Distributing Xvid encoded videos on CD

[josecastello]

I am willing to commercially distribute on CD some videos that I have created by myself (not ripped movies). Is XviD a reasonable alternative at this stage? Should I pay any type of liscencing for using an MPEG-4 codec? Should I expect incompatibility issues for the standard viewer of these CDs?

[Neo Neko]

Unfortunatly it is illegal to distribute XVID binaries. You can give away the source. Just not the binaries. It is an "educational" project and is not necessarily being made for commercial use. :( On a positive note since it is ISO-MPEG4 any ISO-MPEG4 decoder can handle it nicely. Like Divx for example.(with a few exceptions of course) But I'll be damned if this does not really mess up licensing. Do you pay DXN for a Divx commercial license only to use Xvid behind the sceens? Or would it be possible for a company to take the straight source for their own use, compile it and pay the appropriate fees and licensing to the MPEGLA for their own personal use. Not commercial distro mind you. But just for encoding of content.

[Superduck]

Xvid is gpl so there is no problem in distributing binaries, heck he can even charge a million for them as long as the source code i freely avail.

[trbarry]

Xvid is gpl so there is no problem in distributing binaries, heck he can even charge a million for them as long as the source code i freely avail.

That takes care of the Xvid copyright issue but not the MPEG-LA patents issue.

OTOH, the Divx folks are giving away an mpeg4 product. If a customer aquires Divx then he either is patent licensed or he isn't. If he is then you would think the customer could use other mpeg-4 products, but who knows.

And if he isn't you would think Divx Networks would get sued first. So it's very confusing.

- Tom

[yokem55]

Unfortunatly it is illegal to distribute XVID binaries.

So, Koepi and Nic and Umaniac are merely just providing reference examples of functional, working binaries of the xvid codec so that when we all go to compile them on our own, we have an idea of how they should work....right....?????

[Gabriel_Bouvigne]

Hey, I know that it might sound strange, but for me the ability to encode a cd from dvd using xvid and lame is not the most interesting part.

Otherwise why not using divx?
For me, the most interesting point is that lame and xvid allow me to learn about encoding. So yes, sometimes they really are educationnal tools.

[Ookami]

I agree 100%! Learning is the thing that keeps us going! Making a good DVD backup is very easy to learn and really nothing special...

It's really great that so many people are working on free software! Thank you all for coding, testing, reporting...

I'm gonna reap your work when a stable beta appears :D .

Cheers,

Mijo.

Originally posted by Gabriel_Bouvigne
Hey, I know that it might sound strange, but for me the ability to encode a cd from dvd using xvid and lame is not the most interesting part.

Otherwise why not using divx?
For me, the most interesting point is that lame and xvid allow me to learn about encoding. So yes, sometimes they really are educationnal tools.