbids to host videos bigger than 10 minutes on the web unless you pay big $$$ to the patent holders (the mpeg consortium) one of the reasons why Youtube has the 10 minute limit on uploaded video files.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Pentium100]

The Tv can only do 576p - standard PAL video. It supports NTSC too, but that is lower resolution.

Anyway, the price looks kinda normal, but on the high side. It doesn't have a DVD drive though, and the manual does not specify if it supports a USB DVD drive.

In any case, I have the player now, but in the future If I ever need another one, I'll probably give this a try.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[hitmark]

one could probably shift it to a mkv container, but then there is a internet meme that avi == divx/xvid and mkv == mpeg4 ("preferably" 720 or higher resolution).

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[CronoCloud]

Why would you buy a product in this day and age that doesn't support the most ubiquitous and popular portable video format: MP4. It's not a fancy new format. there were portable devices playing both MP4 ASP and H.264 AVC in 2004.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[CronoCloud]

Don't know how much it is in Euros, but considering it's a blu-ray player AND has media capabilities, AND plays games, it's a better deal. It "should" even play your DivX files on those DVD's but since it does DLNA it can just play them directly from your PC.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Ltap]

DivX might have stayed current, but the latest few versions have slowly become more and more proprietary, which is why many people have switched to XviD - not alleviating the problem, I'm afraid.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Ltap]

Here's a solution - HDMI-out. Use it. It eliminates all of the headaches that come from DVD players.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[jridley]

That's all great. Where do I buy a set-top box for $50 that will play AVC files off a thumb drive?

I don't really dive a damn about chapters, subtitles, lossless dolby digital or any of that other crud. I just want to grab some video in relatively small format, I don't care all that much about quality (though honestly XviDs look fine to me) and watch a TV show from last week.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[jridley]

Great. I don't care about playing games, I wouldn't pay a dime for the feature. I can buy a set top box that plays AVIs for $50. Where's that functionality at that price point (heck, I'll even go to $100) for MKV files?

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Pentium100]

Is there a converter that converts the HDMI out to standard composite signal, because the TV only accepts that. No HDMI, no RGB and no S-Video.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Ltap]

I'd get rid of the TV, frankly. Buying a new one and running the cable to it would be a much better purchase than buying a DVD player that will be obsolete within a few years anyway.

I've honestly never heard of a TV that didn't have, at the very least, s-video. Modern ones usually ditch it for HDMI, but usually they have one of them. It must have been a pretty cheap TV - or it still has rabbit ears and a tuning dial.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Pentium100]

We have cable, so no rabbit ears. The TV is ~15 years old and has one composite input (and one output). No SCART and no S-Video.

So, buy a new TV = a lot of money. In that case, a cheap DVD player will be better until cheap DVD players start supporting mkv.

Also, running the cable from where? My PC? I could do that already (video card has composite output), but I don't think my parents would like having to use a PC for watching movies.

I just watch movies on my monitor, because it is as big as that TV (both are 21" CRTs), but my parents want a simpler device that they can control using a remote instead of keyboard+mouse.

In any case, the DVD player I bought now supports DVDs and divx, which is still the standard of how TV series are released on torrents (dvd rips too). I hope that h264/mkv supporting devices become cheap by the time tv shows on torrents become h264/mkv even for SD versions.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[caitsith01]

It is time to move on from this old container format and also move away from older DivX and XviD (MPEG-4 ASP) formats onto the newer H.264 / MPEG-4 (x264) video encoding formats.

Great! I look forward to you visiting my house to upgrade all of my hardware which supports DivX but not h264.

It's really nice of you to go to so much effort to help us all "move on".

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Ltap]

I'm sorry, I guess I moved entirely into the whole HDTV phase without realizing it.

I got a cheap (~$700) Toshiba HDTV that can play everything from VGA and 480i to full 1080i/p. Other people use it, but they generally watch tv using the satellite set-top box and are happy with that, they rarely watch DVDs - if they do, they know the system. It's really all part of my uncompromising goal to rid myself of all optical tech and store everything on hard drives.

Also, many TV shows are in h.264 - those are HDTV shows, but they are still around. Star Trek: TOS, for instance, is floating around in a rather attractive 720p h.264 and DTS with Matroska as the container format. It's the de facto HD standard, the only thing they need to learn is that it can be used with dvdrips as well. I see this as a possible catalyst for killing those amateur release groups and leaving the ones that do high-quality rips and actually care about quality.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Pentium100]

I have ST:TOS downloaded in SD with XviD, that was before the blu ray release, and I am not planning to redownload it. I probably will redownload TNG and DS9 because I have those in the 175MB format (lower quality than 350MB of course) when I decide to record them to tape (I am in the process of slowly copying my DVD-Rs to LTO tape).

$700 is a lot of money, especially if you are going to watch mostly cable TV which is analog and SD for now (there are some HD channels, but for those you need DVB-C receiver with HD support (very expensive) and a decoder card, while you can split the analog signal to however many TVs you want, which we have 4 not counting my VCRs, though I now use a digital receiver with my VCRs, I can see the channels I want even without the card, but in SD).

Yes, HD TV shows are in h.264, so is anime (though sometimes even the SD version of anime is in h264), but SD TV shows are still XviD/avi. The release groups probably know that they can use h264 for DVD rips, but choose not to, because XviD/avi is more common.

Just like audio codecs - ogg and aac may be better, but you can be sure that mp3 will be supported by almost all players (portable and not). So, most of the music is available in mp3 format, because all of the players play it, and all of the players play it because it is so common. When you rip the CD for your own use in a portable player, you can choose whatever codec your player supports, be it ogg, aac or even flac, but if you wanted to release that rip to the internet, you will probably have to choose mp3 because it is more widely supported and transcoding from one lossy codec to another degrades the quality, be it audio or video.

Xvid video with the same quality takes more space than h264 video, but I don't think that people would run to the stores to buy h264 compatible players just so they can download 300MB instead of 350MB. However, I think that xvid will be dropped only when h264 compatible players become as common as divx dvd players are now. Remember - SD TV shows still get released so you can fit 1-2 episodes on a CD-R (350 or 700MB, but usually not 800MB for example) and DVD rips of moves are release in 1 or 2 CD format, usually 1-2 files 700MB each, though now DVDR drives and discs cost about the same as CDR drives and discs.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Ltap]

Your argument differs slightly from reality. Since when did warez groups care about portability? Hell, back in the day most preferred to release music in mp2 because then only "l33t" people would know how to play it. It's no different with the good warez groups; you ignore the fact that, mainly, groups specialize in doing 1 thing, either cheap dvdrips or high-quality stuff. The dvdrip ones are usually more amateurish and take less care and effort.

By comparison, the better groups will usually have more repacks to accomodate for a codec change, will have full subtitles, alternate audio, etc. So, better in just about every way.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[skeeto]

Right on! When I saw the headline about dropping XviD, I thought, "Good riddance!" I'm so tired of coming across new rips in XviD + AVI. I use H.264 and MKV for all of mine.

Re:Because H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is Mature!

[Pentium100]

Since when did warez groups care about portability?

