Oops I keep typo-ing the word DivX, their file format is .divx not the mangled .divzx I said in previous post.
Here is more general waffle from me about file formats, where we are right now: h264 was the last great technical leap in video quality/encoding issues, and the last 2 years have been a story about that technology being used by lots of different encoders/decoders and hardware devices. Meanwhile on the video in the browser front, flash has started to dominate, largely as a result of the desire of people, sites & services to use a format with the widest possible audience, widest compatibility without viewers installing much. For flash to dominate services were needed to take care of the converstion to flash, because desktop tools for encoding flash were far less common. And all this on a backdrop of most mac users having stuff that made .movs and most windows users had stuff that made .wmv's or .avi's, although it was possible for them to spend a few dollars getting quicktime support, or maybe their video editing software already had it. Likewise the only other things that could be relied on a user having built-in support for viewing in a browser or on the desktop, were split along mac/pc lines - mov and wmv again. many PC users werent wanting to bother installing quicktime, and wmv support on the Mac was in a poor state. Over the last year or so, the uptake of itunes on windows has caused more windows users to recognise .mov .mp4 .m4v and have quicktime installed, and some 3rd party tools on OS X have helped mac users deal with wmvs. But there still a split and its still a pain even thinking about these things, so its easy to see how flash has managed to carve itself a large chunk of the action. Where flash falls down is quality, mobile device compatibility, and its not a great format for editing etc, need to convert to something else first really. To be fair, quality is partly down to some services using older version of video part of flash, but generally mpeg4, h264, divx and wmv can be made to look better than the way most flash encoded video turns out, but not necessarily by a huge amount. I always used to preech long and hard about how .mp4 file format and h264 were a sane way forwards in the future. mpeg4 and now h264 to a certain extent, have become very common in mobile and 'connected to the tv' devices, although its still early days for this market. Considering h264 is an important part of the forseeable future of high-definition TV and discs, and mpeg4 and/or h264 is present in most mobile devices, I stick by this as a medium to longterm view, in terms of what will become a mostly interoperable standard for computer desktop, living room & mobile consumption. but I am not sure what will happen in the browser, it will take at the very least some years for anything to rival flash for things like blip.tv and youtube, I would of thought, and I see no signs of that happening. I even consider that the rise of flash, rather than rss, is the more visible driver of the last few years explosion of video on the web 2.0. Ahh who knows, a lot can change in 5 years, the complete absence of real video format in these discussions, its relegation to only the cheesiest mainstream media outlet websites & live streaming stuff, means longterm domination by any one of these competing forces cannot be assumed. Its impossible to tell if DivX is actually in its twilight years, or on the verge of a new era, and the same could be said for any other format, its a mess out there. For example wmv seemed like a browser loser in the face of flash and dropped mac support, but microsofts new 'competitior to flash' WPF/E, which comes out of beta sometime this year, includes support for wmv video. It will be a pretty easy install on windows and mac, and it will seem a lot more like the flash experience, in several ways. It may be a complete failure or it may catch on, time will tell, if it could play .mp4's as well as microsofts own format then I would be hysterically rejoicing about it, but its just another chapter in a big game amoungst these companies, not wanting to let go of their own special mutation of what is in most cases, some kind of mpeg4. Even when companies try to standardize, its messy. Apple did the right thing by the ipod working with .mp4 files, rather than being overprotective and only supporting stuff wrapped in .movs. In practice there are many different versions of mpeg4 and h264, different profiles, and different hardware decoder limitations in different devices, so things got off to a bumpy start, the promised land of making a mp4, whether a h264 one or not, and being reasonably sure it will play on most peoples devices, is not here yet. Sony support mp4 and h264 on the PSP and PS3, but will an ipod h264 play on the PSP? Depends what you encoded it with, what settings, what firmware of PS you use, etc, the usual kind of complete nightmares that spoil things. But these are diminishing over time, it will settle down a bit over the next few years, hopefully not too many new complications will arise. Microsoft show no signs of giving up on wmv and trying to ignore every other format, so their games consoles and media center pc-tv solutions and mobile devices are likely to remain a barrier to mp4 h264 domination. I quite like DivX but if I sound negative about it its because it doesnt seem to simplify the complex picture I painted above. Its in the right area because theres mpeg4 involved, but then it goes murky cos youve vgot your own file wrapper, hardware certification programme, etc, and I get in a muddle about how to generate completely standard mpeg4 video using divx, whether its possible. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In [email protected], "Steve Watkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Anyway in recent years they have promoted their own file format, > .divzx, which is basically still a .avi but with some extra stuff like > support for menus and additonal tracks and subtitles and stuff. >
