[JellyBeen]

Its here folks. go and get it! :-)
The encoder is awsome!!! Getting much better framerates in quicktime on my Divx and 3ivx ripps.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/9563

[voodoo]

too little too late.

we now have VLC and MPlayer.

[wataru]

Originally posted by voodoo:
we now have VLC and MPlayer.

I'd rather only use VLC when I have to. QTPlayer is my media player of choice.

[voodoo]

QT is my player of choice too, but I will not change every .avi I have to be able to play it in QT. And AFAIK WMA sound is still not supported in OS X (but is just fine in MPlayer)

[yukon]

cool, good to know. thanks.

I'd convert all my stuff, but I really want an open source codec. is there any hope for 3divx to be OSS some day? I don't know much about the development other than i have a copy of the old codec. lol, better wait for the ogg video encoder ;-)

[Developer]

We need WMP 9!

[voodoo]

Originally posted by Developer:
We need WMP 9!

Why? (for anything special?)

[Millennium]

3ivx rocks.

If you have a G4 chip, this is hands-down the best way to play DivX movies, as well. A bit inconvenient, what with doctoring and all, but hey, it's not 3ivX's fault that DivX chose a crap container format and then broke it for reasons we may never comprehend (this being the main reason why QuickTime can't do DivX well; the file format DivX uses is not actually AVI even though the DivX team says it is).

As for encoding quality, it's infinitely better than DivX's Mac codec. Of course, this is largely because DivX has no Mac encoder, and seems to be taking its own sweet time in getting it out. But hey, just throw that on the pile of reasons the DivX team is Really Messed Up.

[malique]

I don't understand u guys.

VLC does a tremendous job and it allows a lot more flexibility than QT Player!

First: to watch QT full screen legally u must buy a licence.

2nd: Have 2 monitors? try watching a full screnn movie in QTP and get a message on yer IM - click somewhere. BANG u jump out of full screen mode, the movie stops. And just because u wanted to type a "yes" or so... with vlc no prob at all. watch on the right, type something on the left.

3rd: vlc is FASTER. switch between full screen and win mode in a blink. try that with shitty QT. CMD-F, CHANGE the mode (always) to full screen (it WON'T ever remember), Enter... next time: same. Crap.

For just watching VLC is the convenient solution in my eyes.

(I hope my english is good enuff... thx for "listening".)

[Synotic]

Originally posted by yukon:
cool, good to know. thanks.

I'd convert all my stuff, but I really want an open source codec. is there any hope for 3divx to be OSS some day? I don't know much about the development other than i have a copy of the old codec. lol, better wait for the ogg video encoder ;-)

Can anyone explain the difference between 3ivx and Divx to me? I know they're like video formats. I am going to take a guess.. is 3ivx a program for playing Divx files and Divx just the format? Is there a better format? Thanks..

[Uncle Skeleton]

malique: vlc is fine for quickness, and to see if a file is corrupt, but the video and audio quality are far far worse than the various quicktime decoders. There's no post-filtering for video, and the audio skips constantly and is too low even on DVDs. If you want full screen, take a look at cellulo, metadata hootenanny, fullscreen player, etc. All of these have quicktime quality for free (not sure about two monitors since I have only one; maybe you can tell us), and no hassle going into and out of fullscreen mode.

Synotic: you can think of them as competing products that support each other's files, and everyone has their own opinion on which has the best quality of playback. Each is a codec (COmpressor/DECompressor, though in divx's case it's only a dec on the mac side). When you install one, you then have the option of compressing your video using that algorithm from your favorite encoding app, like QT Pro or FCP (or VirtualDub in the case of divx). To play back the videos produced, you need to have a decoder installed. They use different algorithms to arrive at the compressed product bitstream (the movie file), but they both (attempt to) comply with the MPEG-4 standard, which means that any MPEG-4 decoder should be able to play them. Just like any mp3 player can play files produced from LAME or from iTunes, even though the compression algorithms are different (LAME is better, but iToons is faster). In the case of 3ivx d4 (released today), you can even stick the video in an mp4 file wrapper and quicktime 6 can then play it without the 3ivx codec.
So because the decoding process is so similar in the case of these two codecs, stux, the author of 3ivx, has gone ahead and added support for all the other mpeg-4-like codecs (divx, xvid and "DivX :-) 3.11a" which is not even close to mpeg-4 compliant). So what was once a simple answer of "3ivx is not divx they just sound alike and are used for the same purpose (video compression)" is now "3ivx is not divx and they are not related but they kinda are and by the way 3ivx can play divx and vice versa".