I don't know the date, but currently a lot of music is in mp3 or flac, usually both are available, also mp3 is the main format. At least in the torrent sites I go to.

Videos, especially TV shows are standard. SDTV is Xvid/mp3/avi, sometimes audio can be AC3, but usually mp3. It is 350MB or 700MB size, fits neatly in CDs, but do not fit so neatly in a DVD - 12 episodes 350MB each and you still have 285MB left, if they chose size for the DVD, they would have chosen 345MB (13 episodes) or 373MB (12 episodes) per episode.

HDTV shows are h264/mkv and are 1.09GB in size, you can record 4 episodes to DVD and they fit nicely, just like SD episodes fit on a CD. HD shows can be h264/mkv because HD players support h264 better than SD DVD players do and SD DVD players do not support HD video even if it was in XviD.

I don't know about you, but to me it looks like the groups actually care about somebody being able to play their releases.

0.9.3

[maino82]

I stuck with the 0.9.3 version for quite awhile because of the lack of support for AVI in the latest release, but grudgingly I switched over a few weeks back. MKV is choppy and buggy on my Ubuntu install for some reason (I get video tearing all the time and I can't seek without the audio getting out of sync or disappearing entirely). VLC handles the files a little more gracefully than MPlayer or Xine, but it's still not ideal. I'm banking on support getting better though (or upgrading my hardware if it turns out that's the problem). I do, however, like the chapters and subtitles features that MKV brings to the table.

I can certainly understand to drop support for obsolete containers, but I think that calling AVI obsolete at this point is very premature.

Re:0.9.3

[Microlith]

I think that calling AVI obsolete at this point is very premature.

Hardly, AVI was obsolete ages ago. Remember, this is the container format that was used at the very start of Video for Windows. The most common codec back then was Intel's Indeo codec, which Microsoft just deactivated.

AVI, MKV, MP4, OGG are just containers. Some are simply not worth maintaining due to their age.

Re:0.9.3

[maino82]

I realize that AVI is indeed old, but old and obsolete are not the same thing. People still use AVI on a very regular basis, and as long as it gets used, it is, by definition, not obsolete. I suppose one way to make it obsolete, however, is to discontinue support for it so no one can encode something in an AVI container anymore, haha.

Re:0.9.3

[Yaur]

AVI was showing its age in 2000/2001 when streaming and large file support started to be important... it only lasted this long because it took ages for a relativity open container that wasn't even more broken than AVI to emerge.

Ummm, what?

[dangitman]

Eventually even Sony, the king of proprietary formats, caved into pressure and added DivX support to its DVD players and the PlayStation 3.

DivX is a proprietary format. The summary seems to be implying that somehow it is not. Sony licensed DivX from the company that created it, it didn't use some "open" implementation.

Re:Ummm, what?

[Microlith]

It's not implying anything of the sort. It's making the point that DivX was so popular, even Sony (who loves creating proprietary, Sony-only formats) added support for it to the PS3.

Re:Ummm, what?

[dangitman]

It's not implying anything of the sort. It's making the point that DivX was so popular, even Sony (who loves creating proprietary, Sony-only formats) added support for it to the PS3.

But that's not was written. It simply said that Sony loves proprietary formats - not that it loves Sony-created proprietary formats. Even if it did say that, it still doesn't make sense, as Sony also supports MPEG, H.264 and Windows Media on the PS3. So, what's so surprising about DivX?

Seems to me it was just an excuse to add a troll about Sony. I mean why not mention Microsoft in the same sentence, a company which loves proprietary formats just as much as Sony.

Re:Ummm, what?

[Mulder3]

Yes, it IS... Xvid is based on MPEG-4 part2 which IS a proprietary and patented format...

Re:Ummm, what?

[beelsebob]

Just a random note... Eventually even Sony, the king of proprietary formats, caved into pressure and adde h264 support to it's DVD players and the PlayStation 3. ;)

Re:Ummm, what?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Now if Sony would only get off their ass and add full MKV support.... They might actually beat the Xbox 360 at something.

Re:Ummm, what?

[dangitman]

But Sony didn't implement Xvid, it implemented DivX, and Xvid's openness is actually not guaranteed because of patents.

Re:Ummm, what?

[CronoCloud]

Not going to happen, it's the preferred pirate distribution format.

Re:Ummm, what?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

So is MP3, DivX, MP4 and DVDR, all play on the PS3.

Really it boils down to this... Does Sony want the market to be on their PS3 platform or do they want to lose the market to home made PC Media Servers with NAS?

I see it as a simple choice. There is no reason to own a PS3 as a media device other than games when you can build a PC that can play everything and output it to TV via HDMI.

I guess Sony doesnt really want to win.

Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[YesIAmAScript]

Perhaps you need to stop using a 7 year old OS as your reference of what "Windows does".

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[Microlith]

It does? I've dropped .mp4 files on Windows Media Player and until I installed an actual codec they wouldn't play.

But by all means, what am I missing?

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[DarkTempes]

Because Windows 7 is a majority representation of the Windows operating systems in current use, right?

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[bertoelcon]

.mp4 is a container. The video inside the container must not have been a Windows supported codec.

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[GF678]

He didn't specify Windows XP, he just said Windows, implying no versions of Windows could understand the format. The other poster simply wanted to correct his ignorance.

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[jedidiah]

Perhaps Windows should an invent a way that will cause an old sold last year to seem less lame.

The fact that XP is showing it's age really has squat to do with the situation. Windows has a
rather lame means of dealing with codec compatability issues. This has not changed. The only
thing that has changed is that more stuff is bundled by default on the installation media.

It's a band-aid over a bullet wound.

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[YesIAmAScript]

Look, the Handbrake guys are saying Xvid is the past, H.264 is the present. Quoting what an OS that is 7 years old can do is just reinforcing what the Handbrake folks say.

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[DarkTempes]

And the handbrake guys are jumping the gun and putting on blinders.
H.264 AND Xvid are still the present. Look at top downloads in the p2p arena, look at the anime scene. Xvid is still going very strong. H.264 and the MKV container have had a rough road in the past with compatibility and performance issues. They're finally strong as well but it's taken a while.

People tend to go with what they know works and is more readily accessible. For many people out there that is still xvid/avi. Hopefully one day that will change as h264 in an mkv container is obviously far better.

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[YesIAmAScript]

Seriously, and I don't mean this as an insult.

I don't give a crap about how unhappy the people who still think Xvid and AVI are the way to go are.

It's time to move forward, and you don't do that by standing still.

If you want to produce Xvid, there are still programs to do it. Go get one.

I'm not saying programs shouldn't play back Xvid, they definitely should. But it's time to stop producing new files in an old format that produces noticeably inferior results for the same size file.

I do wish the H.264 guys didn't make the same mistake other formats did with having multiple profiles. It's really annoying when you have a device that "plays H.264" and yet won't play a lot of files. But now we seem to be pretty much past that. Use profile 3.1 and you'll play on any reasonable HD device.

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[Lumpy]

then download the older version and get it back. they really did not make many improvements from the previous version.... All the DVD decryption is done with VLC, so keep upgrading that and handbrake 0.5 wil work forever giving you Xvid.

