Is XviD Dead?

[orion44]

Is XviD still used in 2017?

Do any of you prefer to use XviD to encode your videos, or to watch a movie encoded with XviD instead of x264?

Are there any good reasons to still use XviD instead of a modern codec like x264?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Look on the XviD forum :) There's still some people using it for old hardware.

Makes me nostalgic!

[Midzuki]

I myself still use DivX :devil: 6.8.5.
It's fine for some short clips (up to 30 minutes) @720p :)

[wonkey_monkey]

I'm still waiting for RealVideo 11.

[Asmodian]

I'm still waiting for RealVideo 11.

;) :cool:

[Mick]

@orion44
I use it and love Xvid. And 90 percent of my Clients demand Xvid, only a handfull want x264 ;) So, to answer your question "Is Xvid dead ?", my answer is: No :)

@Blue_MisFit
Where did you get that Story with "old Hardware" from ? Xvid runs perfect on older and up to date Hardware with no problems, inform yourself, okay ;)

Cheers

Mick

[Groucho2004]

@Blue_MisFit
Where did you get that Story with "old Hardware" from ? Xvid runs perfect on older and up to date Hardware with no problems, inform yourself, okay ;)
What? Read his post again and try to understand it.

[Mick]

@Groucho2004
Blue_MisFits wrote:
"There's still some people using it for old hardware."

What has "old Hardware" to do with the Xvid Codec ? I did read his Post and understood it, okay ? ;) If not, well then enlighten me what i did not catch.

Cheers

Mick

[Bloax]

The connection between "old hardware" and "xvid" is that "old hardware" does not support x264 playback, thus the ones still on old hardware are forced to use xvid instead of switching to the superior x264 solution.

[Mick]

@Bloax
If you mean PC's/Workstations without the "QuickSync" Feature with "old Hardware", that might be true. Still, I suggest you compare the Quality between the 2 Codecs. I still prefer Xvid over x264 because the Quality is much better and many of my Colleagues think the same way. But at the end it's a matter of Taste, nothing else and has nothing to do with "old Hardware" from my point of view.

Cheers
Mick

[Groucho2004]

@Groucho2004
Blue_MisFits wrote:
"There's still some people using it for old hardware."

What has "old Hardware" to do with the Xvid Codec ? I did read his Post and understood it, okay ? ;) If not, well then enlighten me what i did not catch.

Cheers

Mick
I was referring to this part of your post:
Xvid runs perfect on older and up to date Hardware with no problems, inform yourself, okay ;)
Nothing in Blue_MisFits' post implied that it wouldn't run on any kind of hardware. Also, I can assure you that he doesn't need to "inform himself". So, I stand by my initial assessment - Your reply makes no sense.

[Groucho2004]

@Bloax
If you mean PC's/Workstations without the "QuickSync" Feature with "old Hardware", that might be true.What does Quicksync have to do with this? The hardware mentioned is obviously set-top boxes and old DVD players with MPEG-4 -2 support.

[Mick]

@Groucho2004
Okay, big misunderstanding here, okay ? First, with "inform yourself" i meant something different, not what you thought. Second, i did not try to make "Blue_MisFits" look stupid, you got that in the wrong channel. Third, if you think my reply "makes no sense", fine, i can live with that and I hope we are clear now, no hard feelings, okay ?

Cheers
Mick

P.S.: QuickSync is needed for a fluent work with x264 stuff, older Hardware does not have that Feature ;)

[Groucho2004]

no hard feelings, okay ?
None whatsoever.

[Przemek_Sperling]

I do not think that XviD is dead. What is interesting AMD's UVD hardware decoded H.264 first (UVD1 and later) and Xvid later (UVD3 and above).

I am pretty sure that Xvid's peak popularity was some years ago anyway. Less and less popular? Yes. Dead? No.

