Interview with DivX - your questions, please

i'd quite like to know who, if anyone, is using DivX for legitimate, legal purposes. IIRC, the only example i've seen was pay-per-download film distribution but other than that i've only seen pirate films and TV rips. I'm curious as to how an "illegal" practice has lead to such widespread hardware (DVD player) support, or is someone really using DivX to distribute paid-for content and just keeping very quiet about it...?

mark.

Mark,

I understand the question and will, of course, ask it.

However, irrespective of the historical situation, just in the last few days, I've seen that there are interesting - perfectly legal - possibilities, not the least of which is commercial movie trailers in DivX HD format (do yourself a favour and check out that Madagascar trailer - you'll be amazed).

But, let's stay nearer to home.

You've shot a movie (for want of a better word) on HDV and now want to watch the edited footage on an HD TV set. What do you do?

While we await Blue ray and HD-DVD, your options (apart from outputting the edited HDV back to an HDV camcorder and playing from there) are kind of limited - but DivX HD opens up some interesting possibilities.

HDV footage can be turned into Windows Media HD format from within an editing program such as Canopus Edius and that can then be converted to DivX HD format.

The DivX HD is good quality (though not necessarily quite the same pixel resolution as HDV) and a lower data rate than Windows Media HD.

It's also possible - if the editing program you use supports it - to convert directly from HDV to DivX HD. I'm still experimenting with doing this using Canopus's ProCoder Express from within Edius and plan lots of other tests but, currently, I'm underwhelmed at the quality of the DivX being produced directly by ProCoder Express.

Once you have the DivX HD files you can play them back from a media player (network or portable) that is able to handle DivX HD or from a DVD player compatible with DivX HD. And maybe directly from certain PCs, too.

At the other end, it's possible to take high-res (or low-res footage) and repurpose it for use on mobile or handheld devices - and all these conversions that use DivX's own converter program are easy and fast.

Let's run you through some figures.

Here, a 30-second clip transcoded from HDV to a 1920x1080 Windows Media HD file is 24.9MByte in size and cannot play smoothly in Windows Media Player on my Athlon 64 3200+ PC with 2GByte of RAM.

The rather wonderful free VLC player/converter/streaming program fares little better for smoothness.

It's possible it might play okay on an equivalent Intel-based PC but I don't think so (though haven't been able to check).

DivX's Convert program can transcode that WMV file to DivX HD, producing a file that plays smoothly here and is 13.3MByte in size (data rate is thus 0.443MByte/sec). Pixel resolution is 1200x672.

I'm planning this week to try to watch some of these DivX HD files on a front-projector system that has a component input, to see how it looks.

The Convert program can also produce 16:9 files at:

"Home Theater" resolution - 720x400 and 25 frames per sec (the 30-second clip is 5.34MByte - so data rate is 0.178Mbyte/sec)

"Portable" resolution - 640x368 and 25fps (4.14MByte file size - at a rate of 0.138Mbyte/sec)

"Handheld resolution - 176x96 and 12fps (916KByte - at a rate of 0.03MByte/sec - or, if you prefer, 30.5KByte/sec ).

Oh, and to my surprise, even the Portable footage looks pretty good when played full-screen (ie full-width) on my 19in Iiyama LCD monitor which runs natively at 1280x1024.

So, those are just some of the things I've discovered messing around with DivX over the last few days and, in truth, it's these sorts of possibilities that interest me - and I suspect most people here abouts - rather than anything nefarious.

And those (and other) legitimate uses could explain why so many makers of video editing software now buy licenses from DivX and include DivX-output options in their programs.

Bob C

Bob, would it be possible to post these files you talk of so we can experiment with the HD footage as well? I also dont know also weather its worth mentioning 'XviD', as its perhaps the main competitor to DivX - as a bonus its also totally free (open source project).

Ed

Ed,

I'll see if I can post something up but tell me what, specifically, you fancied having access to.

As for XviD - I'm experimenting with that, too, in part because I'm looking at the USB version of the Dvico TVX media player box - rather a cute product - and this has available as a free download a program (rather limited in its capabilities) called TViX Manager that can convert to XviD and also report what AVIs are or are not compatible with the TVX box.

XviD very much looks like work in progress, though. Have you got any recommended XviD file-conversion programs I should look at?

Bob C

I suspect that XviD will always look like work in progress being open source, however try http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/xvid.htm and download GordianKnot Codec pack unselect all those codes you dont want (your only interested in the XviD one) and that should include all you will need on your system, your players should pickup on it and also so should procoder for converting to it.