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[adolf]

All of the portable devices I have which play video seem to support h.264 just fine, and it is the only format supported by at least one of them.

I used to have an old Palm Pilot that was stuck in DivX land, but it died a couple of years ago, and it was a lousy way to watch video anyway . . .

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[RedK]

I'm looking at the anime scene and all I see is fansub groups whining that some of the users want DivX AVIs. All the while, the releases are made using MKV + H.264/AAC by default. Only Dattebayo is still using avi for Bleach, because they just refuse to change their ways. Of course, if all you do is watch Bleach and cry that they dropped Naruto, then maybe it's you who has blinders on.

Re:Windows 7 plays H.264 by default

[DutchUncle]

Perhaps you need to stop using a 7 year old OS as your reference of what "Windows does".

Would you be as quick to say: Perhaps you need to stop using the OS with the most installs at the moment as your reference?

It sucks, but it's what's out there. You wouldn't design your system around Betamax, even though it was technically better, because there aren't any; and you can't ignore XP, because it's the most common. By all means let's help the non-technical move to something better, by showing them the better alternatives - but you have to put one foot in the muck to reach them and pull them out.

They're both MPEG-4

[tepples]

I don't want to take the air out of your argument... but... your Xbox 360 never had the ability to play divx/xvid videos until Microsoft released an update. They can release another to accept mpeg4 - but they won't. That's a great feature for the next Microsoft gaming console.

DivX/Xvid are encoders for MPEG-4 Part 2, aka Advanced Simple Profile. H.264 is MPEG-4 Part 10. I would imagine that H.264 has both a CPU cost and a royalty cost higher than ASP. I seem to remember the Xbox 360's add-on HD DVD drive coming with an H.264 decoder, but I also seem to remember its license being limited to HD DVD playback, not Ethernet or USB hard drive playback.

But perhaps more importantly, the Xbox 360 isn't the only device that would need an upgrade; DVD players carrying the DivX logo come with decoders for a subset of MPEG-4 Part 2 but not necessarily H.264.

Re:They're both MPEG-4

[Osty]

But perhaps more importantly, the Xbox 360 isn't the only device that would need an upgrade; DVD players carrying the DivX logo come with decoders for a subset of MPEG-4 Part 2 but not necessarily H.264.

The 360 can already play h.264 in an mp4 container (only 2-channel AAC, though). Zune will stream that natively, and WMP11 can be coaxed to stream mp4 using a registry hack (WMP will list anything it can see in its library, and while WMP12 understands mp4 immediately WMP11 needs an extra registry key to make it see mp4s). The 360 currently doesn't understand the mkv container, but transcoding can be done pretty efficiently. Now that DivX is using mkv, it'd be nice to get an update that would allow the 360 to understand mkv directly.

Re:They're both MPEG-4

[Osty]

Actually, the XBOX 360 can do mkv containers thanks to a plugin (beta status) from xvid. Check this out: http://labs.divx.com/mkvwin7preview Works great....

And that's transcoding, as I mentioned. It does work, though I've only tried it through the media center extender interface. I don't know if it works through the dashboard UPnP AV streaming or not. Even so, I'd still prefer a non-transcoding solution, ultimately.

Now it needs .m2ts support

[YesIAmAScript]

mkv is a great format, but it isn't supported by Windows 7, Mac OS X (Quicktime), 360 or PS3.

I can however play an H.264/AC-3 .m2ts file on Windows 7 and PS3. Maybe Mac OS X too, I'm not sure (my Mac is too slow for HD video anyway).

Because of this I end up converting virtually all my .mkvs to .2mts files (using TSMuxer) and throwing the .mkvs away. I can stream them to my PS3 for viewing on my TV or watch them in VLC on my Mac or VLC or Windows Media Player on my Windows PC. .m2ts is a very capable format, I wish more people would use it.

And on the main topic, I'm so over AVI. Only with extensions can it support files large enough for HD movies, and then the playback compatibility drops through the floor anyway.
And H.264 is so good it almost baffles me.

XVid was key when we were watching SD content on hacked (original) Xboxes. That was a long time ago now. It's time to move on.

Re:Now it needs .m2ts support

[arcsimm]

It's pretty easy to play .mkvs on Windows with the right codec. But then again you still wouldn't be able to stream it over to the PS3 that way.

All my video has been in .mkv containers for several years now, and I haven't had issues with it on XP, Vista or 7. Just chuck CCCP on there and call it a day.

Re:Now it needs .m2ts support

[metamatic]

mkv is a great format, but it isn't supported by Windows 7, Mac OS X (Quicktime), 360 or PS3.

Or AppleTV, or my DVD player, or anything else I have. MKV may be open source, but it's a pain in the ass. I've got a script which seems to be able to convert most MKV files into MP4s that will play, but I could still use a good, reliable MKV to MP4 converter. Links would be appreciated, OS X or Linux.

I can however play an H.264/AC-3 .m2ts file on Windows 7 and PS3.

Using MPEG-2 containers for MPEG-4 is a horrible hack on a par with sticking MPEG-4 in AVI. AVCHD is h.264 in MPEG-2 containers, and look at the problems people have with that. I suspect it was only done because hardware manufacturers already had hardware and firmware to handle MPEG-2 TS and PS, and didn't want to have to implement the more sophisticated and feature-rich MPEG-4. (And no, MPEG-2 containers (whether TS or PS) don't work in OS X by default.)

Big FD.

[xigxag]

First of all the original handbrake.fr article says nothing specifically about DivX. It talks about XviD and OGM. I guess OGM wasn't "controversial" enough for the editors so they ignored that and focused on DivX.

But the real issue is: Big deal, DivX themselves are moving to H.264/mkv with all deliberate speed. Even they realize there's no point in anyone holding on to codecs and containers which are inferior in every respect. So, since mkv is a legitimate container in DivX7, the writeup is in fact erroneous. Surprise.

Re: Its obsolete

[nxtw]

AVI is obsolete; Microsoft uses the WMV container now, and has for about a decade now... DOCX is not obsolete.

Re:So?

[nxtw]

Hardware DivX support is still more widespread than h.264, although h.264 is finally starting to gain some traction in some hardware, particularly phones and PMP devices.

H.264 support is much more widespread - it's in every Blu-ray player, every recent HD satellite receiver, every recent nVidia and ATI GPU and some recent Intel GPUs.

Re:what am I missing?

[snikulin]

Win7 (in my case it's ultimate-x64).

Re:DIVX AVI MKV MP4 eh?

[HouseOfMisterE]

You can most certainly put H.264 into an AVI container, though you may be hard pressed to find a reason to do this. There are tools available that make it an easy task. I've actually had to do it a couple of times, and it worked just fine.

Uh, DivX is switching to MKV

[strstr]

That's a major lack of insight into this situation. DivX also hasn't ever inherintly meant AVI. AVI it's a standard Windows container format and DivX is something completely different, the data that can be stored inside the AVI format.

Re:Uh, DivX is switching to MKV

[TerranFury]

Yes! Finally someone pointed this out! We're talking about apples and oranges here...

