DivX Marke Share

[weaver4]

Let me restate this to make jggimi happy.

I noticed that the content on the Internet is nearly all XviD. A few years ago this was not the case, it seemed to be equally split between DivX and XviD. Has DivX really lost that much market share to XviD in the Past few years, or is what I am seeing an abnormality?

[DarkZell666]

DivX : good quality, full version needs paying for, closed-source ...
XviD : great quality, free, open-source ... heaven man :D

Without even looking at the available content, this would be the most likely thing to happen anyway.

One con though, XviD isn't fool-proof : you need to know what you're doing to use it, whereas DivX has easy ready-made profiles depending on what device you'll use your material on. XviD has adapted rather well to this situation but you still need to be a little g33kish to use it (which everyone is, to some extent, on this board anyway ;))

DivX's free version of their codec doesn't compete with XviD since it's feature-limited anyway.

What else to say ? Get rockin' ;)

[weaver4]

DivX 6.25 is every bit as good as XviD. Several improvements have been made over the last year. Such as Enhanced Texture and Sharping Filter.

DivX now supports Menus and other enhancements that XviD does not support.

DivX does certification of SAPs to make sure that your encodes will work properly.

The only problem with XviD is that it is Free. Since it is Free who knows what will happen to it next week. History has told us that most of the free tools gradually stop development, VituralDub VirtualDubMod, Staxrip, MPEG Mediator, AutoGK, GK, DVDDecrypter, ect. A few weeks ago I complained that the XviD web site had not been updated in 3 months even though the web site said it would be updated with a week on May 10th. I was called "another idiot. whoo hoo." for daring to complain about a "Free" tool.

[check]

Those two features you listed are both implemented exclusively on the decoder side. Simply install the divx decoder to take advantage of them.

Divx does not support these, the divx container does. As an addendum to this, how much online content would require menus? Simple videos which play from start to end (see youtube, TV episodes, movies, etc etc) are all that exist.

This certification can be used with xvid too - the only difference is that divx includes presets to make your life easier.

I fail to understand your argument. Yes, development may cease at any time, but the current quality of the codec is equal or greater than that of divx (taking the latest doom9 comparison as evidence). The onus is not on xvid to improve in this 'race', it is on divx to improve to the same quality.

Also, please don't drag old complaints into new threads :)

[DarkZell666]

@weaver4 : Sad but true indeed, money being involved means more "motivation" than just personnal achievement. I'm ok with that.

But honestly ... give a .divx file to someone not too much informed. Even if he guesses it's video (because there's divx written on it), if he throws it at WMP it won't work. He'll have to download the whole DivX bundle (something well over 10Mb).

Give someone an .avi file (with the "traditionnal" WMP icon on it) with standard MPEG4-ASP and MP3 inside, it'll play like a charm because WMP (via dshow, obsiously) is capable of playing it by default. And since XviD simply IS among the best free MPEG4-ASP implementations around, it's normal that everyone uses it.

Besides, it's ironical to see that people commonly speak about a "divx movie" to designate a dvd-rip (at least over here they do) that doesn't have anything to do with DivX, lol ;)

[Awatef]

@ DarkZell
:D Yeah, everybody seems to call it DivX, even if it's XviD encoded (me included :D). Has probably something to do with DivX 3.11 being the pioneer of it all, and the DivX logo being put everywhere on SAPs.
I would actually say that DivX is far more popular than XviD even if the movies are encoded in XviD, because DivX is everywhere and ironically, it can play XviD too (and that's what it does on my computer as well!)

[weaver4]

I believe that Enhanced Texture is an encode feature. At least it is found on the Encoder dialog box.

I brought up my previous point to make a new one. "When it is Free you seem to lose your right to point out problems." The algorithm seems to be: "It is free so you should not have any expectations, you are lucky to have it."

DivX has spent a great deal of time doing the commercialization of DivX in the marketplace including certification, encouraging manufactures to make DivX SAP. The have also developed a lot of video tools, Dr1, Dr2, DivXMux, Menu Generator and such. I personally do not mind paying a little for that. Sure Xvid has made a great codec and is "riding" on the groundwork that DivX has established. But, I don't think, that we would have 129 DivX standalone players in the market that will also play XviD if it was not for the efforts of DivX.

I do understand your arguments, I go back-and-forth between the two all the time.