[Jamaika]

XviD has unofficial version.
https://github.com/ShiftMediaProject/xvid

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Development still seems somewhat active:
http://websvn.xvid.org/cvs/viewvc.cgi/trunk/?view=log

[Blue_MiSfit]

LOL yeah I was referring to old hardware DVD players with MPEG-4 Part 2 support. These were popular in the mid 2000s before H.264 / AVC had mainstream hardware support. Lots of people use these old DVD players for playing backups from CD / DVD / USB! It's perfectly useful hardware.

Anything being sold today certainly supports AVC.

[Ghitulescu]

Why people waste their time and resources to convert a playable format into a possible-but-not-sure format is still a mystery to me...
As Xvid is a privately-developed codec there are very few sources that provide native support (I know none but I do not exclude the possibility).
On the other hand, all commercial hardware can play the commercial sources, like MPEG-2/VOB/TS/M2TS or even AVC/MPEG-4/etc...
The price of kWh is ~0.30-0.35€.
The price of storage is less than 30€/TB for HDD and less than 0.5€/GB for SD cards and/or USB sticks.
The average loan is 35€/h.

And now it's getting warmer and warmer, so even the excuse of using the CPU at 100% for hours to heat the rooms will fall...

[Groucho2004]

Why people waste their time and resources to convert a playable format into a possible-but-not-sure format is still a mystery to me...
As Xvid is a privately-developed codec there are very few sources that provide native support (I know none but I do not exclude the possibility).
On the other hand, all commercial hardware can play the commercial sources, like MPEG-2/VOB/TS/M2TS or even AVC/MPEG-4/etc...
The price of kWh is ~0.30-0.35€.
The price of storage is less than 30€/TB for HDD and less than 0.5€/GB for SD cards and/or USB sticks.
The average loan is 35€/h.

And now it's getting warmer and warmer, so even the excuse of using the CPU at 100% for hours to heat the rooms will fall...It's difficult to grasp the meaning of this post and - once that is accomplished - quite a stretch to connect it to the subject of this thread. I think you're trying to make a point against re-encoding of any kind and store everything on hard drives in its original format, right?


The average loan is 35€/h.Huh?

And now it's getting warmer and warmerWhat? Where?


The price of kWh is ~0.30-0.35€.
The price of storage is less than 30€/TB for HDD and less than 0.5€/GB for SD cards and/or USB sticks.
The average loan is 35€/h.
Can I use this to calculate the current price of bananas?

[Ghitulescu]

The meaning of the above post was that people argued whether or not xvid can be playable on certain appliances, and what are those...
therefore my post was directed to why people convert sources that work on most if not all players into a format that causes people to argue about its portability across the HW installed base.

[Groucho2004]

The meaning of the above post was that people argued whether or not xvid can be playable on certain appliances, and what are those...
therefore my post was directed to why people convert sources that work on most if not all players into a format that causes people to argue about its portability across the HW installed base.
There was no argument, just a misunderstanding.

[Katie Boundary]

I still use XviD for the following reasons:

- XviD correctly installs on my computers
- VP8 / VP9 doesn't
- X264 / X265 doesn't
- VP7 is slower than watching grass grow

[Mick]

Here is a little Update what "Hardware" concerns:

My Colleagues around the Globe and me tested Xvid encoded Videos with "new and old" Hardware. Result: No Problems what so ever in SD/HD from USB-Sticks/SD-Cards/DVD and BluRay Medias. All modern TV's, Decoders for Digital TV, DVD and BluRay Players played the Xvid Videos fine in a superb quality. The Audio was encoded in PCM (Stereo), MP3 (Stereo) and AC3 (Stereo/Multichannel).

So, Xvid is far from being dead and still my personal favorite Codec.

Even YouTube, NetFlix, DailyMotion and Vimeo accept Videos encoded with the Xvid Codec as a upload, fully tested. The current Version (1.3.4) is fast, stable and fully supports the new Media Foundation Specs. In case you want to find out more or download the latest Version, here is the Link:

https://www.xvid.com

Another Reason why I prefer Xvid: Smart- and Intelli-Rendering makes editing Video a matter of minutes, no matter if you are dealing with SD or HD Footage.