Re:Uh, DivX is switching to MKV

[auntieNeo]

Well, TFA says:

So there you go, DivX/XviD is gone from HandBrake and it's not coming back.

So I think the confusion is justified. Does anyone know for sure exactly what is being removed from HandBrake?

Re: Its obsolete

[mgblst]

Most people don't actually have to develop for .doc or .docx, so they don't see the bad side. Unless Microsoft drops support for DOC and DOCX, just like Handbrake have done, they are still going to be in use.

I am surprised that this needs to be explained.

This is of course wrong

[Snaller]

The dvix people added muxed in subtitles, chapters a long time ago, these people just can't be bothered.

Re:This is of course wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish.

DivX 5, which is a MPEG-4 ASP video inside an .AVI file, did not contain support for chapters, subtitles, or anything like that. This is what the Handbrake guys are removing support for. It's also the format that pretty much any DVD player will play.

DivX 6 added their own custom, proprietary extension to .AVI files. These have a different extension and, on Windows, bypass the standard .AVI splitter entirely. The format is undocumented, isn't supported by anything but DivX's own software player and a tiny selection of DVD players, and is entirely unknown outside of DivX's corner of the world.

There's no point in reverse-engineering their format, since DivX themselves dumped the format entirely with DivX 7. They now use MPEG-4 AVC in a Matroska container. It's a waste of time to support an even more obscure sub-format of an outdated, poorly supported container format.

Similarly, there's no point in inventing their own format to add this information to an AVI file. Nothing else will be able to read the information, so it might as well not be there. It'd be pointless, and a complete waste of time.

The alternative? Remove AVI support entirely - nobody uses it anyway - which makes the code much simpler to maintain. They can actually add features without worrying about breaking the AVI support that nobody uses.

Re:This is of course wrong

[DigitAl56K]

The DivX people now also support DivX Plus, which is H.264/AAC/MKV including surround sound, multilingual subtitles, chapter points, metadata, multiple titles, and more :)

Check it out:
http://www.divx.com/en/electronics/solutions/high-definition/divx-plus-hd-showcase

DivX Plus devices were also announced at CES. Look for Blu-Ray players from Philips and the FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player from Seagate initially. There's even a Handbrake preset here.

- Al / DivX person ;)

No, they didn't remove OGG support

[Smurf]

If you choose the MKV container format you can still choose Theora (VP3) for video and Vorbis for audio (as of HandBreak 0.9.4).

Re:No, they didn't remove OGG support

[xigxag]

You realize your header and message contradict each other? If you have to use MKV to output Theora and Vorbis, then they did drop Ogg.

Ogg being the container format that they no longer support.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[fm6]

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong (definitely no expert), but I've had a lot of trouble playing MP4 files on any of my computers. Too much video lag. I always end up converting them to AVI. (We're talking stuff I've downloaded, not rips.) Perhaps the problem is that none of my machines has the video hardware MP4 requires -- but if that's the case, then AVI is hardly "legacy", since my hardware is at least as powerful as most newer home computers.

Handbrake just dropped support for hw players...

[freaker_TuC]

One of the best features about handbrake is, I could put in my DVD and have the copy on my mediaplayer.

Now; I'll need to use FFMPEG on handbrake input making the process double as long to support my 3yr old media player.

Oh, and it doesn't support MPEG that good without having issues. DivX was the savior for a long time.

Apple Friendly ?

[alexandre]

It's not Apple Friendly, it's world unfriendly.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[stevetures]

Divx isnt the only file type that DVD players play. Most dvd players that play divx also play mp4. check your manual. Plus the normal and High Profile settings work fine on my ps3.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[stevetures]

divx and xvid are slightly modified version of mp4. (reference - "Methods described in MPEG-4 part 2 (MPEG-4 SP/ASP) are used by codecs such as DivX, Xvid, Nero Digital, 3ivx and by Quicktime 6, and methods described in MPEG-4 part 10 (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264) are used by the x264 codec, by Nero Digital AVC, by Quicktime 7, and by next-gen DVD formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.").

You should check out VLC player for a fast good playback experience. Quicktime is what most people try to use to play mp4 files, and, yes its a little slow on most computers.

Re:So?

[thejynxed]

And all of those devices combined don't even come close to the number of -DVD- players that are currently in use.

Did you at all, pay any attention to what he said? Seriously, who gives a rat's ass what a Blu-Ray player, an HD satellite receiver, or nVidia/ATI GPUS do when most people don't have those things to start with.

Plain DivX compatible DVD players still outsell Blu-Ray players by a longshot, fyi. Some recent movie titles coming out didn't even have Blu-Ray releases. Not everyone is willing to replace their televisions with big-screen monstrosities until their old one dies, let alone replace their entire movie collection yet again (if they even can, as titles are still slim pickings for the Blu-Ray format).

you could say...

[timmarhy]

.. they just put the brakes on their popularity

Re:you could say...

[zmollusc]

*Timmarhy puts on sunglasses while blasting The Who from his cassette player*

Re:you could say...

[FreonTrip]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah! *scenic views of Miami*

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[fm6]

I have the VLC player, GOM (my personal favorite), Quicktime, and a lot more. When I have video problems, I end up trying all of them. VLC does deal with more obscure formats than anybody else, but it doesn't do anything about this problem.

Re:So?

[CronoCloud]

Considering that the Sony PSP, which came out in 2005, and the Sony PS3 (2006) both have H.264 support, and that hte video iPods have it as well. I would think that H.264 support in devices easily surpasses DivX

I don't rip DVD's, but if I did I would rip only to H.264 AVC Main Profile Level 2 or 3 with CABAC in 720x480 resolution, bitrate of 2Mbsec, though that's overkill for DVD, but the PSP could handle it.

Double plus good ..erm bad.

[mr_stinky_britches]

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. DivX Plus players of the future? Wouldn't that be MKV devices of the future?

The bottom line is that these developers deserve to be ridiculed for their user-hostile decisions!

cheerio mate.

Re: Its obsolete

[mysidia]

People will still be using DOC and DOCX, even if Microsoft does drop support for it.

And people will still be using AVI, even though Handbreak has dropped support for it.

Handbreak didn't invent AVI, and it's kind of popular as a container format, and Handbreak has very little to do with its popularity.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[JDeane]

Honestly I would recommend a PS3 for that, most formats will play just fine right off a thumb drive. I use a MicroSD card plugged into a little USB adapter and it works great.

I tested a generic USB 13 in 1 Card adapter and it too worked fine.

(a 360 might work just as good but I don't own one and therefore I could not offer a personal recommendation)

The ultimate though for playing video is still going to be a PC with a good video codec pack.

Hmmm the 360 and the PS3 can stream video from a PC and it works great err rather I had it working great until I upgraded to 7 and I haven't had the time to figure it out yet. (for all the slamming Vista got, that was one feature they did do very good)

Sense Of Perspective

[DynaSoar]

There are hundreds of millions of consumer elctronics devices on the market that can play DivX. Many on them, including my Phillips DVD player, will also play Xvid without additional conversion. Besides having DivX conversion software, I have other converters that will handle pretty much everything going and coming, including the 'proprietary' DivX. DivX is signing up corporation after corporation to carry DivX compatibility on board http://investors.divx.com/search.cfm?keyword=certified DivX saw the need for an extended file format and chose MKV. That's been added to their latest version. The response has been less than stellar. It apparently solves a problem that most people don't have. DivX apparently does, and anyone that doesn't care for the 'proprietary' aspect gets most of that functionality and less money shelled out via Xvid.

