DivX Making Hollywood Inroads 244
worm eater writes "CNet news reports that DivX is doing its best to become a digital video compression standard, and has been very successful in courting DVD manufacturers to adopt the DivX format. But will that be enough to beat out competing compression methods as a new Hollywood standard? It faces tough competition, such as MPEG-4, RealVideo and Windows Media. Who will win the standards race and what will that mean for the companies that push the various compression methods?"
easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:easy answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:easy answer (Score:2)
And if I get to watch a movie afterward, so much the better.
And Divx is already on the way (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has a real advantage here (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm guessing their real advantage... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't foresee technical merit being a factor, unfortunately.
Re:I'm guessing their real advantage... (Score:2)
WMV9 is a tremendously good codec, and beats out next generation MPEG-4 for high definition tasks.
Head on over to dv.com and read the article I wrote in the current issue about HD delivery codecs. Microsoft is working hard to win this battle on technical merits.
FWIW, they've also been submitting the technology to various standards boards, including SMPTE.
Re:Microsoft has a real advantage here (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft has a real advantage here (Score:2)
HDTV can be compressed unsing anything you like, in the same way that PAL and NTSC can be.
Re:Microsoft has a real advantage here (Score:3, Insightful)
Change the name first. (Score:5, Funny)
divx? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:divx? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:divx? (Score:4, Informative)
For a healthy dose of naivete... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:For a healthy dose of naivete... (Score:3, Insightful)
porn industry.
Re:For a healthy dose of naivete... (Score:3, Insightful)
All the other features.. no big deal really.
Re:For a healthy dose of naivete... (Score:3, Informative)
For a computer, and in the past when DVD readers weren't 30, having a whole CD on a single CD is such a big deal that as long as the quality was acceptable-to-good, people would use it.
I think people (especially geeks) don't realise this as much a
Re:For a healthy dose of naivete... (Score:2)
I've read that three times, and even put it through babelfish - no dice - I still have no idea what it means.
Re:For a healthy dose of naivete... (Score:2)
"for watching films on a computer monitor, when DVD readers weren't so cheap, having the convenience of a whole film on a single CD is such a positive benefit that people are willing to forego an acceptable amount of loss of quality."
(sorry, I'd had a couple of beers - nice Sainsbury's Blonde Ale, and a bottle of Waggledance - when I wrote that).
(mind, I've added a can of Pedigree to them since then. I hope it makes sense now
Re:For a healthy dose of naivete... (Score:2)
I watch lots of movies and TV on my on my 20 inch svideo monitor with my tv out card, and they actually look better on the svideo monitor than the svga monitor. Because the svideo monitor isn't quite as sharp as the vga monitor you can't pick out the artifacts too easily.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Do we want this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Do we want this? (Score:4, Interesting)
DVDs, DirectX and digital cable boxes all use MPEG-2 to compress the video (and yes, I've seen nasty compression artifacts in them). The real question is what tradeoff do you want to make between quality and storage/bandwidth requirements. Uncompressed video consumes obscene amounts of storage and bandwidth. MPEG-4 is better at retaining quality at a given compression rate than MPEG-2.
The part that concerns me is that Hollywood will almost certainly insist on shoving DRM (that's Digital Restrictions Management) down our throats. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't like being told what I can and can't do with the equipment I own. DRM amounts to big businesses stealing the right of people to control the hardware they own.
Gold Star For You (Score:2)
I'm giving you a gold atr for pointing this out. Particularly with your exposing the real meaning of the acronym. We should all make a point of helping or less technical family and friends realize this; It is a restriction imposed upon us.
Moral or Legal or what not, sanitizing it by calling it Digital Rights Management is very mis-informative, a practice used
DirectX? (Score:2)
As for DRM, the iTunes Music Store has shown that many people don't object to DRM per se, they mainly show that people reject DRM models which don't allow them to use the content in the way they want to use them.
It's not like you hear about people boycotting Macrovision encoded DVD that often
Re:DirectX? (Score:2)
Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:5, Informative)
Divx isn't even that good a MPEG-4 codec. XVID is somewhat better, and it's free.
Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, Windows Media is in no way MPEG-4. In fact, Windows Media does not even (to my knowledge) play MPEG-4 video.
