[Beewee]

Are there any good avi encoders for OS X. I have used Quicktime but for some reason I can't use the 3vix codec with it. The menu bar only contains a hand-full of codecs. Also what is the difference between 3ivx and Divx? Is there any? Well any help would be appriecated.

[Uncle Skeleton]

a few basics and a pinch of commentary:

Video files are composed of two main organs. The codec (COmpressor/DECompressor) and the file container format. The format is a standard that tells an application that knows how to read the format where the data payload is. The codec is what tells the application how to decompress and display that payload in the manner in which it was intended. 3ivx and DivX are codecs. Avi and mov are containers, as are mpg, mp4, ogm, asf, etc.

Of all the possible containers, avi is the worst. In every imaginable way except one. It's very simple (this is also what makes it so bad). It supports exactly one video track and exactly one fixed-bitrate audio track. Period. But the thing about that is, it's so simple that it was the easiest to support, when the first apps were being written to support video. So by that little paradox, avi became very common (on Windows). On the Mac side, we soon after had the QuickTime mov format, which was years and years ahead of everything else (and today is still the most versatile and featureful container out there). I heard a nice quote from around that time (not sure if it's an actual quote but it's an accurate statement) "When QuickTime came out, nothing else was like it. And afterwards, everything else was like it." But it was not well adopted by Windows software writers, for whatever reason *cough*lazy, complacent*cough*. But seriously, the inventor of avi, MicroSoft, has long ago realized the limitedness and uselessness and futurelessness of avi and abandonned it. It was really only the DivX people that kept it alive after that, and most of them also now say it has to die. Investing time in developing for avi or learning the ins and outs of it is really an exercise in obsolescence.

Now back to the story, most windows apps already supported avi, but avi wasn't good enough to do, well, anything. So what to do about it? start supporting better container formats? No. Hack more necessary features into the avi spec (so the resulting files no longer technically adhere to the spec)? Stupid you say? Sounds like a challenge! So that's what happened and now most avi files you find out there are not technically avi but instead something that calls itself avi and that certain Windows software has been specially written to play differently from real avis. Anyway, QuickTime (the app) took no notice of these shenannigans, and so QuickTime on it's own is now pretty much useless for playing or creating the not-so-avi files you find these days (with vbr audio and modern video features like b-frames and multiple audio tracks and subtitles and on and on).

Anyway, to get back to your question, don't waste your time on avi, use mov. That's where you can find 3ivx and DivX in the QTPlayer export dialog. If you want to be contrary, there are a number of apps ported from unix and linux that use ffmpeg's libavformat to write the not-so-avi files you think you want. Look on versiontracker for those.

As for the question about 3ivx vs DivX, you can think of them as competitors, but it's not a very accurate analogy. Here is where you see how standards can come in handy (as opposed to the avi disaster, where you see how standards break down because the standard is inadequate and you have a bunch of individuals taking it upon themselves to implement random and often incompatible alterations to the standard). 3ivx and DivX are both implementations of the MPEG-4 codec standard. This standard specifies what kind of bitstream would be compliant with the standard, but not how to create such a bitstream. So each codec (also XviD and Apple's codec bought from Sorenson) creates the data differently. But here's the advantage: any compliant MPEG-4 codec can play back any other compliant MPEG-4 codec. So that's why it's so hard to understand the difference between 3ivx and DivX and other MPEG-4 codecs, because they all play each other's content. Besides interoperability, the difference between these two codecs in particular is that DivX's business model seems to be making money from their users (selling codecs to individuals, making contracts with hardware set-top players), whereas 3ivx's business model is to make large deals with corporate clients and give away codecs to individual users for free (to make a market for their corporate clients). Also DivX intentionally prevents it's decoder from reading things it identifies as coming from other MPEG-4 codecs, because it wants to create the illusion that you have to buy DivX in order to use it.

[Beewee]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:

start supporting better container formats? No. Hack more necessary features into the avi spec (so the resulting files no longer technically adhere to the spec)? Stupid you say? Sounds like a challenge! So that's what happened and now most avi files you find out there are not technically avi but instead something that calls itself avi and that certain Windows software has been specially written to play differently from real avis. Anyway, QuickTime (the app) took no notice of these shenannigans, and so QuickTime on it's own is now pretty much useless for playing or creating the not-so-avi files you find these days (with vbr audio and modern video features like b-frames and multiple audio tracks and subtitles and on and on).