Cheers

Mick

[Midzuki]

In case you want to find out more or download the latest Version, here is the Link:

https://www.xvid.com

I prefer to download the source-code and then compile only what I need (i.e., the VfW encoder and xvid_encraw.exe). The installer became bloatware some years ago, and to make things worse, there are no applications capable of unpacking it.

[Groucho2004]

Here is a little Update what "old Hardware" concerns:

My Colleagues around the Globe and me tested Xvid encoded Videos with "new" Hardware. Result: No Problems what so ever in SD/HD from USB-Sticks/SD-Cards/DVD and BluRay Medias. All modern TV's, Decoders for Digital TV, DVD and BluRay Players played the Xvid Videos fine in a superb quality. The Audio was encoded in PCM (Stereo), MP3 (Stereo) and AC3 (Stereo/Multichannel).
You realize that your headline about "old hardware" has nothing to do with the paragraph that follows, right?
Apart from that, you're stating the obvious, nobody in this thread ever mentioned that xvid wouldn't run on new hardware.
Your posts remain a mystery. Maybe it's a translation problem.

[manolito]

What I do not understand is the notion that one video encoder is "better" or "superior" or "delivers better quality" than the next one. Video encoders (as long as they do not suffer from design flaws or severe bugs) do not differ in quality, they are different in efficiency.

MPEG2 -> Divx/XviD -> AVC -> HEVC

MPEG2 can deliver just as good quality as HEVC if you throw enough bitrate at it (not taking into account the DVD bitrate restrictions). For the decision which encoder you want to use you need to weigh the advantages against the shortcomings. If you want to distribute the conversion results with maximum compatibility to existing devices or software, then the DVD format or DivX/XviD still makes a lot of sense. The AVC and even more the HEVC formats are quite demanding on the decoding end, a lot of devices or software players simply do not have the power to decode these formats in real time.

In many cases the smaller file sizes from the more efficient formats simply do not matter, because HDD space has become so cheap. Of course this is different for streaming HD content, you have limited bandwidth, and a more efficient codec makes a lot of difference.


I live in Germany, and 2 weeks ago the DVB-T2 standard has been established. The old DVB-T was MPEG2-TS, the new format is HEVC. This is causing a lot of trouble, mainly because I think HEVC is not all that mature yet. My new DVB-T2 receiver records the streams in a .mTS container, and on my PC it is quite difficult to work with this format. tsMuxer and Avidemux refuse to open the files (I am not sure if HEVC in an mTS container is even legal). I am constantly struggling with A/V sync issues, repacking the files into an MKV container is not reliable even with the latest MKVToolNix version, playback is not smooth at all, simply a PITA. I would never consider using this format if I had to send the content out to a client.


So IMO using older formats like DVD or DivX/XviD makes a lot of sense if file size is not an issue. The notion that the newer formats deliver better quality is nothing but a myth... :p


Cheers
manolito

[Katie Boundary]

What I do not understand is the notion that one video encoder is "better" or "superior" or "delivers better quality" than the next one. Video encoders (as long as they do not suffer from design flaws or severe bugs) do not differ in quality, they are different in efficiency.

MPEG2 -> Divx/XviD -> AVC -> HEVC

MPEG2 can deliver just as good quality as HEVC if you throw enough bitrate at it (not taking into account the DVD bitrate restrictions).

...

So IMO using older formats like DVD or DivX/XviD makes a lot of sense if file size is not an issue. The notion that the newer formats deliver better quality is nothing but a myth... :p

Not only that, but as bitrate increases, the difference in quality between these codecs gets smaller and smaller. How many people do you think could tell the difference between 10 mbits/sec MPEG-2 and 10 mbits/sec Xvid?

[Sharc]

...How many people do you think could tell the difference between 10 mbits/sec MPEG-2 and 10 mbits/sec Xvid?
Well, it depends on the picture resolution, doesn't it?

