DivX Version 5.0 Released

[Guru]

Most problems reported by Gurm is caused by his M$ Picasso instalation!

[Indiana]

I still fail to see the advantages of DivX5 against DivX4.
It's not faster here, it's a bit buggy (not as bad as Gurm says, but buggier than the 4). Those additional encoding features here didn't really show better quality and make encoding MUCH slower.

After some testing I find myself currently using my DivX4 settings on DivX5 as well cause they give me the best quality. So I guess I will switch back to the free 4.12 version.

Or has anyone really seen an advantage of DivX5 compared to DivX4?

[Wulfman]

according to c't, the facelet-feature (VOL) will be useful in the future, if they sort the bugs out.

mfg
wulfman

[TnT]

Originally posted by Indiana
I still fail to see the advantages of DivX5 against DivX4.
It's not faster here, it's a bit buggy (not as bad as Gurm says, but buggier than the 4). Those additional encoding features here didn't really show better quality and make encoding MUCH slower.

After some testing I find myself currently using my DivX4 settings on DivX5 as well cause they give me the best quality. So I guess I will switch back to the free 4.12 version.

Or has anyone really seen an advantage of DivX5 compared to DivX4?

It's not a huge difference, but I like DivX5 better than 4. B-Frames and Quarter Pixels are working out great for me, but GMC causes a lot of problems. For others it seems to be the other way where GMC works great, but QPel causes major artifacts. I'm actually thinking that some of the encoding problems may be machine specific.

As for speed I have a Celeron 466 and encoding of course takes forever, but playback is great (speed and quality wise) when I have post-processing all the way down.

I know that some don't like The Player, but for me it works nicely and helps a lot for playing videos with a slower processor. With the newer version you can turn off the update requests.

[az]

Originally posted by Wulfman
according to c't, the facelet-feature (VOL) will be useful in the future, if they sort the bugs out.

mfg
wulfman

Sorry to slow down your enthusiasm, but that was an April fool's joke

AZ

[DentyCracker]

It has a problem with some divx 3 content when using things like Virtualdub, Vegas, etc.

[Gurm]

No, most of the problems I mention are related either to encoding (something you may or may not do), and the "extra" features of DIVX 5.

Basically, decoding a DIVX 3 or 4 video clip once DIVX 5 is installed is an exercise in melting your CPU. Whereas any ol' P2-300 can play a divx3 or divx4 clip with the 4.12 codec installed, with the 5.0 codec installed you need a heftier machine - BY FAR. Meaning to get the same playback quality you need a 700-ish mhz machine!

Now, the divx gurus claim that this is because the 5.0 codec does all kinds of extra spiffy post processing. The simple fact remains, however, that if you turn off that post processing you still get lousier playback quality than with previous codecs. Until I can get a codec-only install that will ONLY associate itself with divx 5.0 clips and NOT with previous divx and/or mpeg4 clips, I am staying away from this codec.

It's quite irritating because the latest videos are coming out in divx5 - 'cuz everybody just HAS to upgrade, without seeing if it's worthwhile first.

- Gurm

P.S. Guru, I am starting to get QUITE sick of your attitude towards WinXP. It runs just fine. Everything works on it. If you think otherwise, you're an ignorant twit. (Nota bene - "ignorant twit" translates quite nicely to "stupid ****head" if that works better as a good insult for you.)

Normally, I'd let it slide. But your insinuation that I'm somehow imagining a particular problem, or that I would go off half-cocked without checking cross-platform to see if it's a REAL problem, is such a big insult that I can't.

Now, if you have some kind of PROOF that divx5 works great on Win9x, Win2k, or (hahahahahahahaha) linux... please pony up. But, since I know for a fact that it sucks donkey cock on all of those platforms (except for Linux, where it just doesn't work because Linux itself sucks donkey cock), you can't. So BITE ME.

[DentyCracker]

Seems to work fine in Linux for me. I also saw a smiley at the end of Guru's post, so I don't think there was any malicious intent

[Wulfman]

Originally posted by az


Sorry to slow down your enthusiasm, but that was an April fool's joke

AZ

Looks like they got me this time...

As I don't download movies (transferlimit), I'm not that familiar with divX. And I was already wondering why the article couldn't be found in their online archive....

thx,
wulfman

[Gurm]

Denty... you'll note that I qualified my statement by saying that since Linux itself primarily doesn't work...

And I don't care whether Guru had a smiley or not. I'm sick of him coming back at every post I make with "well if you weren't running WinXP..."

- Gurm

[Indiana]

This stooopid DivX5 codec (the DivX.dll) is giving me a: "Your 30 days trial period is over" message in VirtualDub since today.
WTF?!? I do have this f*cking GAIN thing installed and not messed with it - so I should not get any such messages. There's nothing in the license or documentation that states something about a 30 days only trial!

Anybody else had this? Any solution - other than going back to 4.12, which is what I'll most probably do anyways?

[Indiana]

/rant on

A quite well backed-up rant about DivX5 can be found here
That Divx5sux guy fully makes my point. I have experimented quite a bit with DivX5, trying various combinations of the "new encoding" features and end up with DivX4-comparable quality at best - most often worse than DivX4.12 was.
And even the official known issues list of DivX5"Pro" doesn't look good at all. Bugs as fundamental as "Basic de-interlacing functionality will crash on P4 processors", "Using the built-in resizing functionality in DivX Pro may cause errors", simply ignoring the selected bitrate or non-functional interlacing settings are just not acceptable with commercial software.
The same goes for the apparently broken QPel and psychovisual modelling options where even the developpers advise not to use them. So why having DivX5Pro at all and not using the standard, if those extra encoding feature don't result in better quality videos? And when DivX5 standard is getting DivX4.12 quality at most but is buggier and slower why not simply stay with 4.12?

And what about this bug with this purple or green tint when the source is not evenly divisable by 16?!? The features list of DivX5 clearly states "Any integer with a multiple of 4 up to 1920x1088" - and this was working fine with 4.12 as well. At least now I know where those ugly purple tint artifacts are coming from...

/rant off




P.S.: There is a way to keep a functional 4.12 together with the DivX5, through renaming of the 4.12 DivX.dll and doing a few reg-tricks before installing the DivX5 dll. See here

[Indiana]

Well, at least the above mentioned patches to avoid DiX5 overwriting the 4.12 in spite of installing DivX5 seem to work.



This seems to be the best solution for me so far. I can keep the DivX4.12 for encoding my own stuff but still have the DivX5 codec installed in case I want to playback an avi that needs version 5. No GAIN necessary as the playback capabilites of DivX5 standard and Pro are identical.

[Gurm]

Hey Indiana,

Wanna explain how you made the 5 not install over the 4?

I want 99% of divx video to play back using the 4.12 codec, and the only thing that uses 5 to be the 5.0-encoded clips.

- Gurm

[Technoid]

Originally posted by Gurm

It's quite irritating because the latest videos are coming out in divx5 - 'cuz everybody just HAS to upgrade, without seeing if it's worthwhile first.

- Gurm

The same reasoning can be aplied to Win XP