[Red Wolf]

I know there are a lot of great MPEG-2/VOB to DivX programs out there for Mac OS X but I'm needing to take movies out of iMovie and FCE and make them into a DivX like video (DivX, XviD, 3ivx, etc) that will work on both Mac and PC (the majority I'm distributing to are PC users).

I've been working with ffmpegX lately and I can make a DivX that works on the PC end but when I doctor it I get a sync problem on the Mac. Likewise I can make a good 3ivx on the Mac but I'm hearing that 3ivx isn't a codec most PC users into video have installed.

I would appreciate any ideas or suggestions anyone more familiar with the dark side of video would have. Thanks.

[Uncle Skeleton]

3ivx is the best choice. It's not hard to install 3ivx for PC, and some will actually prefer the quality of its decoder over the divx.com decoder. The only other option is MPEG-1, which will be playable by default on all machines. But 3ivx's compression is roughly 10x better than MPEG-1, not to mention you can edit it afterwards if the sync isn't quite right or something. (divx/xvid/Apple MPEG-4 are all roughly similar in compression quality).

You might consider Apple's codec, but I would point out that 3ivx is supported back to QT4 and OS 8.6 (and win95 or whatever), and also if you try this export first to mov with the mpeg-4 codec for quality, then export again to mp4 with passthrough, because people like the mp4 file format

You might also consider the divx.com beta encoder which was released yesterday or so. It is a QT export module that creates an avi-like file. Of course, it expires in 15 days, and asking your mac audience to fight with divx files is about 100 times worse than asking your PC audience to install 3ivx IMO

[Red Wolf]

I do MPEG-1 and will probably continue doing MPEG-1 of my videos for the sheer fact you can't go wrong with the format. I actually managed to get the DivX files I created with ffmpegX to work (I forgot to put back in the official DivX codec, hence why my Mac wouldn't play back properly, grrr). Right now I'm working with DivX via ffmpegX and 3ivx through QuickTime. I'll try your two pass technic and see what that does for me, thanks.

[voodoo]

Unfortunately nobody in the PC world knows what the heck a 3ivX codec is, so I'd avoid it if you want cross platform compatibility.

[Uncle Skeleton]

that's an ignorant and short-sighted opinion, and here's why. First of all, the previous install base has nothing to do with compatibility. It is arguably easier to install 3ivx on either platform than DivX. Secondly, there was a time when nobody in the PC world knew about DivX, but it eventually caught on, since it was better than the alternatives, which were basically ASF and RM. (and not better compression than ASF since they were the exact same codec. better usability. And MOV/MP4 is a better container than AVI on any platform, as much as AVI is better than ASF). Lastly, while more PC users have DivX installed than 3ivx, it's nowhere close to a majority of PC users. If you're afraid to have your audience install anything you have to go with mp4/QT6. If you're afraid to have your win audience install anything, you go with ASF, or possibly RM. All these options suck, without reservation. I'm done now.