With basically the same quality, you can fit an entire DVD movie onto a regular CD, or, fit several movies onto a DVDr disc. Moreover, you can download a DVD quality movie from the Internet in just one file, that is only around 1/2 a Gig. You can watch it on your computer or some new commercial DVD players. How is this possible you ask? Well, commercial DVD movies use an outdated video format called MPEG2. It takes several large MPEG2 files to make up one DVD movie. Progressing technology and better programming gives us a new MPEG4 format, making it possible to have the same high quality DVD video with only 10% the file size. The new technology is DivX, or XviD, and this is a brief “where and how” guide explaining what you need so you may also have the same high quality video for your computer and DVD player. You can download, rip, and burn using the new Xvid DivX technology!

High quality movies are now available in small enough files that they can be downloaded from the net, and not those poor quality old MPG, or Apple Quicktime files you are used to, but rather full DVD quality video. This article discusses XviD, the free, open source DivX format. From the hands of hackers to its modern legitimate incarnations, now you can have more video, more movies, and great quality, on less space.

Technology continues to improve, making it possible to have higher quality video on smaller, less expensive media. Over 15 years ago the VCD, which was big on the Asian market, offered digital video with VHS quality splitting a movie onto two CD discs. Those old VCDs use the MPEG1 format. Then the DVD hit the world market, widely acclaimed and popular in North America. DVD is known for outstanding video and sound, and uses the MPEG2 format. But commercial DVD’s are expensive compared to VCD (regular CD media) and only a crippled, half capacity recordable DVD was made available to regular consumers (before duel layered DVDr). At first it was impossible duplicate a movie from DVD without losing a lot of video and audio quality.

From the tombstone of a failed take-home / pay-per-view (father of DRM) DVD competitor called DIVX, a new, high tech, high quality, and extremely efficient video format was born, DivX ;-) That’s no emo, as the smiley represents the efforts of a hacker who modified a shoddy and proprietary Microsoft format (codec) making it an openly available MPEG4 codec for video enthusiasts to use and enjoy.

DivX ;-) violated copyright law since it was basically a hacked Microsoft codec. Furthermore, it gained a bad rap with the MPAA and commercial industry in general as it was born of, and used by video pirates in a process called “ripping.” Specifically, the codec is a hacked version of the Microsoft MPEG-4 Version 2 video codec, extracted around 1998 by French hacker Jerome Rota.

Even though his codec was illegal, Rota managed to form a company around a new version he called DivX. Through his new company he released a version, said to be written from scratch, based on reverse engineering, and containing no Microsoft code. Several versions have been released since then, all using MPEG4 Part 2 compression.

Jerome Rota wormed though the legal ramifications of his hacking and showed his gratitude to supporters by turning DivX from a free open technology into a proprietary, commercial codec. Somehow, he can now make money off of his ill-gotten technology.

Despite this negative turn of events, taking perhaps the best video compression technology available to enthusiasts today and making it commercial, we are given an equally good alternative that is truly free and open source. It is called Xvid.

Xvid is arguably just as good as DivX if not better. It is more or less a fork of DivX, which split when Rota made his commercial, and thus DivX took two paths. One path is the commercial incarnation and the other is the free, open source XviD codec. Xvid is currently developed and maintained by skilled and interested engineers from all over the world.

There’s a lot of detailed information about the XviD DivX codec on their website where interested parties can contribute to the development effort. We call it a DivX codec, because XviD is just that, an MPEG4 DivX codec. Think of it as the one that is free, built in good faith by volunteers who will most certainly appreciate your support.

One thing that isn’t currently available at the XviD web site is the actual windows version itself. They offer the source code, but that is not useful to the average Windows end user. If you want to Rip DVD’s and encode them using the DivX format so you can save them, you need to get a compiled version of the codec.

At the time of this writing, three main codecs from XviD 1.0.3 are available to Microsoft Windows users. You can choose from Koepi’s, Celtic_druid’s, or Nic’s release. These are individuals that took the time to compile the source code from the XviD project and make it into a Windows version you can use. Each is a Windows codec, with an installer.

Lots of choices and who’s to use? The basic difference between these releases seems to be what processor they run best on. Nic’s release runs best on Intel Pentium 4 systems. Celtic_druid and Koepi’s are faster on AMD Athlon systems. Basically, the difference is in the compiler and version as well as who has the latest source. Celtic_druid is said to use the most recent XviD source code (at least when this was written).

Intel Pentium IV system owners use: Nic’s Binary - XviD_Install.exe

Amd Athlon system owners use: Koepi’s Binary - XviD-1.0.3-20122004.exe
Or use: celtic druid Binary - XviD-1.0.3.exe

Only use one! Don’t download and install all three at the same time. More information is available for each version on their respective web sites.

Xvid, the free, open source DivX codec, is extremely popular and in wide use. Many movies and television programs available for download on the Internet are in the XviD format. These are MPEG4 encoded files that typically end in a .avi extension.

You can use the XviD codec with other software to rip and burn your own movies from DVD. You can only play XviD video if you have the XviD codec, or a video player with the decoder built in, such as the VLC “Video Lan” media player. You can only make XviD video with the XviD codec installed on your system.

When you download video from the Internet, sometimes it is difficult to tell exactly what format the video is in. Use a program called Video Inspector to open the video file and tell what format it is in. XviD is only one format for which a file may end with the .avi extension.

It isn’t unreasonable to give Rota, the French hacker, the one finger salute since he is trying to capitalize on what was originally illegal activity anyway. The volunteer developers working on the XviD codec have a different agenda. They want to provide a superior video technology to the world not for financial gain, but to further the continued advancement in technology that is available to everyone. Use their Xvid codec, and give them your support.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2005 at 10:46 pm and is filed under PC/Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.