using xvid for adult porn site

[cruella]

hi, i use xvid and realplayer for distro of femdom videos from my website, for its members.

I used the original Xvid_Installer.exe from ages ago, then i started using the latest version(with the hq option etc), only i get so many users with playback problems.

like the known green screen issue.

i have even had some people say that watching an xvid crashed thier computers and EVEN required a reformat....
Mac users are funny also.
I recommended trying 3ivx to one mac guy, who was having problems, and i got a reply about our videos being in a stupid format and not in 4by3 aspect ratio ( i use the wildy strange mpeg1 352/288 resolution, which i dont think a quicktime 320240 guy has seen before....)
hell, i spend the time and effort making realplayer versions for these type of people.

personally i think these people are computer dinosaurs who will be extinct soon enough...

but in the meantime, does any one know which xvid encoding method/codec gives the most universally compatible video files?

i want to keep our linux fans sweet, but also it needs to work for windows 95,98,se,me,2k,xp

even though only 98se and 2k are worth using, we always encounter people using stupid os versions like windows me, which struggled to even play its own wmv format which win98se played fine, as for xp, i dont know, any issues?

ok thanks for reading, help would be appreciated.

cruella@cruella.com

[Animaniac]

._.

Have your Windows user base use ffdshow-alpha (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdhsow). Linux users should use mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu). They should play nearly all MPEG-4 streams without problems.

[TelemachusMH]

Windows, Linux, and MAC users can also use VideoLan Client (http://videolan.org/).

Also Windows, Linux, and MAC users can use mplayer. Windows (Not recommended) (ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32-beta/), Linux (http://mplayerhq.hu/), and MAC OS X (http://www.fi.muni.cz/~xpridal/mplayerosx/).

I think you're best bet for compadibility is ffdshow for windows, mplayer for linux, and mplayer for mac.

TelemachusMH

[Teegedeck]

I think you'd better stay away from XviD. It's certainly not been made for end-users whose brains are mainly occupied with... other than technical things. To be precise, I suspect you can't expect any thoughts or patience from your clients. Furthermore, you obviously can't provide end-user support to them. Try to license DivX5 instead. Something that shifts the burdon of support from your shoulders onto some other party. This would have the benefit of being legal, also.


Originally posted by cruella
i have even had some people say that watching an xvid crashed thier computers and EVEN required a reformat....
:D :D :D

[wotef]

Originally posted by cruella
i have even had some people say that watching an xvid crashed thier computers and EVEN required a reformat....


and I even heard that watching pr0n gives one hairy palms

the substance of both statements is the same :p

[vinouz]

Well I don't have hairy palms...

[ciper]

why use xvid or any mpeg4 codec for that matter? Due to the redundancy of that video content those scenes are relatively easy to compress with any codec .. :D :D :D

Ok, joke aside .. why not use xvid stable (0.91) and then convert that to a mpeg4 stream with one of doom9 guides? That should be compatible enough :) I guess

[int 21h]

There are some huge licensing issues here, especially since there is a charge for this site.

[IvS]

Endless memebership sites use DivX 3. Obviously their authors don't care about "legal issues" because no legal entity cares that they use it either. I've never seen a case where a porn membership site author was asked by anyone to remove DivX 3 videos because of MPEG-4 licensing issues. If you've ever heard of such a case, please tell.
Endless, often very popular sites use DivX 3 (and rarely 5 or even 4).
Why the case may be any different with XviD, i don't know. Same thing. Unlicensed MPEG-4. But well, No one seems to care.

edit: for example, if anyone forgot, MP3 needs licensing too :rolleyes:, and again, NO ONE CARES. MP3, although old and outdated by AAC (the much better advanced audio coding mpeg-4 format supposed to be a successor to MP3) is by FAR (as you all know) the most popular lossy audio format in the world. It can and will not be controled by any entity enforcing licensing. Not Thomson, not FhG, no one, because no one is that stupid. (p.s. GIF anyone?... hahahaha)

[temporance]

Originally posted by IvS
Why the case may be any different with XviD, i don't know. Same thing. Unlicensed MPEG-4. But well, No one seems to care.Don't believe that!!! The way licensing authorities work is to chase someone after they have made a decent amount of money. They may wait years, letting the illegal use continue so that they can sue for more money.

Let's say there's a porn VoD site using xvid (which cannot be licensed under MPEG-LA because of GPL). After years of selling movies via the site, MPEG-LA's lawyers could come knocking on the door demanding back payment for MPEG-4 licenses (plus damages). It could get very nasty.

So you should really consider licensing a legal codec, if you already have a lot of xvid content then DivX would be the logical choice.

[int 21h]

i.e. GIF licensing.

[S_O]

I also had problems with encoding video stuff for others in XviD, because they only had DivX to decode it. The best thing is you don´t use QPel, GMC or B-Frames, they´ll cause problems. Use the latest unstable build from Koepi and use "DIVX" as FourCC. It will be played with DivX 4/5 without problems.
About that resolution, it´s only used on VCDs (PAL), I don´t know waht input resolution you use, but for correct aspect ratio use a resolution of 384x288.