-David
Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:2, Informative)
[ffdivx] vfm:ffmpeg (FFmpeg DivX
Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:2)
I find it annoying that Divx keeps promoting its brand as if it were something different from MPEG4. If they're incompatible with the MPEG4 spec for some reason, then they're just broken...
Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:5, Informative)
Divx 4.x and 5.x are themselves MPEG-4 Video codecs (pt. 2 video, not the new pt. 10/AVC/JVT/H.264 stuff). They aren't the best, but they're far better than the worst. The bitstream itself is compatible with ISMA compliant decoders, but...
Divx files themselves use the AVI file format instead of the MPEG-4 file format. This is for historical reasons, and the biggest problem I personally have with Divx, since it is incompatible with stock MPEG-4 tools, but not in a way that adds any user value. This is a legacy of how Divx was originally a hack to use a proprietary Microsoft codec in AVI files.
Divx files also use all kinds of audio codecs, which are rarely MPEG-4 compatible. AAC-LC is a great audio codec, and it's ISMA compatible.
So, I really wish Divx would get their tools support exporting to
Also, you are correct, Windows Media can't play MPEG-4 by default. There is a plugin available from Envivio for WMP that will enable this, though.
Bravo! Seconded! (Score:2)
Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:2)
File format=avi
video codec=MPEG-4
audio codec=one of many
Xvid has a few problem (Score:2)
1) It's not completely legal. They don't really have a liscence to use the MPEG-4 patents. That's why DivX has for pay and adware versions, to get money for the MPEG-4 costs. Well if you are making a commercial product for profit, you need to be on the level with lisscencing, or you could wind up screwed.
2) It suffers from perpetual betaness. It's not bad, I mean it's not like it blows up all the time, but it DOES have some noticable bugs. Read the doo
Perpeptual beta (Score:3, Interesting)
And so far as that other guy's problem with "five minutes to fade when I FFW" well, that ain't your encoder, champ. That's the playback codec combined with the keyframe rate of the original encode. Doesn't matter what was used to encode
Re:Divx vs. MPEG-4? (Score:2)
This is exactly why I'm going to buy an X-box and install the linux media player soon. Codecs change, new ones come along, some are better for diffent sources etc. Until the major manufacturers offer upgradeable codecs on their machines, I think the only way to get flexibility is to build your own.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against DVD or anything, I was a very, very early adopter. I'm just moving onto the next adoption no
Is there opensource video compression software ? (Score:2, Insightful)
It would be nice to have something to compete with these guys.
Re:Is there opensource video compression software (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is there opensource video compression software (Score:3, Informative)
Theora is free as in every kind of speech, beer, or anything else you could imagine. However, they haven't locked down their bitstream yet, so it's hard to say how good it will be as a codec.
Huffyuv is open source, but full of x86 assembly, so it isn't usefully portable. I'd love to see an equivalent technology that'd be more portable, and LGPL so it could be used more widely.
Yes! (Score:5, Informative)
Also, there is an Ogg progect, called Theora [theora.org], that is an open video codec. It is based off a codec called VP3 that was orignially developed by a company called On2 [on2.com] They gave the VP3 code to Xiph and continue to work on their own proprietary codecs, such as VP6.
Lossy compression. (Score:3, Insightful)
Kinda makes the purist pine for the days of the Lasedisc.
Re:Lossy compression. (Score:2)
Often it's down to poor encoding. A lot of the early movies have been re-released with better versions.
Cheap players can make it worse as well. I very rarely notice pixelation on my Sony DVD player, hooked up via RGB, blah blah blah. Mind you, it's gathering dust now, two thirds of my media is now DivX ;-)
Re:Lossy compression. (Score:5, Informative)
Well at this point, the only format you could ship that in is harddrive, and that'll probably remain the case for some time. Way too expensive for movies, never mind if you ahve a long one or want extra features.
So the only solution is to go lossy. Personally, I'd rather have a 1080 HD signal that uses lossy comrpession than a 720 NTSC signal that doesn't.
Re:Lossy compression. (Score:2)
Re:Lossy compression. (Score:3, Informative)
However there are legacy TV reasons for this - a combination between gamma correction and the particular color space used means that there are fewer numeric codes available for encoding dark images (near the bottom tip of the YCrCb color cube - gamma pushes them more to the top) than bright ones - this can mean that scenes in dark smokey rooms (think blade runner, any sort of noir etc) tend to be more pixelated than others.
