| 12 Sep 2005 05:10 am |
Wannabe Rep: 0 Joined: 12 Sep 2005 Posts: 14 OFFLINE | Hi folks,
I am new here and had some questions that I hope you can help me with.
First off, my friend and I are downloading some old public domain movies and he has a DVD player the can play divx movies but I do not yet. We already had a handful of divx movies and so far I have been able to play those on Windows Media Player and the program called Divx Player.
But the movies that I have started downloading do not work on Windows Media player but do work on Divx player. I have read some of the posts on this site and I think the problem may be that I do not have the correct codecs in Windows Media Player. So the questions I have are:
1) Are all avi movies divx? If not what other types are there?
2) If Windows Media player is lacking downloadable codecs, will a DVD player also lack those codecs and therefore not allow us to watch movies on the TV?
3) If the avi files are not divx files, how can I make them divx files? I read about avi2dvd but I do not think that is the right program for me.
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| | 12 Sep 2005 10:01 am |
Regular Rep: 5 Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 1,269 | >> But the movies that I have started downloading do not work on Windows Media player but do work on Divx player. I have read some of the posts on this site and I think the problem may be that I do not have the correct codecs in Windows Media Player.
Not necessarily. You probably do have the right codecs, or DivX Player wouldn’t be able to play it either. I think it’s a case of file truncation (file size isn’t correct). WMP is probably the only player that can’t open avi’s of incorrect size. A quick check with gspot (http://www.headbands.com/gspot) will tell you if the file is of correct length.
1) Are all avi movies divx? If not what other types are there?
Not at all! AVI is a container, and divx is a codec. A container is like a wrapper. Inside that wrapper, the audio and video data can be encoded using different codecs. Some video codecs (other than divx) you may have heard of are cinepak, indeo, sorenson, xvid, motion jpeg, windows media video 9, H.264, etc...
2) If Windows Media player is lacking downloadable codecs, will a DVD player also lack those codecs and therefore not allow us to watch movies on the TV?
DVD’s use a totally different format/container. All of them can play DVD’s, which are MPEG-2. Many of them also play SVCD’s, which are also MPEG-2, and VCD’s, which are MPEG-1.
There is a more recent breed of standalone DVD players that can also play divx movies. Those will be data cd’s with an avi encoded in the divx codec. Such standalone DVD players are called “DivX-certified”.
In general people who don’t have DivX-certified DVD players (or have avi’s with unsupported codecs) will use software to convert and burn their avi’s to a regular movie DVD (MPEG-2).
3) If the avi files are not divx files, how can I make them divx files? I read about avi2dvd but I do not think that is the right program for me.
AVI2DVD sounds like it’s doing things in reverse. It’s taking an AVI and turning it into a DVD. To encode in DivX you can use tools like VirtualDub and get the DivX Create Bundle (formerly Dr. DivX and DivX Pro). You may not want to do this if your DVD player is not DivX-certified. If it’s not, there are many tools out there to produce DVD’s from AVI files, and avi2dvd is probably one of them.
Since you’re a newbie I also recommend getting your hands on a couple of tools: avicodec (http://avicodec.duby.info) and gspot (http://www.headbands.com/gspot), which will help you identify the codecs you need for video files. They can also report certain problems with video files, such as file truncation. Just so you know, AVI files' video codecs are identified by their fourcc (four character code), and their audio codec are identified by tag number.
| | | 12 Sep 2005 10:14 am |
Wannabe Rep: 0Joined: 12 Sep 2005 Posts: 14 OFFLINE | Wow. Thanks. That is a lot to digest so I will get started on it and let you know if I have more problems.
| | | 12 Sep 2005 01:34 pm |
Wannabe Rep: 0Joined: 12 Sep 2005 Posts: 14 OFFLINE | Ok. I believe you have helped me find my answer. Here is what I got from AVIcodec:
filename = the name of the movie
V. codec name = DIVx Networks DiVx v5
A. 1 Codec Name = MPEG Layer-3
So based on that info, it is safe to assume that any DVD player that can play DiVx movies can play this movie? That this is a Divx codec movie?
| | | 14 Sep 2005 02:56 pm |
Wannabe Rep: 0Joined: 12 Sep 2005 Posts: 14 OFFLINE | Hello again.
I hit my first snag. Two of my avi files are not codec Divx but rather:
xvid mpeg 4.
Do I have to convert them to Divx? If so, how?
I assume avi files with xvid codec are not playable in a dvd/divx player, are they?
| | | 01 Oct 2005 07:52 pm |
Regular Rep: 5Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 1,269 | Sorry for the delay. Sometimes posts get buried under other posts and it takes lenghty reading for them to resurface.
To your Sept 12 post
>> So based on that info, it is safe to assume that any DVD player that can play DiVx movies can play this movie? That this is a Divx codec movie?
I would think so.
To your Sept 14 post
>> I assume avi files with xvid codec are not playable in a dvd/divx player, are they?
DivX and XviD are different flavors of MPEG-4 and are closely related (they were both derived from Project Mayo - DivX turned commercial, XviD stayed open-source.) In general DVD players don’t need to support XviD for DivX certification, but due to the popularity of the codec, some manufacturers have included support for it in their player. You should probably check the specs in your product manual to see if XviD is supported. If not, there’s a couple of things you can do. The first is a “trick” and relies on the fact DivX and XviD are closely related. Get a fourcc changer (from here for example http://www.inmatrix.com/files/avic_download.shtml) and change the fourcc of your XVID file from xvid/XVID to divx/DX50, then burn your file to a data cd-r (or cd-rw so you can erase it if it doesn’t work - IF the DVD player can read cd-rw discs that is) and test it out. If it doesn’t work, then change the fourcc back. You’ll then have to do a full recompress. Get VirtualDub (http://www.virtualdub.org), open your xvid file, then go to video, compression, and pick the DivX 5 or DivX 6 codec. Click on advanced and set the settings to your liking (the most important one is probably the certification profile). Then click file, save as avi, and it’ll encode your file.
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