[setarip_old]

Hi!"When it is Free you seem to lose your right to point out problems." The algorithm seems to be: "It is free so you should not have any expectations, you are lucky to have it."You seem to be using a very broad brush (referring to ALL freeware) to describe what appears to be a single event or events related to a single program.

At these Doom9 forums, you'll find a tremendous amount of back and forth positive dialog, regarding MANY freeware programs...

BTW - Although it may not happen very frequently, as far as I know, VirtualDub continues to be updated periodically.

[weaver4]

See this is what I am talking about. DivX just came out with version 6.4 of their codec with "1080HD encoding mode", "High efficiency resize filters", "Adaptive noise reduction" and "Improved support for interlaced video". Funny how things get done when you have money.

But, the XviD site was updated on May 10th, apologizing for no updates.

[chilledoutuk]

weaver all the features you mention dont have much if any effect on people that know what there doing.
For example most poeple resize using avisynth filters, there are hundreds of noise reduction filter pluggins for processing video in avisynth.
The fast first pass concept has been in xvid for years.
Finaly something i have absolutely no interest in is support for interlaced video.

So all in all this update seems to be copying the ideas and techniques already well established in open source technologies lanczos4, fast first pass, nosie reduction etc

I personally believe that xvid is the best asp codec around and that if you need something faster nerodigital is also pretty handy.

[weaver4]

I don't know which one is better either. But DivX claims they have made 17 changes that influence video quality since 6.1 which was the 2005 codec shootout.

I hope Doom9 decides to cover these codecs in this year's review.

[DigitAl56K]

While I have hesitated to jump in on this thread because I think some of the discussion comes a little close to trolling in this forum, I want to address a handful of the points made here.

DivX's free version of their codec doesn't compete with XviD since it's feature-limited anyway.

The DivX Community Codec is feature limited. However, you should consider that the features that are restricted generally fall into two categories: 1) Features that aren't supported by DivX Certified devices, and 2) Features that are usually implemented outside of the codec by community tools (e.g. crop and resize is normally done by AVISynth in community apps). We carefully selected the restricted features based on these principles to ensure that you're getting everything you need to create high quality DivX Certified video for free.

I'll also restate once again that we have nothing against XVID video! If that's your tool of choice stick with it. You can even upload either format to Stage6.

DivX 6.25 is every bit as good as XviD. Several improvements have been made over the last year. Such as Enhanced Texture and Sharping Filter.

DivX now supports Menus and other enhancements that XviD does not support.

Those two features you listed are both implemented exclusively on the decoder side. Simply install the divx decoder to take advantage of them.

Divx does not support these, the divx container does. As an addendum to this, how much online content would require menus? Simple videos which play from start to end (see youtube, TV episodes, movies, etc etc) are all that exist.

Enhanced Texture is an encoder-side implementation, while sharpening is a post-processing method implemented in the Decoder and can be (and is!) applied equally well to XVID videos played using the DivX decoder.

As far as the advanced features of the DivX Media format go, if you install the latest version of the DivX Web Player and access it's right-click menu (go to http://stage6.divx.com to find videos to try this on) you can see we're already building support for multiple audio tracks and subtitles right into it. This functionality can be incredibly useful - for example there are a lot of cool Japanese videos on Stage6 right now that I would like to see with English subtitles.

Once again, if you keep your XVID videos compatible with DivX Certified profiles you should be able to mux them into a DivX Media Format container with these advanced features if you like.

This certification can be used with xvid too - the only difference is that divx includes presets to make your life easier.

We actually provided the XVID team some information to assist them in implementing the presets during their 1.0-1.1 period.

Certification is not an easy business. We have to test literally hundreds of devices with dozens of test clips for compliance and work with manufacturers to resolve issues before they can go to market with our logo on their box. We have teams dedicated just to this task, and rooms stacked to their ceilings with players. If we want to add a new feature to a profile or even change something as simple as a VBV parameter we have to produce an entire new suite of test material and retest on many different units.


I fail to understand your argument. Yes, development may cease at any time, but the current quality of the codec is equal or greater than that of divx (taking the latest doom9 comparison as evidence).

XVID beat DivX on 2/3 tests, and one of the tests was exceptionally close. However, I don't intent to start a debate on this in this thread. If you'd like to read more of my thoughts on this issue you can search the forums. I'll simply state that both DivX and XVID are very good ASP codecs :)

But honestly ... give a .divx file to someone not too much informed. Even if he guesses it's video (because there's divx written on it), if he throws it at WMP it won't work. He'll have to download the whole DivX bundle (something well over 10Mb).