[Millennium]

Originally posted by malique:
First: to watch QT full screen legally u must buy a licence.

Only if you use the Apple-supplied QuickTime Player app itself. There are plenty of fullscreen QuickTime player apps which do not require Apple's price-gouge known as QTPro.

2nd: Have 2 monitors? try watching a full screnn movie in QTP and get a message on yer IM - click somewhere. BANG u jump out of full screen mode, the movie stops. And just because u wanted to type a "yes" or so... with vlc no prob at all. watch on the right, type something on the left.

Hmm. Never tried this. I'll have to get my hands on another monitor.

3rd: vlc is FASTER. switch between full screen and win mode in a blink. try that with shitty QT.

VLC doesn't change the screen's resolution. QTPlayer does. That is what accounts for the slowness you see. You can turn this off in QTPlayer, but to be frank, I don't recommend it. The fact that VLC doesn't change your screen resolution seriously affects its playback quality, or its CPU-intensiveness to achieve the same quality, because it has to scale the video to a greater degree. So, am I going to take all of one lousy second to let my app change the screen's resolution, if I can push out a better playback quality because of it? You bet I'll do that.

CMD-F, CHANGE the mode (always) to full screen (it WON'T ever remember), Enter... next time: same. Crap.

Up to this point, your English had been very good (you mentioned this as a concern of yours). But I honestly can't understand what you're trying to say with this. Which app are you talking about? Are you saying it remembers whether or not you were in full screen, and is that a good thing or a bad thing?

[malique]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Which app are you talking about? Are you saying it remembers whether or not you were in full screen, and is that a good thing or a bad thing?

*phew*

I find it a bad thing that I always have to tell QT Player that if I press CMD-F "now I want to see it in FULL SCREEN mode". It annoys me. There is no shortcut to "full screen-o-matic" like the "f" in vlc.

Do u guys really mention a difference in video playback quality? I don't to be honest.

and:

4rth: vlc can play partially downloaded DivX (.avis) and some formats that QT player doesn't!

Good point with the alternative QT players, I will check them and tell u about it.

BTW, I know that QT Player is a different app with a different goal than vlc. Think of coversion stuff etc. But in my opinion the GUI question was not perfectly answered by Apple.

[mikerally]

MPlayer beats all of them hands down, has the highest compatibility of the lot (including Windows Media Audio)

Find it on versiontracker.

[malique]

my test:

I checked Cellulo and Full-screen-player.

For Cellulo: sweet interface but SLOW as the Finder with DivX. Played my DivX DVD Rip testfile w/o sound and "skieppier" than vlc. Was not as flexible as vlc concerning switching to full screen mode and back. ALLOWED typing on another screen but was a lot slower then.

FSP: OMG. Nice idea but while typing or even clicking it also jumps out of full screen mode. Choosing stuff in it's window seems to be easy (theres the QT options and that's not so tricky) but u must hit little radio buttons and stuff to switch full screen on - and full screen is what we wanna get, eh?

also played the file w/o sound and needed TIME to (I dunno what) - recognize the file or whatever.

SO, for my case I stay with VLC. It plays instantly, I don't care about "did I install the right codec so now it will play audio, too" - it simply fulfills my needs.

For those with skipping problems: it really helped me a lot once reading in the manual (!) that periodically pinging apps like Entourage should be switched OFF...

Have a nice day

[malique]

Sorry, it's me again:

Hootenanny (!?) does the same: take long, no sound on my test file and jump out of (press just f!) full screen mode when clinking. pffff.

[Developer]

Originally posted by voodoo:
Why? (for anything special?)

Because WMP 7 for Mac sucks (sorry Microsoft, but you know it's true).

A lots of content is in Windows Media format.

