Reviews by dw817

This is one very good codec and has come a long way since it's humble origins. It does a considerably better job than the latest commercial DivX codec and has none of the bloatware or spyware attached to it as DivX does.

As of it's latest release, it now it provides it's own post-processor icon that appears in your taskbar when you are playing back an XviD video so you can fine-tune the way your video plays, including brightness adjust.

While Google Video is still a strong contender for XviD for anime, cartoons and flash to video, in the long run XviD is still better, especially for live-action movies.

There are also still a large # of portable devices out there that play XviD with no problem.

Since it is and will likely always remain free, it is in your best interests to try and compare this video codec for yourself with the other popular ones out there, especially commercial trialware DivX and see in this case the disgruntled workers of DivX who provided the public with XviD did in fact an incredible job in it's design.

Their words entirely, "what the community really wants is a Winamp, not a Linux."

As popular as WinAMP is today and as easy as it is use, I must fully agree. We're not all rocket scientists and XviD is definitely for encoding videos easily without confusion, slowing down your system, or tapping into your pocketbook as DivX does.

There is a lot of positive talk about x264, and rightly so. For high-yield encodings, it does a better job than XviD, but for low bitrate encodings like 128kbps and a small screen size like 352x240, XviD still does a better job.

Minju, I am coming into terms with the Google Video Codec and it is definitely a strong contender for XviD in the field of low bitrate encodings.

(New rating, color me 0:Disappointed)

What started as a simple search for this rare codec turned into a recorded account of all-out corporate warfare.

I - had no idea that Sigma Designs, the author of RealMagic had sucked - and I mean sucked hard - on the XviD sourcecode and then tried to call it their own creation later.

I FINALLY found the codec after a lotta searching but read the following before you do decide to install it yourself.

There is an article of interest found here:

http://forum.videohelp .com/threads/57361-XVID-HAS-BEEN-SHUT-DOWN-AS-REALMAGIC-STEALS-CODEC

Quoting from Wikipedia:

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 considerable portions of Xvid code. Sigma Designs was 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 the terms of the GPL. After articles were published in Slashdot and The Inquirer, in August 2002 Sigma Designs agreed to publish their source code.

I remember using it in the past (RealMagic) and I was pleasantly pleased with the quality of it, but I guess not now that I know it was ripped from hallowed XviD by Sigma (Smegma?), still, I wanna compare the two of them so ...

Before you install it yourself, read the following:

http://forum.doom9 .org/archive/index.php/t-32212.html

If you still wanna risk it, here ya go, but don't blame me if you have problems later cause it's got no uninstaller.

http://www.avs .com.ru/download76.html

I'm outta here !

You know, I wouldn't mind if a codec was commercial and wanted money because it was really GOOD but this codec is REALLY bad. It's like comparable quality to Mpeg-1 for k/sec and that's using a 352x240 15fps 128k/sec encoding ! And I know what Mpeg-1 looks like at low bitrates cause I spent years encoding them !

To top it off, it =IS= commercial so you get a delicious cherry red candy notice striped across every frame that says, "3ivX Trial" and in case they think you're gonna miss seeing it, it blooming covers your entire video diagonally like a bad package stamp !

If you want to match 3ivx quality without the mouth-watering and savory stamp, just use the free version of TMPGENC to encode an MPEG-1 and compare the two for yourself. That's sad, isn't it ?

Outside of that, if you want the best surpassing DivX, XviD, and even WMV9 or RealMagic, at 128k/sec IMHO is =STILL= Google Video Codec (VP8) which (thankfully) =IS= 100% Free although at this point in the game deserves to be commercial quality software with the comparative tests I've run it on so far.

Grab it quick before it =ISN'T= free is all I can offer you at this stage in your video encoding sessions !

I think the description they have is misleading.

This appears either to be one of those super-old codecs like Cinepak or it's for digital videocameras only. It has no options for compression except for a single item that said, "Single or double field." and that's it, no k/sec, nothing.

Aaand I couldn't even get it to work, it said:

"The current image resolution could not be used for a DV output."

