Yes, these are all mpeg4 encoders, and mpeg4 should generally use less cpu & work on a wider range of devices than h264. But this becomes much less of an issue as the years go by, and 320x240 h264 should play on a wide range of computers. It was mostly at higher resolutions that h264 struggled to play smoothly on some machines, eg the apple HD samples.
This, coupled with the fact thing like the ipod, apple tv, psp, xbox360, can handle h264, along with many people making flash versions of their stuff available for widest computer compatibility, means there are less reasons to stick with mpeg4 rather than h264, than there were when h264 was first added to quicktime a couple of years ago. But for those that do want to stick with mpeg4 for whatever reason, these alternatives are usually better than quicktimes own mpeg4 encoding. If you pick the right settings when encoding, you can make standard mpeg4 files which will playback on a computer without that person having to install 3ivx etc. Alternatively you can go for higher quality, at the expense of some compatibility (eg some 3ivx settings will require the viewer to have 3ivx decoder installed to watch). Its all this 'profile' stuff which defines which features a decoder can handle, same as there are different h264 profiles, with baseline being the simplest, taking less cpu to decode, and working with the ipod etc. Most vloggers are interested in compatibility more than pure quality, wheras quite a bit of 3ivx, xvid & divx's market is people who are ripping DVDs etc to smaller files but that are high quality, where they may never be sharing the files, and so compatibility is less of an issue, so long as it works for them. Further complications surrounding these alternative mpeg4 encoders, are what file wrapper format is used (eg .mp4 or .avi), and what audio format is used. For example DivX uses its own file warpper which is a modified avi renamed to divx, and I think they use mp3 audio rather than AAC. This is fine for playback on DivX ertified hardware, or computers with DivX installed, or in the browser with the DivX browser plugin, but makes DivX a less than ideal choice for people looking to create ipod compatible files. But as I have mostly been focussing on h264 myself, I could be wrong with some of these details. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Harold" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Brad Hood" <anunnaki@> wrote: > > > > It's comparable to MP4 flavors Xvid and Dvix, no? > > I don't entirely know, Brad. The name certainly makes you think of > DivX and Xvid, but whether there's any similarity in the technology, > I've no idea. > > Harold >