Just a quick look through the latest 100 movie file on TPB show 1 MKV, 1 MP4, 98 AVI.

So why should I listen to this Handbrake? What protocol have they developed? Oh, none. So what did they develop? The ability to use other peoples' protocols? I see. Well, I imagine doing that comes with some understanding of those other formats. So why haven't I heard about them before now? I seem to have done just fine without having heard about them before. Maybe more to the point, why am I only hearing about them now? Slashdotvertising? In any case, 'obsolete' is a strange thing to call 98% (by my simple straw poll) acceptance, unless one is using it in the sense that the marketoids do: "it means I want you to use what I say based on what I say about something else, betting on the fact that you don't know shit about any of it except that you wouldn't be caught dead using anything but the newest bestest thing. Which we will tell you when it comes available. Like we did last time." If I hear anymore about Handbrake I suspect it'll be this same message, until they just stop.

Re:Sense Of Perspective

[nyet]

>So why haven't I heard about them before now? Because you are clueless.

Re:Sense Of Perspective

[igb]

It is remarkable the amount of vitriol that people will unleash at free software here on Slashdot. The software is released free by volunteers. If you like it, use it. If you don't like it, use something else. A rant about ``I don't care'' and ``I've never heard'' and ``What have they developed'' might be fitting were this the behaviour of a large, market-dominating for-money application, but in fact it's a volunteer effort producing free software. You attitude seems to lack just a hint of proportion, and has no perspective whatsoever.

Re:Sense Of Perspective

[Jiro]

I have yet to see a hardware player that plays Xvid 3 warp point GMC.

Exactly what 3 warp point GMC is is unimportant, except that divx doesn't have it and it takes a lot of CPU to decode by hardware player standards (it's nothing for a PC, of course), and lots of anime fansubs use that format.

So far the only "hardware" solution I know of to play these is to use a game console--a hacked Xbox or Wii with an open source player will do it, and I assume the standard players for PS3 or Xbox 360 will do it (never tried one).

Re:Sense Of Perspective

[jo_ham]

Handbrake still outputs DivX - it just doesn;t support the AVI container anymore due to increasing complexities with the code trying to maintain support for it.

Handbrake has been going since the days of BeOS and has been doing just fine. There's no chance of it "dying". It didn't even have a windows version until recently. The DivX peope themselves have a preset for handbrake (current version), so as usual with /. summaries, the title is just erroneous. They claim AVI is obsolete because it is - not in terms of use, but in terms of the features it possesses, like support for chapters and other such things. It's the same as saying IE6 is obsolete, despite so many people still using it.

There are better container formats out there (even for DivX!) and the decision to drop AVI here is purely a code one. If you want to write your own transcoder, feel free to do so, or contribute to the ones already out there. That's the beauty of OSS.

Re:Sense Of Perspective

[Taibhsear]

Just a quick look through the latest 100 movie file on TPB show 1 MKV, 1 MP4, 98 AVI.

That has nothing to do with handbrake, and everything to do with filesize (ie. bandwidth issues).

Re:"As a output format"

[JDeane]

To me it seems that if you accept it as an input format you should be able to output it as well.

I am not a programmer so take this next bit of post for what it is... pure conjecture lol

But it seems like if your decoding something then the same amount of work is already done for doing output?

Also I agree if something is a program made to convert video then it should do as many formats as possible.

I am on Windows so I use a program called Format Factory, and it supports like a bazillion formats (well all the ones I have ever ran into)

http://www.pcfreetime.com/

I don't watch my video on a PC

[YesIAmAScript]

And you can't add codecs to the PS3.

Also, if a .m2ts file plays on the PC, you don't need more codecs to play the corresponding .mkv file of it, all you need is something that understands the .mkv container format. Because the payload is the same, just the container is different.

I'm sure a good streaming program can remux .mkvs to .m2ts on the fly, even high bitrate HD video, because my PC can convert a 3GB .mkv to .m2ts in about 90 seconds. However, I can't find a streaming (DLNA) program that I like that does it.

Handbrake 0.9.4 does support multiple subtitles

[Anonymous Coward]

Handbrake 0.9.4 does support multiple audio and subtitle tracks, if you select mkv as the file output format.

Re:Handbrake 0.9.4 does support multiple subtitles

[drinkypoo]

Handbrake 0.9.4 does support multiple audio and subtitle tracks, if you select mkv as the file output format.

Audio yes, subtitles no, at least, they didn't work for me.

xvid is less demanding

[auntieNeo]

Xvid and divx (mpeg-4 part 2) are far less resource-intensive than h.264. I don't know if anyone's ever tried playing a reasonably sized h.264 encoded video on a PIII, but it usually doesn't work out so well. Avi and divx I'm not so sure about, but I don't see why they had to get rid of xvid. Maybe I'm behind the times, but most of the time when I decide to re-encode something it's because I need to play it on a slow budget box like the ones they have at school.

Re:xvid is less demanding

[mariushm]

Most recent video cards have dedicated chips on the board that decode the h264 video in hardware. Not so many recent video cards can do the same for XVID or DIVX (same thing, it's MPEG4-ASP or part 2). You can buy now ATI 4xxx series cards on AGP slot for your PIII system and you'll probably be able to run 720p smoothly and maybe even 1080i/p. You can't say the same for these high resolutions and xvid/divx.
The beauty of h264 is the ratio between bitrate and resolution - while you can have a good quality 720p at 2mbps, you'd need at least 3.5 - 4 mbps for the same result with xvid.

Re:xvid is less demanding

[auntieNeo]

My main box has what I consider to be a fairly recent video card, an Nvidia 7 series, but still doesn't support h.264 acceleration. I don't think the open source drivers support acceleration. My handheld certainly doesn't have any hardware acceleration, and can only really play xvid/divx at its native resolution. My Wii cannot play most h.264, but can play rather high resolution xvid. My point is, there are a lot of "underpowered" devices out there. If you're re-encoding video solely for quality, you're doing it wrong, because no matter which lossy encoding you chose it can never be as high quality as the original. I usually re-encoded video for compatibility. Size usually isn't an issue, so I try to keep things in their original encoding.

I should have mentioned earlier that I am a huge fan of h.264. I use it as much as possible and even called one of my friends an idiot for encoding his dvds with xvid, as his box is far more powerful than mine. I just don't think xvid is dead quite yet, as long as my Wii still runs.

Re:xvid is less demanding

[mariushm]

Even a 35$ card can do hardware decoding of h264 and VC1 bitstreams... I don't know about nVidia models but I know about ATI: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%204025%20106792627&name=Radeon%20HD%204000%20series

xvid is decoded in software on the systems you mention, and that means it uses a lot of battery or mains power for this. There are ARM processors that now include hardware decoder for h264 and these processors will appear in devices as they become cheaper due to volume of sales.

