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 It is obsolete.'"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

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();

[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]

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();

[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();

[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();

[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();

[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();

[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();

[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();

[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.

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.

[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.

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

[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

[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:I haven't used DIVX in years

[jo42]

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

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.

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.

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: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: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.

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: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:Talking about apples and oranges.

[biryokumaru]

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

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: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: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: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 ;)

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).

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.

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).

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.