[Groucho2004]

Well, it depends on the picture resolution, doesn't it?Not to mention the complexity of the source.

[albt]

Not yet.

[Katie Boundary]

Well, it depends on the picture resolution, doesn't it?

Let's go with 720x480

[Mick]

@Groucho2004
Thank you for the Hint about the Headline, just altered it. True, nobody stated here that Xvid would not work on new Hardware. I just wanted to make clear that it has nothing to do with "old" or "new" Hardware what the Xvid Codec concerns.

@Manolito
I totally agree with you :) Newer is not always better ;)

@Katie
Nobody can tell the difference when it comes to Quality, you're right. :)

@Sharc
It has nothing to do with the Resolution and as long as you use the proper Profile of the Xvid Codec, everything is just fine, in SD and HD.

@Midzuki
The Xvid Installer works fine and so far none of my Colleagues and Friends ever reported any Problems installing the Xvid Codec. Foreign Installers might cause Problems but not the one from the Xvid Website or the Builds from Koepi.

Cheers

Mick

[Groucho2004]

I just wanted to make clear that it has nothing to do with "old" or "new" Hardware what the Xvid Codec concerns.Hardware that is incompatible with newer encoders/formats is in almost all cases the reason why xvid is still used.

@Katie
Nobody can tell the difference when it comes to Quality, you're right. :)What?

@Sharc
It has nothing to do with the Resolution and as long as you use the proper Profile of the Xvid Codec, everything is just fine, in SD and HD.Yes, it does have to do with resolution (and complexity). MPEG-4 Part 2 is more efficient than MPEG-2. Therefore, at a given bitrate, the result with xvid will be better with an increasing number of pixels/frame.

Why do you keep writing about things of which you clearly have insufficient knowledge?

[Midzuki]

<!-- SNIPP -->


My nickname is Midzuki.
If I complained about the installer, it's because its creators have been doing it all wrong.
I am not a newbie, sir.

Last but not least: welcome to my Ignore List.

[Logan9778]

It was dead to me YEARS ago.

[johnmeyer]

My nickname is Midzuki.
If I complained about the installer, it's because its creators have been doing it all wrong.
I am not a newbie, sir.

Last but not least: welcome to my Ignore List.You have GOT to be kidding! The guy hits an "i" instead of an "o" and you post this? The two letters are next to each other on the keyboard, in case you didn't notice.

Please also put me on your ignore list.

[Midzuki]

Please also put me on your ignore list.

Nope :)

P.S.:

Answer me Herr Meyer, what made you conclude that I killfiled Mick because of a typo, and not because of the drivel which made Groucho2004 write:

Why do you keep writing about things of which you clearly have insufficient knowledge?

?????

P.P.S.:

On the other hand, probably I'll killfile you @Videohelp.com :D

[manolito]

To get back on topic, I agree with Midzuki that the XviD installers got kind of bloated over time.

IMO the latest significant update to XviD was the addition of VAQ (by Dark Shikari), after this nothing really important was added. In the good old times I always preferred the Celtic Druid builds over the Koepi builds (they were more stable and did not cause memory corruption under DVD2SVCD), and the latest Celtic Druid builds from 2008 featuring VAQ are still available:
http://esby.free.fr/CelticDruid/mirror/XviD/

The installer is absolutely clean, and I cannot see a difference in quality compared to the latest official builds from 2015.


@Groucho
Why do you keep writing about things of which you clearly have insufficient knowledge?
Didn't most of us start here writing about things of which we had insufficient knowledge? I really get very red in the face rereading some of my posts from 14 years ago... :eek:


Cheers
manolito

[GMJCZP]

IMHO, Xvid is still usable.

When I use Avisource I feel much more comfortable than with other source commands.

I recommend using Jawor's builds to install Xvid.