[JellyBeen]

I think most of you have missed the point. This release contains an "ENCODER". What that means is that if you have a VOB file from a DVD and you want to convert it to mpeg4, D4PR2 will do that for you but will do an infinatly better job than Apples Mpeg4 Codec can at the moment.

So to recap,
You can Decode your Mpeg4 files (avi's,mov)
You can Encode VOB files to Mpeg4 with super high quality while maintaining The Quicktime container.
Awsome job 3ivX Team!!

PS. I'm on a G3 and no longer get stuttering in high motion scenes..so this could be a great advantage to all you G3 owners.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally posted by malique:
Sorry, it's me again:

Hootenanny (!?) does the same: take long, no sound on my test file and jump out of (press just f!) full screen mode when clinking. pffff.

oh yeah. I was thinking about clicking (which does nothing; please tell me if just clicking brought it out of full screen mode), but I forgot you want to type, which does. I'll add a preference. btw, what would be so bad about enlarging the window to fill the screen, if you're already doing other things, and obviously don't care about video quality?

[midwinter]

Originally posted by JellyBeen:
I think most of you have missed the point. This release contains an "ENCODER". What that means is that if you have a VOB file from a DVD and you want to convert it to mpeg4, D4PR2 will do that for you but will do an infinatly better job than Apples Mpeg4 Codec can at the moment.

So to recap,
You can Decode your Mpeg4 files (avi's,mov)
You can Encode VOB files to Mpeg4 with super high quality while maintaining The Quicktime container.
Awsome job 3ivX Team!!

PS. I'm on a G3 and no longer get stuttering in high motion scenes..so this could be a great advantage to all you G3 owners.

I can't seem to export 3ivx files using this new codec. the older, 3.5 relase, works fine. Anyone else having this problem?

Cheers
Scott

[qnxde]

While playing fullscreen in Quicktime Player, simply press command-tab to switch to another app. This works on multiple monitors too.

[Uncle Skeleton]

@qnxde: That's great! I never knew that...

@midwinter: Did you restart quicktime after installing? did you try removing all 3ivx and divx codecs besides d4pr2?

[brainchild2b]

go with mplayer. while the interface buttons need polished. It plays anything. and faster than the other players without doctoring. Even plays wierd WMA codec in ms mpeg

[nickm]

In the case of 3ivx d4 (released today), you can even stick the video in an mp4 file wrapper and quicktime 6 can then play it without the 3ivx codec.

So, I've been dreaming of a codec that will allow me to make mpeg-4 files that will be readable with Quicktime and the Divx player without modification. 3ivx seems to be the closest to that dream.

I've been using it in conjunction with Quicktime pro, and I'm pleased with the results I've gotten so far. But, as far as I can tell, I can only write a 3vix-encoded movie to a Qicktime container, rather than an mp4 container. Does anyone know how to convert between the two?

[Uncle Skeleton]

it's...hard. By changing the fourCC of a 3ivx movie, I can get the QT exporter to allow an export to mp4, but the result is not a valid file (according to qt). I have managed to do it with MediaPipe with the method described (somewhat inaccurately) here, and though the resulting file displays "3ivx delta 4 pr 2" in the info window, that string is the extent of 3ivx's further involvement with the file (Apple's inferior decoder is what plays back mp4-format files). But it is compatible...

I don't know about Divx Player or "the Playa" or what ever is the software du jour for windows, but the 3ivx team claims that any direct show application can now play 3ivx mov files with or without quicktime being installed (aac support included). I think this is an even better solution than mp4, as mp4 is still awkward for us mac users, and the mov format is superior to mp4 anyway.

[sapiens]

First of all I'd like to state that I've found the latest Mplayer far superior to vlc or cellulo in playing ALL kinds of divx files. I would call iy AWESOME. I suggest you all have a look at it.
Now what I don't understand and I hope someone could help me here is the following: How do I encode a vob file with the 3ivx encoder? I mean what is the exact procedure? Do I open the vob file with QT pro and choose to export/encode using the 3ivx encoder? Can anybody be a bit specific on that? Thanks.

[malique]

Originally posted by qnxde:
While playing fullscreen in Quicktime Player, simply press command-tab to switch to another app. This works on multiple monitors too.

thanx for the tip, will try - but u don't know how many apps I run while a movie is playing. it still is a more inconvenient solution...

