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l008com · Jan 11, 2002, 07:24 PM

The Question:
How do I play Divx Movies on my Macintosh?

The Elaboration:
There are many divx players/codecs out there that claim to play divx movies. But they all seem to come down to the same thing, they play "openDivx" or some other format, none of them actually play MS's Divx, which it the format in use by about 95% of the avi's out on the net right now. I have tried many different 'players' and the only one that I have gotten to work is DivX Player for Classic Mac. It works but only if you have the Windows Media Player Mac app hanging around. Also, it can't even come remotely close to keeping up the frame rate, even on my Mac. I tried converting the avi's to MPEG in virtual PC, which took a long time, and produced no usable results. If anyone knows a way to play these acceptably on a mac, preferably in X, but in classic if not, enlighten me (us).

The Foundation:
Power Mac G4 533DP � 640 MB RAM � 10.1.1 Server

Millennium · Jan 11, 2002, 07:58 PM

Did you try the one from http://www.divx.com yet?

l008com · Jan 11, 2002, 08:11 PM

Yes, I actually have that installed right now. According to them, that codec supports standard mpeg-4, but the Divx everyone uses "Microsoft mpeg4" and is not supported.

Fallout · Jan 11, 2002, 08:36 PM

Go to Versiontracker, search for divosx. It's a little codec and a program that converts avi's to mov's so the sound works better. It works great with my "liberated" movies.

l008com · Jan 11, 2002, 08:47 PM

Quicktime still has to be able to play the file or it can't convert it. none of my AVI's had video, and I tried a bunch.

lucylawless · Jan 12, 2002, 12:51 AM

I don't want to call you a liar, but...I can't find a way to finish that sentence. I've had each of these three products installed, and they all work for me 98% of the time.

If you have Quicktime Pro, I008com, please take a few of your problem movies, open them in quicktime (choose "continue" when they open with a white screen), choose "Get Movie Properties" from the "Movie" menu, and select "Video Track" and "Format" from the relevant popups.

I'm guessing from the language you've used in this thread, that the format of your movies is "Divx (ms) Codec". This is what a number of my movies say, and they always play for me. Other divx formats that play for me are "DIV3" and "MP43". Formats that will probably never play are "IV50" (Indeo Video 5.0) and the like. So what do yours say? Also, what version of quicktime are you using?

arn · Jan 12, 2002, 01:10 AM

Of note, Divx.com's codec encompasses the "old" microsoft hacked codec... so they are effectively the same...
http://www.macdivx.com for links

Briefly,

there are 2 codecs out there:
http://www.divx.com http://divx.jamby.net

both are comparable... HOWEVER - you need the tool "Avi2Mov" to convert the divx AVI's to MOV files. This is not a conversion so much as it is a "rewrapping". This allows the audio to be properly read into quicktime due to a bug in quicktime.

the Avi2Mov tool is with Jamby's site/files.

This setup supports 90% of divx files I've run across (Divx + Mp3 audio)

arn

l008com · Jan 12, 2002, 01:15 AM

Almost every single one of my divx's is "MP42" The one I tried that did play was type "Divx", with mp3 audio, but the audio was playing as poorley as it possibly could. So how do I play MP42's? Which is the format.

I just tried another movie that was "Divx" and the audio and video played fine, they were just about 10 minutes off. I played this movie with the classic app i had mentioned and it worked fine, so it is the codec no the file.

l008com · Jan 12, 2002, 01:17 AM

Ok so the avi2mov app will make the 'Divx' ones work, about about the 'MP42' ones?

Jansar · Jan 12, 2002, 01:31 AM

All DivX movies should play if you decode them properly in OS X (the programs for OS 9 are not available). However, like most people have said, the regular avi files are simply unplayable, that is, unless you like to use Virtual PC.

lucylawless · Jan 12, 2002, 03:41 AM

oops, I meant MP42, not MP43. I'm pretty sure I've been able to play these just like any others, but I have no way of looking up which files have this codec...can you put one online?

lucylawless · Jan 12, 2002, 03:46 AM

actually, I think that because I have the divx.com codec installed now, it's labeling all the files it can read as "Divx (ms) Codec". Can anyone verify this? 1008com, do you have the divx.com codec installed?