[Groucho2004]

@Groucho

Didn't most of us start here writing about things of which we had insufficient knowledge?
I don't know how to write or talk about something of which I have little or no knowledge, nor would I want to. I know that there are people who have that skill, they usually have jobs in politics or marketing.
I prefer to do my research first. Thanks to the internet, this is a lot easier than 30 years ago when I had to go to the library on a regular basis.

Lastly, there is a difference between occasionally getting something wrong and writing stuff that consistently contains 70% nonsense and 30% padding.

[hello_hello]

Is there a type of Xvid I've so far not discovered, because I'm a little confused about the claims that Xvid is as good or better than x264. Well.... I guess it can be, but the default h263 matrix throws away plenty of fine detail, (for "old hardware" compatibility you possibly need to use it), and if memory serves me correctly Xvid's B-Frames are somewhat average quality. It's also more prone to "blockiness" in flat areas, no matter how much bitrate you give it..... at least in my experience.

And Xvid has no quality based single pass encoding method as x264 does, so it's either pick a bitrate and hope for the best, which is far from ideal (remember when every AVI was 350MB or 700MB etc?) or run a compression test before encoding.

Mind you the mpeg matrix is better than h263, and some of the custom matrices (from memory) do a good job of retaining detail, but that's generally reflected in the bitrate. Not that I think anyone has mentioned the matrix they use with Xvid, although a custom matrix could hurt hardware compatibility.

Is there a name for the "hazy" compression artefacts around subtitles or sharpish edges that I recall were inevitable for Xvid but far less of a problem for x264?

I ran a few little sample encodes just to see. It's a 1080p source downscaled to 960x396 (Spline36) for encoding, then upscaled to 1080p again on playback by MPC-HC. To find the bitrate for Xvid's maximum quality I ran a CQ2.0 encode (Home Theatre profile, one B-frame, VAQ enabled) then I used the resulting bitrate for 2 pass encodes (1050kbps). For x264 I used the default settings (no tuning etc). I assume those claiming Xvid is wonderful must at least be using the mpeg matrix.

These be thumbnails. Click for the full size version.
Source
https://s7.postimg.org/8zq4g83hj/source.jpg (https://postimg.org/image/8zq4g83hj/)

x264
https://s7.postimg.org/7ypvr3mhz/x264.jpg (https://postimg.org/image/7ypvr3mhz/)

Xvid h263 matrix
https://s7.postimg.org/wghzezp2f/xvid_h263_matrix.jpg (https://postimg.org/image/wghzezp2f/)

Xvid mpeg matrix
https://s7.postimg.org/4pbgkmyef/xvid_mpeg_matrix.jpg (https://postimg.org/image/4pbgkmyef/)

[Sharc]

....To find the bitrate for Xvid's maximum quality I ran a CQ2.0 encode (Home Theatre profile, one B-frame, VAQ enabled) then I used the resulting bitrate for 2 pass encodes (1050kbps).....
Interesting. This also means that higher bitrates for XviD would have no beneficial impact on the quality in this case.
It is also an explanation for some "undersizing" issues: The XviD encoder is saturated and doesn't waste extra bits for no benefit.

[hello_hello]

Yeah the way I understand it, a long time ago the quantizers were changed so the minimum quantizers could be set to "1" to allow the encoder to spend extra bits when required, to help prevent undersized files, but as far as I know it does nothing to increase the quality. I don't know what it does with them, but I'm pretty sure CQ2.0 is maximum quality.
I remember back in the AutoGK days I'd occasionally specify too high a bitrate for one reason or another and end up with an undersized file, and AutoGK was very good at outputting the requested file size as a rule.

If you run a single pass, "100% quality" encode using AutoGK, you get a CQ2.0 encode, unless my memory is letting me down. 75% quality is CQ2.67, from memory.

[hello_hello]

Now I'm wondering if I was wrong when I said a minimum quantizer of "1" doesn't improve quality. I'm not sure if I'm interpreting the Xvid stats correctly, but for the first encode I specified a bitrate way higher than the encoder would be able to achieve.

https://s3.postimg.org/6tdvmyczn/xvid1.jpg

For the second encode I specified a more sensible bitrate.

https://s3.postimg.org/8jwwofuir/xvid2.jpg

If nothing else, maybe forcing a minimum quantizer of "1" by specifying a really high bitrate will effectively improve the B-Frame quality, if the stats are anything to go by.