[Nic]

Windows Media 8 would probably be the logical choice for them, because its free to use and can be played on almost every platform.
(although with difficulty by non-windows platforms)

-Nic

[mf]

Good news! I've traced the website to a UK operation, and since the EU doesn't accept software patents, cruella's free from any hassle. After europe accepts software patents, things could get nasty though. Watch out, but for now you're safe.

[temporance]

Originally posted by mf
Good news! I've traced the website to a UK operation, and since the EU doesn't accept software patents, cruella's free from any hassle. After europe accepts software patents, things could get nasty though. Watch out, but for now you're safe. Not so fast, mf!! If, by a software upgrade, you can make a piece of hardware infringe a patent, it still counts as an infringement. This is true in the UK. So if xvid code turns a PC into a piece of hardware capable of decoding MPEG-4, then there has been an infringement.

[mf]

Originally posted by temporance
Not so fast, mf!! If, by a software upgrade, you can make a piece of hardware infringe a patent, it still counts as an infringement. This is true in the UK. So if xvid code turns a PC into a piece of hardware capable of decoding MPEG-4, then there has been an infringement.
Lawyers that'll make a judge take such crap are VERY expensive. More expensive than the money you could get out of taking it to court.

[temporance]

"Lawyers that'll make a judge take such crap are VERY expensive. More expensive than the money you could get out of taking it to court."

Completely agree. Patent cases are so expensive that 99.9% of the time, these things never get to court. And for anyone working on open-source, patents are more-or-less a non issue, unless your work results in some huge company losing income!

But on the software patents issue... If I have a box full of large FPGA's and processors, with video input and network output, it doesn't infringe any patents. As soon as I add the right software and firmware, it becomes, a hardware MPEG-4 encoder. At this point, I have something that requires patent licenses.

So, when a piece of software itself doesn't infringe any patents, and a piece of hardware doesn't either, but the combination of the two does, there are issues, even in Europe. I've had to deal with patent attorneys on this sort of thing - trust me, it is a very real problem.

[sungey]

Originally posted by cruella

but in the meantime, does any one know which xvid encoding method/codec gives the most universally compatible video files?
cruella@cruella.com

I suggest using xvid with bframe and then make it playable with divx5. I have seen hundreds of publicly-distributed anime using this style of encoding and its very seldom to hear ppl complaining about it.

how to do it ? using Koepi's latest build ... hit Load Defaults
and change to this...

http://www.rpi.edu/~ismael/pics/xvid-dx50.JPG

[mf]

I thought packed bitstream was also necessary to imitate DivX5 ? Btw, VHQ4 is also decodable by DivX5 ;).

[Alxemi]

cruella:
As soms people said, recommend ffdshow-alpha to your clients and thats all.

[sungey]

Originally posted by mf
I thought packed bitstream was also necessary to imitate DivX5 ? Btw, VHQ4 is also decodable by DivX5 ;).

yup VHQ=4 also works .... you can also change the bframe threshold and bframe ratio/offset ... but quantizer type _must_ be h263 for Divx5 playback..

afaik, packed bitstream doesnt work correctly ... its been discussed in this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47381&highlight=packed+bitstream)

[cruella]

thanks for all the replies!!

some very interesting reading.

bye for now

[Rooster6975]

FFDshow, in my experience, is a bit of a nightmare. It seems to work perfectly on some systems, but does not work at all on others. I can't recommend it for anyone going for the most universal method of providing video content. In my own experience, it worked fine for all versions of the DivX codec, but produced a green screen for all Xvid AVIs. I have seen this posted many times in various forums. After a number of attempts to fix it, I deselected Xvid from the FFDShow config and used it only for DivX movies. I could see no appreciable benefit over using the codec by itself and eventually de-installed FFDShow.

Trying to get end users who are not DivX savvy onto FFDShow is a big mistake. The only way I could get the configuration dialog box up was to install Zoomplayer, go into the filter options, and get to the config by selecting FFDShow. My regular player, MicroDVD, did not seem to have a filter option to get to the ffdshow config. Other people seem to imply that by going through the Start menu and selectiong Program - FFDShow - Configuration, it would pop up a dialog box. It doesn't on my computer, nor does it on many other computers. Most of the people who have this problem post "Now What?" and do not get any responses.

Another problem with XVid is that if you get a few bad frames in a download, the video stops. DivX has long had antifreeze built into the codec to avoid this problem. Most of the time you won't even notice the corruption. With XVid, you can't help noticing because your player will either crash or the audio will carry on without the video. There is no solution to this problem that I know of as of yet.

Therefore, trying to run it as a general public tool is a big mistake. You are better off using the DivX codec even if you have to work out some licensing issues. It is far more mainstream, and far more user friendly.

Cheers,
Rooster.