Re: Curiosity: XviD vs. DivX

Hello everybody!

On Sunday 14 December 2003 06:14, Robert Aronson wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've heard that XviD is able to produce higher quality
> video than DivX in the right hands. If this is true,
> I'd sure like to make my hands the "right" ones.

Well, this IS a difficult question... because there are many reasons to 
use XviD and some to use DivX. In my opinion, it is NOT only a matter of 
quality. As I said, all this stuff is IN MY OPINION, feel free to 
relativise and correct or add Yours!

--- Quality:
DivX is for the lamers (don't take this serious!), it is designed to make 
all the decisions for You. In DivX You can make a lot of settings 
concerning quality and file size, but they are DIFFERENT from those You 
make with XviD. (In some way, and AFAIK.)
This COULD be one reason why Your XviD-Movies looked worse than those with 
DivX. Depends on Your settings.
--- What do OTHERS think about this?

--- Philosophy: (Doesn't earn money, but can make happy :-)
DivX started - AFAIR - as OpenDivX-Project ("Majo"). This was something 
the OS community could have been proud of. But then the company driven by 
Gej decided to make it a closed source/commercial product, adding spyware 
to some free versions, limiting Your choices of configuration by "lite 
versions" or wanting to pay money to them.
I don't want to be called a communist, but I thougth back then that this 
was unfair. I don't like pure capitalism, even if it functions in some 
way :)
Open Source project XviD - I'm NOT expressing the XviD's team's opinion, 
just talking for myself - is a salvation from this situation. It helps 
people to get high quality software for no charge, helps express ideas in 
a very open way (I think that this IS some kind of art :) and it shows 
that non-profit organisations can make BIG things.
Again, this is what the people should - 'xcuse me - might be proud of - I 
am, I like Open Source and the philosophy (even if I've been told not to 
have understood it well ;).
--- So, what's YOUR idea behind using Open Source?

--- Speed and efficiency: (Don't read this, if Your already bored, it's 
just a field report)
I am NOT using any DivX or windows based encoding software anymore (there 
seems not to be an official DivX ENcoder?!), just happened to be like 
this. So I can't tell whether XviD is faster than DivX. But I've been 
told it was. Try it, if You can. Tell us! :)
- DivX has some kind of bug - maybe this fits more the Quality section, 
but nethertheless: DivX can NOT encode with low resolution videos AND fit 
the desired bitrate [statement true with DivX 5.x I used months ago]. I 
used to make my TV captures (back then under Win32) with DivX (not the 
capturing, the POST processing), or I made videos for friends I wanted to 
upload on a FTP server, small ones, just for showing them something 
little (e.g. a funny TV commercial). So I decided to keep resolution 
small and bitrate low.
DivX was very clever: It made files x times smaller than expected. And 
with quality worse than expectable.
I've been told to try XviD (out of technical and philosoiphical questions) 
and I succeeded with creating files with moderate quality and small 
sizes. Perfect. :)
--- Did anybody had similar troubles?

So, just everybody feel free to tell us Their opinions :)

Greetings from Stephen D. Leedle, happy about XviD and thanking all the 
authors and contributors!