I would be interested in seeing both those HDV clips if that is at all possible. I only say this as I dont have any HDV footage other than that from MS and I would be interested to see how they compare :)

Ed

sorry, Bob, i didn't mean to sound so negative towards DivX and my comments weren't intended to sound derogotary. I'm just confused as to why there's so much hardware support for a codec that thus far i haven't seen that much legitimate use for that would require stand-alone hardware.

I'm intrigued to know how you got WMV HD files to play more smoothly in VLC see as well. I have only been testing with MS's 1280x720 sample files but i've always found VLC to fair much worse CPU-wise and IIRC that's down to VLC having to use ms's directshow filter and WMP being hard-coded to handel WMV. I've also found that VLC can't skip through wmv files effectively - ie. without having to wait a while (presumably for the next I frame) for the picture to put itself back together again.

The datarates sound similar to what apple are doing with H.264 and you're right, it's amazing! I'll download the Madagascar trailer today.

I too would be more interested in open source projects like XVid and X.264. Not because i don't like paying for software - i just think that in the long-term free, open development leads to better software that's more adaptable and better-suited to users' requirements. There are obvious pitfalls though, one of which is that open source software almost always appears to be in beta development and i hope this doesn't scare too many people off. I'd rather software was in active development while i'm using it than a. not being able to use it because it's not finished, or b. using when it's riddled with bugs that i know won't be fixed until the next version! I think we all know what i mean *cough* Pinnacle *cough* Adobe *cough* Microsoft!
but that's enough Open Source ranting from me for now... :D

DivX is looking good, what sort of encoding times did you get with the files you've tested, Bob?

That TViX box looks quite nice too and not that expensive either. They do USB and Firewire models but i'd really prefer something networkable. Forget Bluetooth, if more devices in my house had some form of ethernet connectivity (wireless or wired) life would be so much easier!

mark.

just downloaded some of the DivX HD trailers and while they look great, but there's something not quite right about it. It sounds realy silly but i can't work out what it is! At 4 Mbps you can't really complain...

Mark,

I didn't feel that what you said was negative - it was fully understandable, I think.

As for the level of hardware support - yes, it is surprising (likewise the support from within video editing programs) but it certainly does seem the case that there are now lots of legitimate uses for DivX files, as you're starting to see after downloading that Madagascar file.

Oh, and VLC does not fare any better than Windows Media Player with WMV HD files - I simply chose the wrong words.

The open source=never finished thing you mention is, when I come to think of it, inevitable and not something to worry about (though XviD is, I think still officially in beta - though that may be equivalent to some commercial programs' release version 1.1 for all I know).

However, I've personally had too little first-hand experience of open source to be able to comment about whether or not it ends up being better-suited to users' requirements than commercially-developed stuff - though I would say that the availablity of some astonishingly useful free tools does lend some credibility to your opinion.

I haven't yet done any timing tests for the encodes that the DivX Convert program carried out because my priority was how the files played (because this was all to do with my testing of the Dvico TViX box).

Subjectively, I did think that they were fast, though, not just because I didn't feel I was waiting a long time (they weren't faster than real-time or any such thing, though) but also because of my belief that the conversion was rather complex.

Note that the TViX box is available (and from the same source you gave) in a bunch of different versions where the cost varies according to the size of hard disk - the biggest available being 400GByte.

As for wanting something networkable - I understand why you say that but even my limited experience of network media players such as Pinnacle ShowCenter do lead me to believe that the man in the street would find the TViX box FAR easier to use in two ways.

Setting up is a doddle and transfer of media is trivial, whereas the power of the networkable solutions such as Pinnacle's greatly increases the complexity (perceived and actual) of those two tasks.

Furthermore, the portable solution such as the TViX box offers some things that the networkable solution doesn't - notably the ability, in effect, to play back anywhere there's a TV set or AV system and the ability to play back media without having to have a PC switched on and feeding the media out over the network.

It's also impressive to see the range of voltages that the box's built in power-supply supports - and there is one option I've seen outside the UK to buy a bundle that includes a car cigarette-lighter power adaptor, for running the box in a car or, perhaps more likely, a mobile home.

The networkable solution offers more possibilities for stay-at-homes but the portable solution is rather simple and elegant.

What's shocked me, though, is quite how many hard-disk-based portable-media contenders there are already - I'd thought that the TiVX solutions and LaCie's Silverscreen (see this DVdoctor.news posting) were rarities but that's far from the case.