Sadly I expect dire
Re:Lossy compression. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Lossy compression. (Score:2)
Laserdisc? Only when the remaining choice was VHS (Score:3, Interesting)
>Kinda makes the purist pine for the days of the Lasedisc.
Sure, I see this all the time... but I wouldn't go back to Laserdisc.
There are two causes for seeing this in DVD's:
1) Lousy DVD encode work.
Laserdisc had media *transferred* to it. They would (hopefully) clean the negatives, get everything aligned, and record to laserdisc. Everything was done at once.
By contrast, DVD is *captured* as uncompressed video, then (perha
Re:Lossy compression. (Score:3, Insightful)
many companies encode at low bitrates to try and fit lots of crud on one DVD.
bitrates below 7Meg per second is low quality (for a DVD) I encode my home movies at 12.000Meg per second . (But then I shoot with a Canon XL-1 so I have an awesome video quality to start with..) and friends and relatives rave about how much clearer,crisper and better looking my DVD's look compared to commercial movies.
It's the bitrate... I'm content with fitting only 1 hour and no added crud on one dvd.
Re:Lossy compression. (Score:2)
Beta hit the retail shelves around 1975.
VHS appeared a year of two after that.
Laserdisc came out around 1979.
Beta made a bit of a comeback around 1984 when they introduced the HiFi decks.
Theora (Score:4, Insightful)
How about Theora [theora.org]? . . . I know.. but maybe someday.
Not really DivX anymore, is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean it's not the proprietary, pirated
This move isn't surprising to me, because I'd expect the movie industry to use the latest Standard once it became mature.
And if they have a solution ready to go, why would they reinvent the wheel?
I'm sure the next generations of DVD players will support DivX encoded discs, just as DVD players eventually came to support MP3, WMA, VCD, and CDR/RW.
I might be betraying my ignorance of, and apathy towards, video. Excuse me if that's the case.
Re:Not really DivX anymore, is it? (Score:2)
Bet I'm not the first to say: OGG (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bet I'm not the first to say: OGG (Score:2)
I think they are building the codecs into the hardware to make the players faster. While it's certainly not impossible to build hardware that can be upgraded, it poses a challenge and somewhat defeats the purpose of having an industry standard. Not to mention people wouldn't have to buy new players when the standard changes.
Same quality as DVD? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can anyone who uses DivX or has a DivX/DVD player hooked up to their TV attest to this?
Re:Same quality as DVD? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Same quality as DVD? (Score:5, Informative)
DiVX though has been mainly used by "consumers" who don't really know/care about any of that stuff, and just want to be able to throw in a DVD and get one a DiVX. They don't sit and tweak each scene's or frame's bandwidth requirements. Only recently did DiVX release their EKG application which allows a person to modify (inbetween VBR passes) the data allocated to individual frames. If someone (ie, a professional) really knew what they were doing, then I have no doubts they could produce an almost DVD-quality film which takes up only 700megabytes. But why stop at 700 megabytes? Using DVD media, we could get 8+ gigabytes of video/audio on a single disc. That's (theorhetically) almost 8+ hours (at "film" quality) of video. Featurettes and the like could obviously be encoded in a much lower bitrate, as they are with MPEG2/DVD's now, allowing even more room on the disc.
What we really need to be concerned with/pushing is higher resolutions. 720x480 just ain't cutting it anymore. High Def is where it's at, baby, and DiVX and Windows Media are delivering that right now. We just need a medium to transport it properly.
Re:Same quality as DVD? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Same quality as DVD? (Score:2)
We also have to remember that going DVD->DiVX is re-encoding from one lossy format to another. If you had a perfect digital
Re:Same quality as DVD? (Score:2)
Not to mention how many different versions and combinations of codec?s out there that is called ?DivX?. There is no such thing as being able to play them all, and play them all well. Also, there are a lot of graphical glitches you end up wit
Re:Same quality as DVD? (Score:2)
malarky... (Score:2)
Have you looked at paused frames from a DVD on a progressive scan TV?
Looks nice, doesn't it.
And (joke approaches) I'll wager the quality of such a DivX is much higher than one taken from some other method, say a telesynced camcorder in a movie theater.
Video and Audio Codecs (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Quality - If it is compressed it still needs to be good quality
2. Widespread adoption - If you can't encode and decode it wherever you want to use it, then it won't work for you.
3. Portability/Restrictions - Finding the right balance between copy protections wanted by the MPAA/RIAA and the portability wanted by the consumers.
