XviD is an open source MPEG-4 video codec originally based on OpenDivX. XviD was started by a group of volunteer programmers after the OpenDivX source was closed.

Because of patent laws, XviD is not licensed to people/firms in the US or Japan.

In January 2001, DivXNetworks founded OpenDivX as part of Project Mayo, which was intended to be a home for open source multimedia projects. OpenDivX was an open-source MPEG4 video codec written entirely from scratch, however the code was placed under a restrictive license and only members of the DivX Advanced Research Centre had write access to CVS.
In early 2001, DARC member Sparky wrote an improved version of the encoding core called encore2, which was updated several times before, in April, it was removed from CVS without warning. The explanation given by Sparky was "We ( our bosses ) decided that we are not ready to have it in public yet".

In July 2001 developers started complaining about a lack of activity in the project, with the last CVS commit being months ago, that bugfixes were being ignored, and that promised documentation hadn't turned up. Soon after, DARC released a beta version of their closed-source commercial DivX 4 codec, which was based on encore2, saying that “what the community really wants is a Winamp, not a Linux”.
Some people accused DivXNetworks of starting OpenDivX for the sole purpose of harvesting other people's ideas to use in their DivX 4 codec, some were disappointed that the codec had stagnated and wanted to continue working on it, while others were angry at the way DivxNetworks handled a so-called open source project. It was after this that a fork of OpenDivx was created, using the latest version of encore2 that a few people downloaded before it was removed. Since then all the OpenDivX code has been replaced and XviD is published under the GPL.


In July 2002, Sigma Designs released an MPEG-4 video codec called the REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec. Before long, people testing this new codec found that it contained lots of XviD code. Sigma Designs were contacted and confirmed that a programmer had based REALmagic on XviD, but assured that all GPL code would be replaced to avoid copyright infringement. When Sigma Designs released the supposedly rewritten REALmagic codec, the XviD developers immediately disassembled it and concluded that it still contained XviD code , only rearranged in an attempt to disguise its presence.

The XviD developers decided to stop work and go public to force Sigma Designs to respect terms of the GPL. After a long controversy, Sigma Designs agreed to publish the source code for their REALmagic MPEG-4 video codec.

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• Download latest REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec:
- REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec 1.1
- Source: Wikipedia