Talk:Xvid

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My apologies for saying "Reverted edits by Tnikkel" in my last edit - it should read "Reverted edits by 201.6.16.70", as the clueless edit was made by 201.6.16.70. J. M. 09:16, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

The link to http://www.xvid.org/v1_1_comparison.pdf about the analysis of the rewritten REALmagic code points to a 404. This should be changed to point to a current version of that document or the link should be removed if no ocpies exist anymore.

Contents 1 Clarification of legal status necessary 2 Lossless conversion tools? 3 User Questions 4 Huh? 5 XviD on Mac OS X 6 MPEG-4 compatibility 7 New Xvid 8 XviD, DivX, LOL!

[edit] Clarification of legal status necessary

Under legal it says:

"However the legal usage of XviD may still be restricted by local laws. (See mailing list discussions [1], [2], [3].)"

The citations are over four years old and may no longer be relevant. Anyone know the current legal status of XviD?

[edit] Lossless conversion tools?

I'd like to extract the I-frames as JPEG without lossy recompression. (see jpegtran for the general idea) I have the video in AVI container files.

I'd like to remove audio from some of my videos.

I might want to losslessly crop or rotate too.

Command-line tools for Linux would be great.

AlbertCahalan 05:51, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Lossless crop is impossible, as you is changing the image. Imagine if the codec use one of the croped pixels for motion estimation for example. It is a mess. The same can be said for rotate.

For extract audio losslessly you can use Virtualdub, in Windows, or Avidemux, in linux. Manabu 15:38, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I can see that you are right about losslessly cropping a video, but I still think rotation should work. Why not? One should be able to simply flip some coordinates; this would include the motion vectors. AlbertCahalan 09:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Nothing to losslessly extract an I-frame as JPEG? I'd be 1/2 happy if I could at least get the Y channel to be lossless and the other channels not going through RGB, if perhaps there is a compression block alignment problem. AlbertCahalan 09:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User Questions

Okay, is it safe to have XviD and DivX on the same computer?

Yes. Ashibaka tock 00:37, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Probabily, but this is not necessary if you only want to decode them. For decoding only FFDShow shoud be fine for both. Manabu 15:36, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Huh?

The following is taken from the article:

XviD is a main "competitor" of DivX (XviD spelled backwards). While DivX is closed source and is designed to run on Windows, Mac OS and Linux, XviD is open source and runs on multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac OS and GNU/Linux.

The same platforms are listed, yet the wording seems to indicate that XviD has an advantage in that area.—Kbolino 04:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, XviD does have an advantage in that area. As an open-source product, it can be compiled on any operating system - Windows, Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, Mac OS, Solaris etc. etc. Originally, the sentence in the article said that XviD was designed to run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS, while DivX was designed to run on Windows. The GNU/Linux was added later to DivX. So yes, now it says basically the same thing, but it was nonsense even before - XviD is not designed to run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS, XviD is simply a cross-platform library that can run on any OS (not only Windows, Linux and Mac OS). J. M. 08:57, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Besides, DivX is only marginally usable in Linux - there was no DivX for Linux between 2003-2006 and now, in 2006, there's only some x86 version for developers with restricted usage, which still more or less means that DivX for Linux does not exist. J. M. 09:06, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I know what open source is, and I know that it can run on any compliant platform, but the wording in the article does not say that, which is what the reader will see. Perhaps you could clarify, as you have done for me?—Kbolino 01:09, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I clarified things a bit. Hope it helps.

Yep, thanks.—Kbolino 04:33, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

J.M., your clarifications seem to have been lost on the main page. It may be better to just re-do that paragraph with the much better explanation text you have provided above. --Todd 22:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think the current explanation in the article basically says what I said, just much more concisely. Do you think it should be explained in more detail in the article? — J. M. 01:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I think paragraph #3 should be changed because at that early point in the article, the reader does not know much of the details, and saying Xvid runs on all platforms when DivX runs on Windows, Mac. and Linux, is simply confounding the reader (they are thinking, what other platforms are there besides these three?). Maybe the cross-platform advantage should be dropped altogether at this point, even though I, as a sw. eng., personally understand the fine points you are making above. --Todd 22:16, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe. But still, I think it could be mentioned in a way that's less confusing. What about something like "While DivX is proprietary, closed source software, Xvid is free, open source software and, unlike DivX, can be used on many different platforms and operating systems." — J. M. 08:45, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Plus, of course, like I said earlier, there is basically no DivX for Linux. For a regular user — there is no known playback/encoding Linux software that supports DivX anymore. And the unofficial x86 DivX for Linux is obsolete, with a limited feature set and not officially available from the main website. Plus it's only for developers, not for regular users. This means that DivX is available only for Windows and Mac OS and that's also why I think the cross-platform advantage is important enough and should be really mentioned in the article. — J. M. 08:55, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I suggest a modification of your description: "While DivX is proprietary, closed source software with no known/practical Linux support, Xvid is a true cross-platform, free, open source software and, unlike DivX, can be used on many different platforms and operating systems, including Linux." -- Todd 12:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

While I agree that this can make things more clear for some readers, I'm not sure if it's precise and neutral enough for Wikipedia — people may argue that you can use DivX on Linux if you want to — that is, if you download the "unofficial" version for developers and write your own encoding program that uses the divx4linux library, or if you use the ~3 years old divx4linux version with MPlayer/MEncoder version that's old enough (DivX support has been removed from MPlayer/MEncoder). I think it could be quite controversial. It might require longer, more detailed explanation and I'm not sure if that's appropriate. Anyway, I modified the sentence in the article and made it as simple as possible. Now, if you want to add anything, like the Linux explanation, feel free to do it — we'll see if someone reverts or modifies it. — J. M. 13:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks good! Thanks - this exchange has been very informative for me. Hope to meet you some day, I bet you know a lot about video technology. I only know a little, about MS DirectShow, a horrible way of displaying video! Regards -- Todd 22:34, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] XviD on Mac OS X

In the article, there is a link with the title "Download the XviD Codec for Windows or Mac" linking to xvidmovies.com. The Mac codec you can download there is technically not a version of XviD; it's unrelated code that tells the DivX component to decode XviD. It's now obsolete, as DivX 5.2 and later do what it did. The only QuickTime component as far as I know that actually uses the XviD library is Christoph Nägeli's, at http://n.ethz.ch/student/naegelic/. Since the Windows version at xvidmovies.com is Koepi's, which is already linked to right above it, I suggest replacing the link with a link to Nägeli's component.—Dicey 00:59, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, done. J. M. 12:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MPEG-4 compatibility

How compatible is XviD with MPEG-4 (and in which direction?)? Some of the references mention it in passing, but I can't seem to find a definitive cite (e.g. in the XviD FAQ). 202.55.146.66 23:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Xvid

Xvid has a new homepage (more commercially oriented) and also a new name — apparently, it's not XviD anymore, it's now Xvid. So I think the article name should be changed from XviD to Xvid and the XviD words in the article should be changed to Xvid, too. Also, they have a new logo (which should replace the current one in the article), plus these changes and new things (the Xvid Solutions company etc.) should be mentioned there, too. — J. M. 16:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] XviD, DivX, LOL!

I have just realised that XviD is DivX backwards! LOL! Also, it is not made by the same people, Legal Problem??

What legal problem? And I didn't know there was anyone (who knew what XviD was) who didn't know about the DivX<->XviD connection. It's also explained in the article. — J. M. 18:29, 1 November 2006 (UTC)