I never said xvid is dead, I quite like it myself, but when I do backups of DVDs it's way easier (for me) to just encode with h264 and then mux the original soundtracks and subtitles with the h264 video into a MKV file. AVI doesn't do that (it's not capable) and that's why Handbrake decided to drop it as an output container.

Re:xvid is less demanding

[auntieNeo]

I use CoreAVC (through wine) when I want to play 1080p video without having to buy a slightly newer video card.

xvid is decoded in software on the systems you mention, and that means it uses a lot of battery or mains power for this.

Well of course, I bought these systems before hardware h264 decoders were common. That doesn't make them useless. :(

I totally agree with you on AVI. MKV is a much better container format, especially if you want nice ASS subtitles or multiple soundtracks. Now, whether or not it was a good decision to remove it from HandBrake is their problem, as I don't use it anyway. :P

Nailed it

[xororand]

It's sickening how some feel entitled about this. The next step is demanding their money back.
+5 insightful to you, mate.

Terminology?

[RAMMS EIN]

Help me out here. They are dropping DivX because AVI is obsolete? Aren't these two different things? As in: DivX is a codec, and AVI is a container format. So you can encode your video using DivX and store in in an AVI file. Or you could encode using DivX and store in an Ogg file. Or even a raw MPEG4 file. Could someone explain what is _really_ going on here?

Re:Terminology?

[nedlohs]

http://handbrake.fr/?article=10

Re:Troll mod?

[SCPRedMage]

You must be new here...

Re:Handbrake just dropped support for hw players..

[nedlohs]

Or you could just use the old version...

Didn't know about it before

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know about handbrake before. Just sucked down the source and built it (ubuntu 9.10). Damn! It runs like a champ. On a corei7-920 it spits out a 115 minute film in 37 minutes (roughly quad speed).
I just uncompressed the source (tar -xjpvf HandBrake-0.9.4.tar.gz2) and then ran this:
#!/bin/bash
apt-get install subversion yasm build-essential autoconf libtool zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev intltool libglib2.0-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libgtk2.0-dev libhal-dev libhal-storage-dev libwebkit-dev libnotify-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev
cd HandBrake-0.9.4 ./configure --launch
cd build
make clean
make -j 16
make install
make doc
# For Testing
ghb ...and the thing goes like a house on fire.

I despise MKV

[meerling]

For reasons I'm not going through again, but I absolutely can't stand MKV.

MP4 is mostly ok, so it's not that big of a deal, I can convert stuff to AVI on the off chance I need it to.

Guess it doesn't matter too much to me, I don't even use handbrake.
When I tested a year or two ago on some stuff I wanted converted, it failed to meet my standards.

So I guess their change isn't any loss for me, but I wonder how much share they're going to lose with this change.

Re:I despise MKV

[xous]

So your contribution to the discussion is unsubstantiated statements about two different containers while implying a preference for AVI and then note that your opinion is irrelevant because you don't even use Handbreak?

What was the purpose of your post?

Re:This isn't that...

[smash]

try playing .ogg on your PS3, PSP, Xbox360, iphone, DVD player, etc. Ability to encode stuff for free is pretty much useless if you can't play it anywhere. And before someone says "use open source for device X" - you're missing the point. Open source consoles, smart phones, and dvd players are not generally available, whereas devices that play other common (proprietary) formats are.

You aren't required to like it because it's free

[Sycraft-fu]

Just because something is free doesn't automatically make it good, and make the people who make it saints. If they do something shitty with it and if they don't treat users well, then people very well have a right to criticize.

I personally get a little tired of this attitude that crops up on Slashdot from time to time that if software is free you should have to take it as it is and be immensely grateful for the privilege. No, not so much really. Like anything else it is a free target for criticism. While there's nothing requiring the authors to act on the criticism, there really isn't any cause to say "People shouldn't be able to criticize."

Also, that attitude is something that hurts OSS. If you tell people "It's free, either use it and shut up, or fix it yourself," many will decide that if that's how it works, they'd rather have commercial software. A good attitude towards customers, and that's what people who download your software are if that's how you give it out, is something that you need if you want it to be successful.

Trojan - Generic.dx!kdh

[AliasMarlowe]

If your running Windows you might try a program called Format Factory its free and it is amazing in that it can convert almost any format with very little loss in quality.

FYI, Format Factory 2.2 (the newest version, released in December) appears to have the Generic.dx!kdh trojan, according to McAfee. This is a recently reported trojan, and is only discovered with DAT files less than 12 days old. I downloaded Format Factory 2.2 from 3 different sites and while the zip file names were slightly different, all three were reported as having an exe file infected with Generic.dx!kdh.
http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_252791.htm
There is not much information on this trojan right now, but it appears to be a member of a family which disable protective software and install IRC back doors for DDOS attacks or for later installation of other malware.
http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_141693.htm
Maybe it's a false positive. And maybe the developer's machine is spreading something unpleasant.

Re:Trojan - Generic.dx!kdh

[JDeane]

Probably a false positive if you got it from here.

http://www.brothersoft.com/download-formatfactory-98431.html

I have never known this page to host any bad files and my scans are clean.

As always be careful where you download things.

Re:Trojan - Generic.dx!kdh

[AliasMarlowe]

Probably a false positive if you got it from here.
http://www.brothersoft.com/download-formatfactory-98431.html

Yep. That was one of them. Note that McAfee says the trojan will NOT be spotted if you are using signatures dated earlier than 6 January 2010 (abput 12 days ago). I can't say whether it's a false positive or not. Let's wait for the next update to the virus scanners instead. If it's really a false positive, then the Format Factory makers will notify them.

they aren't droping MPEG4

[Yaur]

lost in TFS is that they are not dropping support for MPEG4 Part 2... they are just supporting ffmpeg instead of XviD and ffmpeg

License Violations

[AliasMarlowe]

Another comment which resulted from discovering a trojan signature in Format Factory. It may be "free as in beer", but it's yet another example of a Chinese company appropriating "free as in freedom" software, and claiming ownership of it. The Format Factory installer contains mplayer, mencoder and avcodec compiled with support for libamr, libfaac, xvid and x264. However, contrary to the licensing conditions for all of these, there are no sources provided or made available, and Format Factory claims copyright on everything (does not even acknowledge the FOSS items it includes).

Lots of DVD players play DivX not h262

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of DVD players play DivX not h262. This would be one major reason to keep it.

Re:You aren't required to like it because it's fre

[FooBarWidget]

Then why are most of the complainers not using commercial software? Oh right, because of the price tag.

Most of these complainers want to have "commercial quality software" (between quotation marks because I know commercial software isn't always good) but they aren't willing to pay, donate or contribute. Yeah and I want a million dollars. Quid Pro Quo.

Re:Sounds to me like handbrake wants to be for war

[Per Wigren]

Nothing beats MKV+h.264 when you want to put your DVDs in your HTPC/media center and keep all audio tracks, subtitles and chapter markings, while using a third of the needed diskspace compared to a full ISO copy. This, and reencoding your movies for your portable devices, are the main use-cases that Handbrake is optimized for. This is as legit as it gets, IMHO. Also, I'm pretty sure that most "scene" release groups don't use it for their releases, they use a collection of other tools.