Thanks for the help.
I do have a few more questions if you want to answer em. The avi files or not-so-avi I have downloaded recently were incredible near dvd quality. I opened them in Quicktime and played em. There was no sound but that's not my question. While I was tracking back and forth it responded incredibly well. All of the 3vix mov files I have made have always been horribly processor intensive when played. And where as in the avi I was able to bounce to anywhere in the time bar and was taken there almost instantly when I do it with my mov files I would get the beachball for several seconds, and there was no way I could grab the trackball and fastforward through the mov file where as the avi did it beautifully.

As you can tell I am some what of a newbie at this. I was assuming that it was the container that made the diff, now I am thinking it is the settings at which I encode my mov files. What do you think?

Also DivX intentionally prevents it's decoder from reading things it identifies as coming from other MPEG-4 codecs, because it wants to create the illusion that you have to buy DivX in order to use it.

So DivX cannot read 3vix or apple's MPEG-4 codec?

[Uncle Skeleton]

That's a bug. I've had that bug once (once in thousands of uses of 3ivx). I'm pretty sure it means the codec didn't include enough keyframes for some reason. There are two different kind of frames. Keyframes are self-reliant at the expense of being larger. Other frames (I and B) rely on the frames next to them and only include data describing the differences between them and their neighbors. These are much smaller but it means the decoder must decode all the other frames these ones rely on before it can display the picture. Anyway, I'd like to be able to give the 3ivx developers a more helpful bug report about this, so please tell me all you can about your encoding (hardware, system version, software version, software settings, 3ivx version, 3ivx settings, source material). When it happened to me it was the first time in ages I was encoding on my old laptop (on vacation), this is why I suspect it might be related to hardware configuration.

DivX chooses not to play other codecs' content based on the identifying FourCharacterCode. If you change a movie's code to one of DivX's codes (like DIVX or DX50), it will play it

[Uncle Skeleton]

oh yeah, the sound thing. Most AVIs have mp3 sound, and in that case you can play them if you just install the DivX codec from divx.com. It will take over reading the pseudo-avi format from the default QuickTime component and allow QuickTime to see the mp3 audio inside. Unfortunately, as stated above, this component refuses to work on videos that don't use DivX compression. There's a "delegate" component that also routes XviD content to the DivX AVI importer at www.insaneness.com (For other MPEG-4 codecs you would have to change the FourCC). And for things that aren't MPEG-4 like MP42, you just have to use something else (VLC, MPlayer, Divx Doctor, etc).

[Beewee]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
That's a bug. I've had that bug once (once in thousands of uses of 3ivx). I'm pretty sure it means the codec didn't include enough keyframes for some reason. There are two different kind of frames. Keyframes are self-reliant at the expense of being larger. Other frames (I and B) rely on the frames next to them and only include data describing the differences between them and their neighbors. These are much smaller but it means the decoder must decode all the other frames these ones rely on before it can display the picture. Anyway, I'd like to be able to give the 3ivx developers a more helpful bug report about this, so please tell me all you can about your encoding (hardware, system version, software version, software settings, 3ivx version, 3ivx settings, source material). When it happened to me it was the first time in ages I was encoding on my old laptop (on vacation), this is why I suspect it might be related to hardware configuration.

Let's see...

Machine specs:
OS X 10.3 (latest version)
PowerMac G4 867 Quicksilver
384MB RAM
ATI Radeon 9000 video card
40 GIG Hard Drive (storage recently expanded to 320GB)

I have used quicktime and DiVA (with similar results)
Quicktime 6.5
Codec: 3ivx 4.5
the codec settings are Single Pass at constant quality everything else is default. Force keyframe after 300 delta frames...etc.

Source: Is DVD .vob files that are either split into their elem. streams or just left as-is (If I am using DiVA, since it can encode directly from the .vob). Or I convert it to aiff and the video is converted to a .mov file (3ivx codec, using either quicktime or Diva). Then I convert the .aif to an .mp3, open it in quicktime, copy it to a "new movie" and then open and copy and paste the video over the top and the mp3 (so I've got two separate tracks video & audio) and save the entire thing as a self-contained movie.

That's about it, I think.