DVD DivX Player Problem

Entree
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Joined: 15 Jun 2008
Posts: 2
OFFLINE

Hi,

I bought a DivX DVD player today.

I made a DVD data disc with a few avi. files on there, but when I put the disc into the player, it reads the disc but will not play them, coming up with a message 'unsupported format'.

As far as I was aware avi files can be played on a divx player!

Any suggestions as to what the problem could be?

Cheers.

Regular
Rep: 6

Joined: 20 Nov 2004
Posts: 1,286

They can’t play just any avi. Only those encoded in the DivX codec (and sometimes Xvid and motion JPEG and a few others). I think you have container and codec confused.
A container (like AVI) is like a wrapper; inside of it you can put various streams (usually audio and video, but can be subtitles and others) encoded in various codecs. Containers are usually denoted by their file extension (but not always - sometimes people rename them incorrectly).
I think the first thing you want to check is whether your AVI files use the DivX codec. Use a tool like gspot, avicodec, or mediainfo. The video codec will be denoted by its fourcc (four character code). Xvid will use the fourcc XVID. DivX 3 uses the fourcc’s DIV3 and DIV4. DivX 4 uses DIVX. DivX 5 and 6 use DX50.
Next you want to check your manual for what your standalone DVD player can handle. Can it handle DivX? Xvid? DVD+R? DVD-R? RW? CD-R? CD-RW? etc... Also check if there’s a recommended brand of media (sometimes some brands work better than others).
Then there’s a lot of other variables.
Filenames can be a headache sometimes. If the filenames for your movies are really long, contain special punctuation like ] , ) etc., or contain foreign characters, you may want to edit that.
Also you may have to check the way in which the DivX movie was encoded. On a PC it doesn’t matter much, because the decoder is software, and can handle pretty much anything you throw at it. Not so with hardware devices. That’s why you have levels and certification profiles. They define the parameters of the files the hardware player can handle (frame rate, resolution, and other features) - some examples of profiles are 'portable' or 'home theater'. For example one feature that’s not supported on all players, but used from time to time to encode movies is QPel (quarter pixel interpolation).

If all else fails, you can simply convert your movies into DivX format (using DivX converter or VirtualDub). Usually under advanced settings you’ll get to pick a certification profile, then you can just let it encode.

P.S: Until you can find out the proper parameters, you might want to burn to CD-RW, or DVD+/-RW.