I probably should re-run my earlier test encodes at a much higher bitrate to see if the quality does improve.

[Sharc]

Yes, the quantizer range is 1 to 31, with 1 being generally considered very inefficient, means no to little quality improvement at "exploding" file size. Hence the more practical value of 2 for "maximum quality".
Two more parameters to play with for quality optimization for single-pass encodes are BRatio and BOffset which determine the value of the actual B-frame Quantizer from the quantizer values of the adjacent I or P frames. Oh yeah, long time ago ......

Edit:
I just found in my old notes that my recipe was for BRatio = 1.65 and BOffset = -0.25 (XViD defaults 1.5 and 1 respectively).
But don't quote me on that......

[hello_hello]

Looks like I'll have to do an about-face. I tried again using the h263 matrix while specifying a bitrate of 2050kbps. For some reason I actually got 2900kbps, maybe because it was a short sample, but the detail retention definitely improved. In fact I think this time the h263 matrix retained about the same amount of detail as the x264 encode, although at nearly 3x the bitrate you'd hope so.

Edit: For future reference I ran the encodes again with Xvid's overflow controls set to 10% and that way it hit the target bitrate of 2050kbps. It still wasn't doing quite as well as x264 in respect to fine detail retention even though it was now only twice the x264 bitrate, but it wasn't much worse over-all as the 2900kbps encodes when the overflow settings were 5% and it overshot the target bitrate of 2050kbps by quite a lot.

Xvid h263 matrix, 2900kbps
https://s12.postimg.org/6tbh5g115/Xvid_h263_B.jpg (https://postimg.org/image/6tbh5g115/)

So I might have to eat my words about Xvid not being able to retain the same amount of detail as x264, assuming you let it use an extremely high bitrate (compared to x264), but even so, I'm not sure I'd be using a less efficient encoder unless I had a particular reason, such as hardware player compatibility.

[johnmeyer]

Answer me Herr Meyer, what made you conclude that I killfiled Mick because of a typo ...

Because of what you wrote. Here it is again:My nickname is Midzuki.It was you who added the boldface on the letter "i" in order to indicate the correct spelling. Almost immediately after that statement you then said you are adding him to the ignore list. Thus, my conclusion was very straightforward.

I have no way of knowing your history with every member on this forum. All I know is what I read in that post.

On the other hand, probably I'll killfile you @Videohelp.com :DWow, it is obvious that it doesn't take much to cross you. What the heck did I do over there? I think my history in both forums is one of helping people rather than engaging in this sort of nonsense.

[Midzuki]

<OFF-TOPIC>
Because of what you wrote. Here it is again:It was you who added the boldface on the letter "i" in order to indicate the correct spelling. Almost immediately after that statement you then said you are adding him to the ignore list. Thus, my conclusion was very straightforward.
Nope, your conclusion was trollish.
"Almost immediately" is what you say.
Why you wanted to ignore the paragraph below:
If I complained about the installer, it's because its creators have been doing it all wrong.
I am not a newbie, sir.
I really don't (want to) know.

But again: ¿why the hell should I tolerate when someone miswrites my name?

BTW, I also don't like when people call me "Marisa" instead of «Marsia».

Over now.
</OFF-TOPIC>

[wonkey_monkey]

Well, it depends on the picture resolution, doesn't it?Let's go with 720x480

What? It wasn't a question - it does depend on the resolution.

But again: ¿why the hell should I tolerate when someone miswrites my name?

Because we're all just humans and we sometimes make mistakes and it doesn't indicate any intended insult and you're massively overreacting (to this and more besides, it seems).

That you blocked Mick because he misspelled your name was the only plausible conclusion I could come to, as well.