MPEG4 or DIVX

cheekers wrote on 6/11/2001, 10:54 AM

When I use programs like VirtualDub to process my AVI files (mostly uncompressed, but some compressed fles), I am able to choose various compression codecs like DIVX or MPEG4 (Microsoft's codecs).

Why don't either the DIVX or MPEG4 compression options show up when I try to render a project from VF? VirtualDub only works with VFW codecs so it doesn't like my DV files from my camera. I'm forced to load the file into Video Factory, render as uncompressed, load it into VirtualDub, then save as MPEG4 or DIVX.

Comments

jimcho wrote on 6/12/2001, 11:09 AM

Render to AVI, then click "custom", then click the video tab. The video format drop down list will contain all the codecs installed on your machine, though not all of them may work. I know that DivX 3.11 works well, but DivX 4.0 does not.

cheekers wrote on 6/13/2001, 1:14 AM

Thanks. Sometimes the DIVX stuff looks alright,sometimes not. As far as quality goes, I've had the best luck encoding to MPEG4 v2 (by rendering uncompressed to AVI and using Virtualdub). The only weird thing is among the long list of codecs, the MS MPEG-4 codecs are nowhere to be found. Why doesn't VF recognize the MPEG4 codecs? Is there a workaround.

jimcho wrote on 6/13/2001, 3:49 PM

I can't comment on MPEG4 as I don't have those codecs installed. But have you tried increasing the bit rate of DivX to 6000 kbps? Click on "Configure" and slide the bit rate slider all the way to the right. Then save the configuration. Each time you click on the configure button, it will reset to its default value of 910 so you have to remember to reset it to 6000 if you save your configuration again.

nlamartina wrote on 6/24/2001, 12:53 AM

Cheekers,

VideoFactory does recognize the MPEG-4 codec. However, it won't let you render with it, and for a specific reason: Microsoft says no. They created the codec, and in the distribution thereof, they decided that we consumers should only be allowed to decode MPEG-4, not encode it (for who knows what reason). However, there is a workaround. Enter DivX. DivX (or "DivX ;-)", as it's sometimes known) is a hack of the Microsoft MPEG-4 codec, which gives users the power to encode, not just decode. So on the surface, DivX v3.11 and MPEG-4 v2 are virtually the same, deriving from the same parent, MPEG-4 v1. They just have different capabilities.

Hope this info helps,
Nick LaMartina