DivX 7 Adds Support For Blu-ray Rips (H.264/MKV) 294
mrspin writes "DivX looks set to continue to be the video format of choice for 'grey' content, with the company announcing that version 7 adds support for H.264 video and, more significantly, the Matroska (MKV) container. Anybody familiar with Blu-ray rips found on BitTorrent sites or other filesharing networks will instantly recognize the MKV file format in combination with the H.264 codec as a popular way to deliver High Definition video on a PC. And now that DivX is throwing its weight behind the Matroska container, MKV support should increasingly find its way on a range of non-PC devices, such as Blu-ray players, HD digital televisions and set-top boxes."
H.264/HE-AAC support in Flash Player 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
And now that DivX is throwing its weight behind the Matroska container, MKV support should increasingly find its way on a range of non-PC devices, such as Blu-ray players, HD digital televisions and set-top boxes.
I don't know man, I think both DivX & Adobe have hidden costs even if both like you to view them as "open." I would put my money on Adobe coming through with better player/container support & marketing. On top of that, I don't know of any plans for DRM in Matroska.
So while this is great news for the people who want to put their home videos out there with software that doesn't support DRM (is the average user really going to care though?), I think that the MPAA & porn industry are going to be the deciders here (as they usually are).
My prediction: Flash 9 will become so pervasive that everyone will use that as a container instead of asking their users to download & install a DivX codec.
DivX? (Score:3, Interesting)
Xvid seems to have taken over as the 'gray area' encoder of choice from what I've seen.
And do people still pay much attention to the actual "DiVX" people? Even when I used Divx it was all mplayer/mencoder, ffmpeg, vlc, etc.
Re:H.264/HE-AAC support in Flash Player 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand why you think DivX won't succeed. For years no-name DVD players have almost all supported DivX, and now even my Pioneer unit is DivX 6 certified. It doesn't seem like a stretch that they will support 7.
Personally, I love having 3 or 4 DVDs on a single disk for traveling. Since my portable player supports DivX, I can fit more than a whole season of Dora on a single disk and keep the little one quiet on long trips.
Re:DivX (the codec) is irrelevant (Score:2, Interesting)
It's nice to see DivX (the company) back Matroska, but does anyone really use DivX (the codec) anymore?
Yes they do! It's what gets implemented in the firmware of all those DivX(TM) certified DVD players. It's why the XVID codec must be tuned to produce a 'player compatible' file. There's still a lot of DivX enabled players who are limited to 720x480 playback. Hopefully, this will break the HD barrier for user generated content.
MKV is instantly recognized (Score:0, Interesting)
as the container format nobody wants.
It doesnt work on major brand portables, doesnt work in most standalone DVD players, nobody supports it .AVI/.mpg/.mp4 is available and far more accessible
Only a minority would download an obscure format and put up with re-coding hassle etc to get it displayed on their player of choice, why put up with the trouble when
so in summary MKV is another failed format, not because it wasnt technically any good,
it just lost in public opinion resulting in no hardware support from manufacturers and no interest from customers,
how bad is it if even the pirates/leechers won't use it ?.
hmmm
What Gray Content? (Score:3, Interesting)
DivX looks set to continue to be the video format of choice for 'grey' content,
Not sure what gray content you are referring to. I'm assuming this is about legal shades of gray, but there aren't any in terms of content (or at least not the ones you are probably talking about):
There is exactly nothing illegal about making copies of your own discs for personal use.
There is a law against distributing ripping software (the DMCA), but it doesn't sound like you're talking about that.
There is a law about distributing the content itself, but that isn't gray - it's illegal.
The only gray areas are content used for criticism and education.
'course - entirely possible I've misunderstood what "grey" is supposed to mean - maybe a hipster term for re-encoding or something.
MKVs (Score:3, Interesting)
Confusion... (Score:3, Interesting)
MKV is a container format. It's not impossible for a container format to induce overhead, but in all likelihood that isn't the case.
The codec would be something like h264,xvid,indeo,theora,etc for video, aac, mp3,vorbis,wav,etc.
I don't know about Quicktime, but avi is horribly limited. Ogg seemed to have promise for a container format, but for whatever reason MKV came about with support for some killer features menus and vobsub format subtitle tracks. I have never seen an mkv with menu, but I have heard it exists.
It would be interesting to know the codecs involved.
An open letter to the powers-that-be (Score:3, Interesting)
... or at least the ones that handle the media that can be read by the Xbox 360.
Please add MKV support to the Xbox 360. Don't touch anything else.
Thanks!