Welp, I use 352x240 for all my stuff so if it won't do that I don't wanna play.

Ouch. Where to begin.

Let's see.
It's a big program, 46mb.
It took a long time to install.
I brought up VirtualDub, Virtualdub took a long time to load. It also took a long time to select the codec (locked up the computer for a bit each time I highlighted it in, they're doing something screwy there each time it's looked at).

I brought up a test video, tried to encode with it.

Then it crashed and brought up this message:
"Error Code 0x80044005"

Aaand it's a commercial codec, and they want money for their hard work ! Gimme gimme !

They're gonna have a long wait ! ☺

I'm running Win7/64-bit VirtualDub & tried TMPGenc Xpress, both crashed with it (and both programs took a LONG time to load too specifically because of DivX cause it's never acted like that before). All other codecs work fine.

I still recommend the top 3 codecs as #1 Google Video Codec, #2 XviD Codec and #3 Windows Media Video 9 Codec last.

Since this version of DivX actually slows down anything that even smells like it can play or edit an .AVI I must uninstall it to get the speed back on my computer, sad I know.

Does what it says. Takes your video and about as fast as it can lightning slams it down into an .AVI at a terrible overhead. Nearly 5,200kbps for a 352x240 at 30fps.

Most DVDs save raw 720x480 30fps video at 4,800kbps so the compression of FC is lower than a DVD.


But if you are encoding from a DVD or some other volatile source like a live video, it's nice to have that final 2gb .AVI source to work with and there are no keyframes so every single frame is as clear and clean as it can get like the source forwards and backwards in VirtualDUB.

It's free too. No nasty tags appear anywhere on your video and the user interface is minimally minimalistic.

Visually Lossless or Absolutely Lossless.
Not much more than that.

I use visually lossless and obviously the end result video is DVD quality no matter how high the action gets.

Not really for archiving videos because of the tremendous overhead so you should stick with your DivX and XviDs for that stuff but very good if you want to get "hands on" the source video to compare compression algorithms from a FC .avi source.

If you insist on playing back videos that are encoded in codecs that have jpeg-trash in them or are distorted from being encoded at a low k/sec, then you will find this program a definite blessing.

Not only does it have an option to run directly with Media Player Classic and do block-deinterleaving and other pre- and post- production outputs that can blur and filter out video artefacts but the codec is also a video encoder allowing you to encode multiple formats including .AVI using WMV XviD DivX Mp4 and several other popular formats as it's backboard.

We are rapidly entering an age where a video codec is not so much based on the quality it can compress a video but the quality of it's output through pre- and post- filters that clean it before it plays it back to be viewed by an audience.

Modern XviD already has a pop-up that appears in your taskbar to "clean" your video by adding interleave and "noise" to remove artefacts.

FFDShow does just that and can work with a large variety of video playback software and ultimately any video format to clean the video before being seen, Media Player Classic just being one of the programs it can work directly work.

You owe it to yourself to examine this incredible combination codec and filter that cleans and removes artefacts from your videos as they play back notwithstanding what video codec they were originally encoded in.

I am rating it Very Good, not Excellent, because the interface is HUGE and may appear cumbersome and complex to some, such as myself.

Not good.

I'm running it in Win7 64-bit with 22gb of hard-drive space free and it says, "Not enough storage is available to process this command. Installation did not complete."

I'm assuming it's Win7 incompatible but I'm not certain.
Fails here.

Source video: CGI High-action, 1 minute, single pass, 352x240 15fps, 128kbps (16k/sec)

It certain encodes better than DivX or XviD or WMV at the same k/sec but still not as good as Google Video's codec, which I guess is not too surprising since GV is using VP8 and this is VP7.

This codec encodes slower than GV and I can't see an appreciable difference of two videos encoded at the same k/sec except that VP7 is about twice as slow with more configuration options than GV.

If you're curious, VP8 is a commercial codec so for Google to incorporate it as their own is great since it's 100% free to use in your own projects and their minimal interface works fine certainly for what I need.