Re:You aren't required to like it because it's fre

[Sycraft-fu]

Turns out many people do simply use commercial apps. I use commercial video editing apps for just this reason. I've been told how great OSS ones are, but they fail to be workable. When I say what needs to be fixed I'm told to shut up and/or fix it myself. Ok, that's how you want it, I'll just go and buy Vegas. I'd rather use a free app, but I'll pay for one that works.

Like I said, it is an attitude that hurts OSS. It also hurts it more because managers see this. They get the idea that anything OSS isn't worth trying and the mark of quality is a price tag. That's not always true, but this attitude can give them that impression.

Re:You aren't required to like it because it's fre

[FooBarWidget]

Why does it hurt OSS? The alternative is for the developers to work like slaves, not getting a paycheck for it, and losing all of their enthusiasm and/or starve. How's that any better?

Oh, right, it's better for YOU, just not for them.

Free as in takes all your free time

[Rocketship Underpant]

" I can't get the latest to compile, on two different linux boxes (one Debian, one Ubuntu), so I've been using my older copy on the Debian machine. My binary won't run on the Ubuntu box, though so I needed an older version. I had to grab an svn snapshot of a previous release to get the older source code, and then their manky build system tries to download certain packages from a handbrake-run ftp in order to get specific versions of certain libraries, which fails to work since they've removed those files specific to the older version of handbrake. "

Ah yes, a day in the life of a Linux user. Thanks for reminding me of those frustrating times. :)

Even Microsoft doesn't really support AVI anymore

[Wildfire Darkstar]

Yeah, you can still play back AVI containers in Windows, but Windows has been pushing WMV in its stead for years now, for better or for worse. Windows 7 comes with out-of-the-box support for MP4 containers, if I remember correctly, as well.

AVI has been a functionally dead container format for close to decade, in all honesty. It's survived in zombie form because the only alternatives were either too bogged down in proprietary fluff (ASF/WMV) or not user friendly enough to set up for most Windows and Mac users (MKV and MP4). It had its lifespan prolonged by hardware manufacturers like Sony, but its falling further and further behind the technology curve, and the trends seem to be behind MP4, even in the dedicated hardware market.

And as for DivX/Xvid (since TFA fails to grasp the difference between codec and container), well, that's much ado about nothing: HandBrake will still happily encode MPEG-4 Part 2/Xvid-compliant video. It's just eliminating the Xvid encoder itself in favor of FFmpeg. And if you're not familiar enough with the situation to recognize that how little difference this makes, chances are you probably aren't affected by the decision at all.

His point still stands, I say

[RulerOf]

Plenty of business users are on XP, where you could perhaps get your majority sampling, but 9 times out of 10 now, when I troubleshoot a home computer for anyone, it's a laptop or desktop running Vista or 7. The only machines you see with XP on them are enterprise machines, which won't be playing those files anyway, and ones that were manufactured before 2006, which probably wouldn't be able to reliably play h264 videos, or which the owners of long ago solved the issue of "this file doesn't work right."

Re:Wow, really a lot of anger

[jedidiah]

> I mean, I know it really pisses me off when people develop something free and open
> source and then make a decision to remove something outdated and replaced by newer
> functionality that I happen to disagree with.

Yes. They make something. They get people used to using it. Then they BREAK IT on purpose.

Of course users are going to get pissed. If you intentionally break something that's already
functional and working then you are bound to annoy someone. This is what happens when you
let other people use your tools. This is the real world and real users and not some ivory tower
nonsense completely detached from reality.

Re:Handbrake just dropped support for hw players..

[freaker_TuC]

Or you could just use the old version...

Older versions get deleted as soon as a revision is up. If they would made those available to download, it would sure make my day.. since I don't trust to leech these things from unknown sources.

Re:Handbrake just dropped support for hw players..

[nedlohs]

If you've been using it then you already have it. If you haven't then you are no worse off with it not being able to do something you weren't doing anyway.

Red-laser HD DVD-9

[tepples]

a H264 encoded DVD (HD movies take up a full DVD or even a DVD DL disk)

Interestingly enough, the HD DVD people agreed with you: the spec mentioned DVD-9 (spun at 3x) as one of the physical media that HD DVD players shall play.

Re:Red-laser HD DVD-9

[JDeane]

Yeah from the perspective of price and being able to buy HD movies at home, it would have been better for HD DVD to win the format war.

I guess the BD spec was slightly better though and offered movie studio's a temporary reprieve from all those scurvy pirates!

MOD THIS UP?

[TerranFury]

Indeed! I was confused by the summary; it lumps XviD (an encoder) together with AVI, MKV, and MP4 (container formats). I am surprised that nobody here has pointed this out yet.

Re:Sounds to me like handbrake wants to be for war

[TerranFury]

Indeed, AFAIK most release groups distribute a multipart RAR file containing an AVI with the audio/video and a seperate .srt file containing the subtitles track. After you extract it, a slightly snarky way to explain things would be to say that "the file directory is the container format."

clearup

[kangsterizer]

From http://handbrake.fr/ (instead of linking to a loosy article):

- AVI container removed
- OGG/OGM codec removed
- XVID codec removed (in favor of FFMPEG)

but then again you don't have to use handbrake. its not about obsoleting for the better, its obsoleting cause they couldn't be bothered to include and test them.
one should still be able to encode whichever format he likes. you might have a player that only support AVI for example.
Fortunately, you do not *have* to use handbrake. Like, you know, there's other things too. Heck I still use VirtualDub just for encoding.

You can't make something obsolete...

[gregthebunny]

...just because you don't like it. You're not Microsoft, you know. zing!

HandBrake v0.9.3 SVN1413

[caveman978]

http://trac.handbrake.fr/changeset/1413 In between v0.9.3 and v0.9.4; HandBrake was patched to make Xvid/AVI work properly with DVDs that contained VBR audio. In otherwords, SVN build 1413 contains all the fixes needed to have Xvid/AVI work. This means you have to compile it yourself; but for linux this is easy. Maybe, the HandBrake team should just release this build as their final work of Xvid/AVI.

File extentions

[ArundelCastle]

Summary gives the impression that MP4 and M4V are different (or platform-flavoured), but I have no trouble with renaming them back and forth.
M4V is iTunes-friendly, certainly. But that's a file association that can be tweaked in a few clicks.
V is just shorthand for video to clarify what the content inside the container is. A for audio, B for bookmarked audio, R for ringtones, etc. Apple is doing the same thing that Microsoft is doing with ASF, WMA and WMV.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14#.MP4_versus_.M4A_file_extensions
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/284094

Isn't stupid devices the real problem?

[jonaskoelker]

So again, for so many people who own DivX devices

Isn't that the real problem: that we buy devices that easily could be reprogrammable, but aren't?

Yes, watching software-decoded video on your phone is going to be a bitch, especially on the battery life. But bitchy is better than impossible.

Yeah, it sucks having to spend your afternoon upgrading your wii homebrew linux installation to the newest version and fixing the things that don't work. But it's better to do that and have a working media center than not, right?