Codec vs Container (Score:5, Interesting)
Took a while for that distinction to sink in. Here is another container format you'll be hearing about a lot more in the coming months. QAM [wikipedia.org] and ATSC [wikipedia.org]. QAM is only a signal modulation and can be used to stream any kind of container format--usually some variant of ATSC. Think of it, I guess, as like the low-level ethernet stuff--ethernet doesn't care if you use TCP/IP or IPX/SPX. ATSC is kind of like TCP/IP or IPX/SPX, it defines how information is sent over the low-level stuff, but for the most part it doesn't care what the information is (MPEG2, H.264). ATSC typically only carries MPEG2, but I guess it has been updated to carry H.264/MPEG4. I guess it can only carry AC-3 audio streams and not mp3.
If you really want to force yourself to learn about video and audio codecs and containers, force yourself to use ffmpeg on the command line for a while. It's docs and number of switches can seem daunting at first, but just remember what you are trying to do is tell it what codecs to use, what bitrates to use, and any modification to the video/audio stream (aspect ratio, resolution, framerate, etc). If you type "ffmpeg -formats | less", you'll get a list of what your version of ffmpeg can read and what containers and codecs it can write to. Keep in mind not every container can hold all the codecs; you'll have to consult wikipedia for that. The whole exercise will make you think about every aspect of your transcoding experience.
PS: is it me or does chrome have a horrible spellchecker?
Re:Why is Matroska used? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it's simply the best out there for it. It support just about everything you can mux into it. AVI just don't cut it any more. MP4 was close and it is a good container but it left one important thing out. In a bout of stupidity rivaling the bay of pigs and the bush election the audio codec of choice for dvd, ac3, was left out of the spec. That's right. The standard audio format can't be used in mp4.
Now to be fair you can mux ac3 in a mp4 container using what is called user tracks or streams, or something like that. But that is not a official way to do it so it won't play on some mp4 devices.
Re:Why is Matroska used? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know why it's currently a favorite, but like ZFS, the goal for Matroska is for it to be the end-all be-all of container formats. They eventually want to be able to have DVD-like menu systems, for example. How sweet would it be to be able to rip your DVD (including menus and special features?)
Matroska also supports an unlimited number of tracks. That's pretty neat, though I don't know if anyone's doing much with that.
As I noted in another post, it even allows for variable frame-rate (VFR) encodings, meaning that the frame-rate can change in the middle of the video stream. This addresses a common problem with encoding DVD rips from sources with mixed content.
Most modern television is filmed at 24fps (really 23.976). The film is then sometimes telecined to 30fps (really 29.97) to display on interlaced NTSC TVs. A goal for encoding is to reduce filesize--so if you can recover the 24fps video from the 30fps "source" (from a capture card or from a telecined DVD) then you can encode only 24fps instead of 30fps. In addition, you don't have interlacing in your output. The recovery process is called inverse telecine (IVTC.)
The problem comes when producers draw on the video. Special effects may be created at a different frame rate than the filmed scenes. IVTC will be unable to recover if the animation is at 30fps. You'll get awful-looking animated shots. Alternatively, you can try deinterlacing instead of IVTC, but then you get awful-looking motion in the non-animated segments.
Enter Matroska. Now you can IVTC when appropriate, deinterlace when appropriate, and simply keep the source frame-rate when appropriate. You get the best of all worlds, and all because you can store VFR video streams.
Re:H.264/HE-AAC support in Flash Player 9 (Score:3, Interesting)
This is old news, and you're misrepresenting it. The Flash player supports H.264 in the standard MP4 container, not only in the old FLV container. In fact it seems like FLV is being phased out. So, surprisingly, Flash has become the leader in standardization of video formats. AVC/AAC is likely to become a new de-facto standard, whether in Matroska or MP4 containers. Container formats don't matter much. It's very easy and fast to remux something into another container if the stream formats are supported.
Re:Downloading isn't even illegal... (Score:3, Interesting)
Using P2P is a different story of course, because you upload to anyone who asks, not just people who you've verified owns the original.
It's the uploading, not the downloading, which is technically illegal.
Re:H.264/HE-AAC support in Flash Player 9 (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem is flash can't be used to create portable files without buying additional software. DivX is free to create, and is pervasive throughout PMPs, home theater receivers, and is potentially playable on every computer.
Re:H.264/HE-AAC support in Flash Player 9 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:H.264/HE-AAC support in Flash Player 9 (Score:3, Interesting)
With a toddler?
Re:Why is Matroska used? (Score:3, Interesting)
Matroska also has less overhead, plays damaged files better than AVI, has better audio/video sync, streams better, supports more codecs, and you can skip to points better.
Re:I don't understand (Score:3, Interesting)
Fansubbed anime has been distributed as 720p/H.264/AAC in the Matroska container for at least a few years now. In fact, this is now the pretty much the standard format for most fansubs. So now that a commercial entity is doing the same thing it's somehow news?