Xvid vs. DivX

[Locutus]

Hi everybody!

Which codec brings better compression quality, Xvid or DivX? What is the pros and cons?
Is DivX maybe better for higher compression and Xvid for big movies? What's the difference in the way they compress?
Is one of them faster then the other (in compress or decrompress)?

Thanks for answering all my stupid questions.
Locutus

[killingspree]

this has been discussed over and over again.
doom9 has done some comparisons (see doom9.org)
quality is subjectiv, you have to decide for yourself
anyway speed, quality etc are all very dependant on the source.
about speed: i believe divx might be a little bit faster in decoding if you switch off all post - processing!

regards
steVe

[chilledinsanity]

yeah, download the codecs for yourself and try them out on some sample video clips. Personally I find Nic's build of Xvid to produce the highest quality encodes for me, but then again I burn to DVD-R too.

[Justinus]

Well...it's not that stupid question. I used to ask myself whether I should use DivX or Xvid as well. Both of these codecs are MPEG-4 so it's hard to tell you whether what the difference is (only its internal algorithm that's what I could say).

I really have no idea which one provides better compression ratio. Each version of these codecs generate slightly different compression ratio already and DivX codec is being continuously released 5.0.4 beta at the moment so that everything I told you right now would have been obsoleted in the next few months.

Here (http://www.doom9.org/codec3-1.htm) is the comparison between several codecs. It might be a bit outdated in your point of view but at least it could give you the differece between these two codecs.

If you have more patient, then try to experiment by yourself. Just prepare a short movie clip (5-10 min) and encode with both codecs and see the result. This is very subjective and no one could tell you what is the best for your need.

[MasterYoshidino]

they are both MPEG4 codecs so they yield little difference. Since XVID is still beta and no 1.0 codec has been released, I am going to say try DivX 5 first.