Then again, most people don't want the same as me. Why don't people want smart computers with stupid screens, speakers and NICs, instead of the other way around?

Re:Isn't stupid devices the real problem?

[bheer]

> we buy devices that easily could be reprogrammable, but aren't?

DVD players are practically zero maintenance. My grandmum can use it. They're cheap ($30 or so) and also available in portable form factors ($70 or so), so I don't have a problem giving one to my niece for a road trip. Many of these devices support DivX. In fact, most solid-state MP4/video players from Asia support DivX too.

The closest programmable alternative to a DVD player's a Mac Mini-form factor device in the home, and a MP4 player/iPhone type device for the road. Those cost a lot more and require a fair bit of care and feeding.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[Ltap]

I doubt it - my 3-year-old dual-core E6700 and 8600 GTS can handle 1080p MP4s just fine. Either it's an issue with your decoder or your hardware is more obsolete than you think.

Re:They're BOTH good programs, @ least imo... apk

[Rich0]

It probably has something to do with the fact that the freeware software doesn't have to:

1. Have tie-ins for 47 different kinds of DRM.
2. Have 17 different places to tie-in ad and placement revenue.
3. Incorporate with the company's latest media store concept (while breaking compatibility with the last one).
4. Make sure that the company's proprietary codec works better than any of the others.
5. Incorporate Bob's idea. Everybody knows that it is a dumb idea, but Bob's uncle is the executive VP of sales, so...

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[fm6]

Dude, you got a $200 video card in that thing! Not standard equipment. I suppose for a gamer your rig is low-end, but most of us don't need that kind of hardware -- except to play MP4s.

Re:What's a TV?

[fast turtle]

You're not the only one to ask that Grasshopper so I'll explain it to you. A TV (television) was a magical device created by great wizzards to allow us to view people and events from anywhere until the great evil Advertise cam to dominate it. Then the great Enabling Internet was born to fight the great evil and that battle continues today on many fronts.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[Ltap]

Not really, the 8600 GTS is (in performance) between the GT 220 and GT 240. The 240 is a midrange gamer card, but the 220 is considered low-end. The 220 goes for ~$75* and the 240 for $135* or so. The 8600 doesn't have the same video rendering capabilities (older generation of PureVideo), and as an older card it'd go for less. So this is a $45 card at most, cheaper now than almost anything else still on the market.


* Prices are in CAD.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[geminidomino]

Speaking of VLC... does anyone else have it hog CPU when playing back an mp3 (without visualizations or any of that fancyness)?

I've tried a few times to play some music in the background during an MMO session, and it just creams it. It's quite strange...

Sounds to me...

[slantyyz]

Like the devs are just saying "If you don't like it, then go fork yourself!"

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[fm6]

A typical home computer owned by a non-gamer doesn't even have a $40 card. It has an embedded graphics chipset that's good enough for some 3D and multimedia (think Google Earth and Netflix) but bogs dowm if you try anything fancy.

you've heard of Handbrake...

[vaporland]

...if you regularly rip different video formats to AVI. My Philips DVD player plays AVIs from data discs. I could network a video server, wire up a bunch of crap to my TV and stream video, Or I can just convert multiple FLVs to AVIs in Handbrake all at once, then burn the AVIs onto a DVD data disc, and watch that on my Philips DVD player and Sony TV with little loss of quality.

Apple Safari will let you see all of the files on a webpage (WINDOW -> ACTIVITY); you can click and COPY the name of the FLV you want, then PASTE into the DOWNLOADS window - free FLV downloads. This way, I can download FLV files from Flash "player only" websites and run them through Handbrake: presto, web video on your TV, without the web connection...

Wow, just like Microsoft was saying years ago...

[TheNetAvenger]

"AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete"

Yep...

Microsoft has been trying to kill AVI for years because of the lack of features compared to more robust options.

I like the MK4 move, but truly don't get the move to Apple's MP4 format, which is just as obsolete in terms of features as AVI, let alone Apple's control/influence of the format.

Unlike 5 years ago, Microsoft is now a strong advocate on codec neutrality, even though they are the original designer of VC1/WMV. Look at Microsoft's support of HTML5 and even Silverlight as an example as the latest versions handle any codec and is also being used server side to provide Flash video content to the iPhone. (Something Microsoft hasn't even given their own products like the ZuneHD yet.)

I have never been a big fan of the whole DivX and even XVid movement because of the quality and bandaid additions to the format over the years. However in torrent world, it is still king, sadly. The code for DivX XVid (MPEG4 P2) are taken from Microsoft's early MPEG4 reference implementation from around 1998, and the quality hasn't improved much since then, while Microsoft's WMV/VC1 and the final MPEG4 (P4) formats progressed almost a whole generation.

I personally think that since Microsoft gave over VC1 tot he VC1 standards group (like 20 companies) it again needs to be considered by the OSS world as a strong format, as it doesn't have the licensing restrictions of MPEG4p4, and there are many OSS codec tools and encoders and players now available, and it gives you variable bitrate packaging with native BluRay HD from most studios.

There are some other good OSS codecs and packages out there, but it is probably time to give VC1 a chance even if Microsoft invented it.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[Ltap]

Even those people could probably handle 720p fine - but really, you have to invest some money. No one can buy a $300 netbook or something and expect to actually DO anything with it.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[fm6]

I do a lot with mine. On my last road trip, online video was a welcome alternative to the crap on motel cable. I do agree that a serious geek would want to spring for decent video hardware. But not everybody is a geek.

Next time I have an MP4 that won't play, I'll have to try changing the resolution to your suggestion, instead of converting to AVI.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[Ltap]

The higher the bitrate, the better the card needs to be, as it has to process and output more at one time. A low-bitrate video should theoretically require less processing power. The confusion isn't just h.264 vs xvid, it's that most h.264 stuff is high definition with an extremely high bitrate (nothing compared to what the raw video would be, but still very high). The combination of this and h.264 makes it very easy to create hard-to-render video, especially if it's high profile and has all sorts of extra effects.

For what it's worth, I use handbrake to convert dvdrips to h.264 and keep the original audio tracks (AC-3/DTS, usually). I can play this on just about anything, and that's with only about 65% of the original bitrate. Handbrake has a bitrate scaler, so I'd suggest experimenting and moving it up and down until you get something that plays well.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[fm6]

Actually, I never even heard of Handbrake before. I'll have to give it a try.

Re:Bah, AVI is ultimately legacy. Switched to mpeg

[fm6]

Ok, you're right, it's all about the bit rate. I was misled by the fact that people who create MP4 files also tend to use high bit rates.

Re:You have no idea what you are talking about

[jedidiah]

Divx is great for portable media players.

PMPs are small enough that the quality drawbacks of divx don't really matter.

Plus, divx has about a 7:1 speed advantage over h264 for similar sorts of transcodes.

Being forced to use h264 is just f*cking inconvenient.

Although this is ultimately more about the lameness of portable devices. The only
reason that a transcode would even be needed is the fact that most portable devices
aren't capable of playing back a proper archive copy or original.

Until portable devices are less lame, they should support divx and so should Handbrake.