Lumpazi · Jan 12, 2002, 06:23 AM

from my experience the best results are being achieved by playing the movies in the divxplayer in OS9 (use the divxdoctor first), but without the MS WMP. i installed the codec from www.divx.com (4.11beta) and started the divxplayer with holding the option key. then it prompts you to locate the WMP but you can press cancel until you are through. the movie can still be watched and in my opinion the performance is better...

sadly an avi2mov converted movie in X causes the same soundproblem as when watching the original .avi

[ 01-12-2002: Message edited by: Lumpazi ]

Jan 12, 2002, 11:56 AM

l008com,
MP42 avis have always played for me using the Mac OS DivX Player after using the DivX Doctor. This is in MacOS 8.6 so YMMV.
Lucy,
You are right. After installing the DivX4 decoder QT reports them all as DivX.
To everyone. The problem is not limited to DivX videos. Any avi made on a PC that uses Variable Bit Rate mp3 will not play with sound on a Mac without fixing the audio with DivX Doctor. PC folks are starting to use codecs like On2VP3 and the VBR mp3 codec and you will encounter the same problems with such avi files as with DivX avi files.

Bobbinson · Jan 16, 2002, 01:40 PM

The problem is that Quicktime 5.0 does not implement the latest AVI file format properly. As a result, it does not handle embedded audio in the AVI files as it should. Therefore, your options are to completely extract the audio and have Quicktime Pro playback the AVI with the extracted audio file as it's sound track, or to use a tool such as avi2mov (OSX only) that will convert the file format itself to MOV. Tools to do this are found at divx.jamby.net

This conversion does not re-encode the data, so the video and audio content is identical whether the file is AVI or MOV (these are both wrapper formats, and have nothing to do with how the content is encoded).

The real solution would be for Apple to properly implement the AVI format in Quicktime. That should take one of their software engineers a few hours and would put an end to this silliness. It would also allow support for VBR MP3 audio and so on.

The way things are going now, it looks as though Divx4 will be the only freely available MPEG-4 codec out there, and I seriously doubt that the official MPEG-4 codec and file format will be anywhere near as popular in the long run. Also, early indications are that the quality of the official MPEG-4 codec is not as good as the Divx4 codec anyway ... even though Divx4 is just an implementation of the MPEG-4 standard, it has been modified somewhat by the open source community for better quality/compression/etc.

lucylawless · Jan 17, 2002, 12:41 PM

ok, I've been poking around in Windows. I already had installed the Microsoft MPEG-4 V1/2/3 VKI Codec. I did this so I could stick my asf files into avi wrappers, which in conjunction with re-encoding the audio makes them playable in Quicktime with all the various divx players mentioned above.

Futher inspection reveals that my asf files were version 3 of this codec (MSMPEG4v3), and that makes a file of the type DIV3 in quicktime. These files, as we've already discussed, can be played with any of the three divx players for mac. When I just tried an incoding with version 2 of the microsoft codec, it produced a file of the troublesome MP42 format. This file was playable only in the OS 9 divx player from www.divx.st (I tried the official divx codec in X, but not 9).

So I'm guessing that files of type MP42 were originally asf files, or encoded with MS's asf codec, not the DivX ;-) codec. They also probably have wma audio, and for both video and audio will only be playable in the OS 9 player.

if you have an old pc laying around, or you have a VPC and a lot of spare processor time, I would suggest re-encoding your files with into MSMPEG4v3, or Divx 4. In my experience, the divx codec handles noise better than any other, and the original encoding of these files tend to leave a lot of noise that confuses other codecs (in other words, you probably shouldn't re-encode these with another codec)