Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

maximage · May 21, 2002, 10:59 AM

I have some non essential video I want to back up but dont want huge file sizes and cant justify the cost of DVDs since its not too important to me. The only DivX encoder I can find wil only allow 50% quality compression whereas I want higher quality. Dont want to use 3ivX because I want a codec that will definaytely be around in a couple of years. DivX seems the way to go, or should I just wait out for QT6 with true MPEG4?

lucylawless · May 22, 2002, 01:15 AM

where did you get a divx encoder for mac?

maximage · May 22, 2002, 05:15 AM

I searched for"divx" on versiontracker.com and came up with 5 utilities/extensions, 4x divx and 1x 3ivx. The one called OpenDivX has encoding abilities but it will only do so at 50% quality which is nowhere near the quality the codec is capable of. The other problem is that there are so many variants of DivX and the question is whether these will be supported by quicktime natively without having to add proprietary extensions everytime you upgrade or update. 3ivx looks pretty good but I would prefer something more standard that I know will still be around in a few years timeand will still work on future OS's which is something that a STANDARD Quicktime (Apple written) codec is almost guaranteed to do. The main concern with 3ivx is that I fear it will die once QT6 is out with true MPEG4, since it is similar in quality and no-one will need 3ivx.

memento · May 22, 2002, 11:08 AM

If you can wait for QT6 with MPEG-4, then wait. It's VERY impressive. Opendivx is different from DivX is different from 3ivx is different from MPEG-4. On top of that, there are many variants of DivX, at least one of which can NOT be played on the mac - and never will. It confusing, but aside from waiting for QT6, DivX is the most likely candidate to still be around in a few years. They do not have an encoder yet, but it will be released "soon".

lucylawless · May 22, 2002, 02:45 PM

It's true, I guess, that 3ivx may not be around forever. But OpenDivX is arguably already gone. It's my understanding that OpenDivX was just a testbed for Divx 4, and now that the latter is released, the former is of interest only to historians. (I couldn't find it on versiontracker today)

One thing you might want to do is to encode your content now in 3ivx at very high quality for storage, then in a year or so when it is more clear which formats will survive the longest, reincode from 3ivx to your final choice. Ordinarily it is a bad idea to recompress video in different formats, but it's not verboten. Also, 3ivx might turn out to be the most prolific codec after all.

Originally posted by memento:
[QB... at least one of which can NOT be played on the mac - and never will...[/QB]

memento, which divx are you talking about? MSMPEG4v1? help jog my memory pls.

memento · May 22, 2002, 03:08 PM

I'm not at my mac, so this is from memory. It was the DivX that was hacked from a codec of MS Media Player that was not made available on the mac. It was something like MSMPEG4v1 or MSMPEG4v2. although I should not have said "never" because I just found out about mplayer for OSX which supposedly WILL handle all previous codecs (just not the LATEST version 5.?.? from divx.com). I can't wait to try mplayer!

istallion · May 22, 2002, 11:22 PM

MSMPEG4 v.1,2,3 are mpeg4 codecs. Divx

low & high motion are hacks of msmpeg v.3

echoes · May 23, 2002, 12:07 AM

Does anyone know if it's possible to play or compress XviD content? I see it mentioned a lot lately and wanted to try it out (like in this recent codec shoot-out).