YASW (Yet Another Standard War) (Score:2, Interesting)
Pixlet (Score:2)
Not its inteded use. (Score:2)
So, Pixlet is ruled out of the question, because it doesn't achieve the compression required to store a movie on a single disc. Again, Pixlet is meant for studio us
A little surprised they're not using it.. (Score:2)
Re:A little surprised they're not using it.. (Score:2)
Considering DS9 (and other shows) already ran on TV and presumably made money that way, they're already raking cash with the sets.
DivX is already Old.. (Score:2, Informative)
I am building my own player (Score:2, Interesting)
It will capture TV shows in mpeg2 format with the video capture cards built in hardware compression, then transcode them at it's leasure into MPEG4 format. Once it has about 10 hours of shows recorded and transcoded, it w
DivX and Xvid Player (Score:5, Interesting)
Just my opinion...
Heehee (Score:5, Funny)
The DivX formmated has successfully courted this manufacturer. (Rubs lovingly my spindle of CD-R's)
Rippers (Score:2)
Man, wouldn't that make for easy to use rippers:
2 minutes to rip vs 6 hours. Sign me up!
-Chris
Xvid is the best. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Xvid is the best. (Score:2)
Re:Xvid is the best. (Score:3, Informative)
No, XviD is GPL'd.
libavcodec, which is part of ffmpeg, and programs like mplayer/mencoder are based-on, is the fastest, and highest quality (if you use the right options) MPEG4 encoder around.
What's with all the Xvid fanboys?
Production vs distribution (Score:2)
Remember DRM is intended for consumer consumption 9 regardless of how foul it tastes). I think the discussion needs to
DRM this DRM that. Why worry??? (Score:2)
Sorry, but as soon as they get their DRM stuff in, someone's going to hack it. End of story.
A 100% LOL (Score:4, Informative)
Are you kidding me? Who in their right mind would choose RealVideo unless it was for some specific video settings. RealVideo isn't a choice, it means your screwed. When I must see a RealVideo file, well just installing the thing and letting them try to corrupt my system makes me feel dirty.
Re:A 100% LOL (Score:2, Informative)
homepage [hccnet.nl]. I think this is its homepage at least.
V1.08 is the newest.
While you're at it, Quicktime Alternative works great as well.
Pest
What about all the updates? (Score:2)
DivX...Xvid (Score:2, Flamebait)
Another problem for adoptation i'd assume, would be the REAL MPEG4 codec and QuickTIme.
Let the market decide (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, the more codecs there are, the higher the chances that MPlayer will become "the" "standard" movie playing software, since it's probably one of the few that can play almost all of them!
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
I can't imagine them playing the format upgrade game all that much longer, or they will be replaced by streaming video over the web once broadband gets ubiquitous enough. Which isn't reall
quick path to HD DVD (Score:2)
Or, cable/satellite broadcasters could use DiVX to send channels at lower bandwidths than they do cu
Different Dixv (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Isn't DIVX an variant of MPEG4? (Score:2, Informative)
Meanwhile, XVid provides DivX quality with a totally open source. (no 'borrowing').
Wrong on both counts (Score:2)
The technology did start out as an illegal hack, but it's 100% legit know as far as I know.
Re:Why DiVX? (Score:2, Funny)
those trademarks no longer valid? (Score:3, Informative)
#75352735 - "DIVX" - dead, abandoned 10/5/2000
#75367710 - "DIVX Digital Video Networks" (logo) - dead, abandoned 12/18/1998 (???)
Re:trademark lawsuit? (Score:2)
Re:Completely off-topic.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Completely off-topic.. (Score:2)
Looks like there are at least a couple of moderators with bugs up their asses about something today...
Re:Completely off-topic.. (Score:2)
I've noticed they take 'off-topic' way too seriously. Had that happen the other day [slashdot.org] when there was that article about telemarketing execs signing up for the DNC list. Fortunately anotoher mod came in and fixed it.
I'm going to get modded off topic for this one as well, even though moderation of a post is very much on-topic.
Re:Sorry, DviX sucks... (Score:2)
Well, ever considered that maybe we need those guys trying to become monopolistic, or else MS will just make Windows Media Video a standard instead of DivX? At least the DivX team has a niche, MS don't.
Re:eh, no. (Score:2, Funny)