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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 It is obsolete.'"
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.
Streaming to my legacy device which cannot be easily reprogrammed such as my Xbox 360 really relies on XVid. So, for now, I guess Handbrake is the rough beast. Oh well, I use dvd::rip anyway and avidemux when I need to do some transcoding. Computers can be easily upgraded, devices not so much: that is something to keep in mind too.
Shh.
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.
Qxe4
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)
All we need now is for .flv to dry up and blow away...
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.
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.
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.
It's hardly a de-facto standard; it's just another utility using ffmpeg and x264.
Perhaps you need to stop using a 7 year old OS as your reference of what "Windows does".
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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.
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.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
You could just use "greasemonky" plugin in Firefox and install the "YouTube Without Flash" script and videos will play using your default media player...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
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.
I just renamed all my AVI files to MKV. It's, like, the same thing, right?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
This is not informative.
XviD is an MPEG-4 Part 2 implementation; it is one of many.
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.
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.
Possibly because they were out-of-spec, or not in a container the player supports. x264 isn't responsible for the user's ignorance.
.. they just put the brakes on their popularity
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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).
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
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 ;)
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).
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.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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).
#DeleteChrome
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.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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.