Bob C
(So much to learn - so little time to learn it in)

i agree... streaming clients tend to involve some knowledge and set-up time but what i'd really like is something like the TViX that has the ability to act as networked storage. Equally, if my DVD/HDD recorder could be networked, i could transfer files off the HDD and onto my PC. Which reminds me, are there any hardware-based, preferably stand-alone, "one box" encoders for DivX?

mark.

Folks,

I've also posted a call for questions on DivX's own forums and thought it would make a lot of sense to also do so over here in Doom9's forum.

Trouble is, there's a five-day delay between registering on Doom9's and being able to post!

If any longer-standing Doom9 forum member is able to post this for me, I'd be most grateful - but do please comment here before you post so that no duplicate postings are made there.

If you can do that, this is what I'd like to have posted:
=============================
I've arranged an interview early next week with Eric Grab of DivX and thought that this would be a good place to look for sensible and incisive questions I should put to him.

I know quite a bit about video editing (if not, I've fooled a lot of people over the years) but I am not quite sure about how to put DivX – the company and the products - into the widest possible and most appropriate context.

I'm believe that the company's technology makes possible some quite exciting - and totally legitimate - developments, and I want to explore those areas as much as possible in the interview.

I'd also be happy to discuss digital rights management and anything else the experts hereabouts thought relevant - including problems/issues with the company's own products and, indeed, with third-party products that use the company's technology.

For the record, I was minded to ask for an interview after messing about with the latest DivX Converter and Player for a day or two (while creating test footage for a Dvico TVX portable media player) and realising just how good the results could be.

My viewpoint was also affected by realising just how widespread has been the adoption of DivX by the big names with which I'm familiar in video editing software.

I've already seen that it's possible to play DivX HD versions of 1440x1080 Windows Media video high definition videos on PCs that aren't fast enough to play back the WMV versions – and have been rather shocked at just how powerful a PC would seem to be needed to handle these 1080 WMV HD files.

Appreciate having your questions and comments as soon as convenient.

Thanks in anticipation.

Bob Crabtree
editorial director, http://www.dvdoctor.net
(and launch-to-burial editor of Computer Video mag in the UK)
-------------------------

That's it.

Thanks in anticipation.

Bob C

No standalone , but a few external or pci encoder systems.
http://www.divx.com/hardware/browse.php?c=6

Mark, there's a Topfield settop box HDD recorder that has a USB2 connection for downloading to/from a PC. I think it plays DivX but can't be sure.

Mark's question was about encoders but thought I'd also offer this link to a French site that has an excellent listing using a database that lets you compare media-player hardware.

Contrary to my expectations, it is perfectly possible to use the site even if you don't speak French.

And, any terms you don't understand can readily be translate by using altavista's Babel Fish Translator.

The link to the French site came from this amazing posting on Doom9's forums about choosing media players, which is definitely worth reading - as indeed is a lot of stuff on those forums.

Bob C
(The internet; who needs it?)

or if you fancy a giggle, get google to translate the whole page into "English" for you! ;)

mark.

Doom9.org a hive of info eh Bob :) Its regarded as one of the best there is for this kind of stuff.

It's also the home of many a useful tool including IFOEdit and Rejig.

I think the reason that the hardware support is so widespread is because it is trivial to add. XViD, DivX and MPEG4 (as I understand it) are all based around the MPEG4 codec design and so MPEG4 enabled hardware can be easily fed the data from an XViD or DivX file, providing you can unpackage the data from the file format.

Presumably there are now a lot of combined MPEG2/4 decoder chips on the market and people thought it would be an extra selling point. And once one manufacturer does it, then everyone adds it.

Steven

Google around for the LinkPlayer2 DVD Player :) It's a DVD player with an ethernet port that can play just about anything off your computer. (including MPEG2 HD TS files).

Only downside is that it doesn't have a digital out (HDMI or DVI) to a HD display, only component out.

There is also a pinnacle model (Showcentre HD?) and another one I can't remember the name of

Steven

thanks Steven, sounds interesting but what i'm really interested in as a hard drive recorder that will allow access to video stored on the drive via a network. Something that the Topfield recorder that Alan mentioned seems to do... it's certainly good to know that the are HD streaming clients around though!

mark.

The Topfield box has two Freeview decoders as well.

Ed,

It's a very wonderful resource!

Er, but are you going to post that message over there for me?

If so, please let me know the url so I can see any replies - cost I've not had a single one over on the DivX forums (to my astonishment).

Bob

this might be of interest... it's a DVD player from liteon that features wired and wireless ethernet connections to allow playback of streaming media. it also plays divx. on £99!