[JLL]

Originally posted by sapiens:
How do I encode a vob file with the 3ivx encoder? I mean what is the exact procedure? Do I open the vob file with QT pro and choose to export/encode using the 3ivx encoder? Can anybody be a bit specific on that? Thanks.

Use MacMPEG2Decoder

http://mm2d.sourceforge.net/

[JellyBeen]

Originally posted by sapiens:
First of all I'd like to state that I've found the latest Mplayer far superior to vlc or cellulo in playing ALL kinds of divx files. I would call iy AWESOME. I suggest you all have a look at it.
Now what I don't understand and I hope someone could help me here is the following: How do I encode a vob file with the 3ivx encoder? I mean what is the exact procedure? Do I open the vob file with QT pro and choose to export/encode using the 3ivx encoder? Can anybody be a bit specific on that? Thanks.

Thats exactly right, Export using (export to QuickTime movie) then select the options tab. From there go to 3ivX encoder.
PS. Quicktime must be loaded with the mpeg2 decoder first. You must buy that from Apple.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
I don't know about Divx Player or "the Playa" or what ever is the software du jour for windows, but the 3ivx team claims that any direct show application can now play 3ivx mov files with or without quicktime being installed (aac support included).

That just means that they've released a DirectShow codec. The ability to parse out .mov files has been in DirectShow for years; the only thing missing was the proper codecs.

I think this is an even better solution than mp4, as mp4 is still awkward for us mac users, and the mov format is superior to mp4 anyway.

The mov format isn't superior to mp4. It can't be; they're basically the same thing (mp4 was based very heavily on mov, much to Microsoft's chagrin). There are minor differences between the two formats, but nothing of any real substance.

However, you're right about the mp4 format still being a bit awkward. I don't really know who is to blame for that; has Apple not made its FourCC recognition robust enough, or has 3ivx overlooked something in their implementation?

[JLL]

Originally posted by JellyBeen:
PS. Quicktime must be loaded with the mpeg2 decoder first. You must buy that from Apple.

Not if you use MacMPEG2Decoder

[lucylawless]

Millenium, I'm also having trouble using any quicktime features with mp4, like chapter marks, text tracks, sprite tracks, metadata, etc. As far as I can see, QTPlayer's implementation only allows for video and audio (multiples of each, at least, unlike avi). Is the rest allowed in mp4 movies, but just impossible to author with the current tools (or do I need Livestage pro 4?), or what?

edit: by also, I mean in addition to the problems with muxing 3rd party mpeg4 content into mp4 files with quicktime player

[sapiens]

Thank all who tried to answer my previous question. I guess I should have been more specific.
Let's say I have extracted a vob file containing both video and audio. Now I want to make a 3ivx movie of that file. That is, I want to create a movie using the 3ivx encoder.
How do I do that?
I cannot use Quicktime because Quicktime cannot open vob files.
As far as I understand, from responses to my previous question,I need to use MacMPEG2Decoder. The Manual of which (http://mm2d.sourceforge.net/man_index.php)is very sketchy on details. It does not say what kind of media it accepts, but the read me which follows with the application says it accepts vob files. So far so good. I have no vob file available as I write this so I cannot have a look at the options under the Settings. I suppose if I click on settings I can choose the 3ivx codec for the video. But what kind of choices are there for audio? Are there more than one options for audio, and if so, which one should i use.
This a typical problem for most Mac users out there. We have a great number of choices regarding divx encoding/decoding applications but they are all developed by people who believe all mac users are mind-readers, and experts on that. I have not yet seen ONE single such application with a manual written with real people in mind. I want to address this to all developers in this field. Thank you people, we are grateful for what you are doing for us, but your manuals/instructions SUCK BIG TIME. And no exceptions.
Now, English is not my native language but I'm offering my help anyway. If any of you developers are reading this (which I doubt)and you want help writing some legible instructions/manuals for your applications, I'm offering to help you out, free of charge.
My email is [email protected] . Get in touch.

[Uncle Skeleton]

you might find this helpful:

http://mediapipe.sourceforge.net/For...wforum.php?f=9