Because someone downloading video over the Internet can't download a 15MB installer? Even when I was on dial-up many years ago I downloaded files larger than that regularly.

Don't know how to play a .divx file? Type "DivX" into Google and click on the top result.

The installer gives you a lot of functionality for working with DivX. You have access to the DivX Codec for VFW and DirectShow, you have DivX Player for playing and burning your files, and optionally accessing VOD services, you have DivX Web Player for Firefox, Opera, IE, Netscape, the Stage6 uploader plugin, and DivX Converter.

Give someone an .avi file (with the "traditionnal" WMP icon on it) with standard MPEG4-ASP and MP3 inside, it'll play like a charm because WMP (via dshow, obsiously) is capable of playing it by default.

It won't, because it isn't.

And since XviD simply IS among the best free MPEG4-ASP implementations around, it's normal that everyone uses it.

Again, we have no problems if you want to use XVID.

DivX has spent a great deal of time doing the commercialization of DivX in the marketplace including certification, encouraging manufactures to make DivX SAP. The have also developed a lot of video tools, Dr1, Dr2, DivXMux, Menu Generator and such. I personally do not mind paying a little for that.

Thanks weaver4, we do put a lot of work into what we do and it's nice when people do contribute back to DivX to help us continue our efforts. Just as the video community here has helped us tremendously over the years, and we thank you all for your support, we have also tried to give back a lot. The DivX Community Codec, Dr DivX 2 OSS, Stage6, DivX Web Player, the DivX for Linux codec, and of course our device certification are some of our projects that you can see publically today, and internally we keep developing towards the future.

I do understand your arguments, I go back-and-forth between the two all the time.

Again, use whatever you feel is the right tool for the job :)

See this is what I am talking about. DivX just came out with version 6.4 of their codec with "1080HD encoding mode", "High efficiency resize filters", "Adaptive noise reduction" and "Improved support for interlaced video". Funny how things get done when you have money.

I think having a team who can afford to be dedicated to a project certainly makes life a little easier, but another important factor in my view is the driving force behind a project. Too frequently today it is easy to point to a closed-source application and its open-source counterpart and find several reasons why the open-source project holds a greater value to its users, be it responsiveness to user requested features, responsiveness to security issues, or even just pricing/licensing schemes. I certainly know that much of the development on products like DivX Codec or Dr DivX 2 OSS happens because we see user demand for certain features, or else we simply think that they'd be really cool (the sharpening post-processing we added to DivX Codec 6.2.5 is a great example).

In my personal opinion, DivX Codec and XVID are actually a really good example of how a closed-source and open-source project can not only co-exist, but both share at least some of the same goals and values.


I personally believe that xvid is the best asp codec around and that if you need something faster nerodigital is also pretty handy.

If you need something faster try DivX Codec on the "High Performance" setting, you will get better performance and overall PSNR.

Hope this all helps.

[Your_Idol]

There is no need for so much discussion. They do different things so they don't need comparing. Basically Xvid is for the professionals and Divx is for the amateurs. Divx is easy and if you set it to Home Theater it will 100% work on SAP. Xvid has more options for god knows what. I can’t tell the difference between the quality or speed of the two.

[DigitAl56K]

I can’t tell the difference between the quality or speed of the two.

So why suggest XVID is for professionals? ;) Maybe you mean that XVID is preferred by people who like to tweak every last option manually.

We could easily expose many additional settings in the GUI of DivX Codec if we thought that was the best thing to do, but really this is not necessary, and so we choose not to.

[stoppots]

:helpful:

what would be interesting indeed would be to go ahead and "expose" those "many additional settings in the GUI of DivX Codec" and in doing so,

let those people or professionals who like to "tweak every last option manually" could do so and then maybe a little light could be shed on this debate

[Sagittaire]

For quality: XviD, DivX, Nero ASP or Libavcodec ASP are really close codec now.
IMO in objective and subjective test all these codec will obtain really close result

For Use: At this time these codec have different users
- DivX is a very friendly avi/divx/vfw codec
- XviD is totaly free but more complex
- Nero use a very friendly mp4 interface gui with a very fast frame serveur
- Linux community use Libavcodec codec suite

[Sharktooth]

- Linux community use Libavcodec codec suite
I use xvid on linux...
However all my respect goes to DXN for providing free tools (such as DivX decoder, DivX media format and Dr.Divx) and a free community codec that is excellent in quality.
I miss a commandline encoder though...