DivX Support Under Linux?

Sesse writes: "XMPS 0.1.1beta is out, with experimental DivX support for Linux (by thunking to the Windows DLL). It's still buggy, but it seems to work! Sounds like good news for bringing multimedia another step away from Windows-only systems :-)" XMPS driving force Damien Chavarria has placed a screenshot on this page about the DivX support. Can anyone comment on success with this, name files successfully viewed, etc?

Why did they name it DVIX?

We would have avoided half of the posts to this story that say stuff like,

"DVD rulls DivX sucks!"

Is there a reason why they chose the name DIVX? Maybe they should call it Matt instead :)

Re:Some questions

Divx is just an implementation of mpeg4, a low-bitrate compression that is intended for streaming video over low-bandwith lines like 56k6 modems. mpeg1 and 2 are still better, but also a lot bigge

Dude, you are just so wrong! DivX is a hack of MS MPEG-4 candidate code. It has been changed to allow it to be used in AVI files (MS only wants you to use it in ASF due to copy protection stuff) and adds in the Fraunhofer mp3 encode for audio. I believe it is VBR. This hack was possible because the MS code was available under an NDA and 'escaped'. DivX (and MPEG-4 in general) whup MPEG-1,2 ass! A standard VCD is 1374 kbits/sec, fits about an hour of 352x240 video on a CD, and looks terrible. MPEG-1 caps out there while MPEG-2 can do higher resolution/bitrates, but still aint great. MPEG-4 can easily fit about 45 minutes of 640x480 (resolution I sometimes use with TV captures) on a CD. Check out some DivX trailers [divx.ctw.cc] and you'll see what I mean.

A lot of people claim DivX is better than a DVD (MPEG-2), which is true. Just don't expect to see than when you are stuffing the same video on one or two CDs instead of a DVD. It still looks great though.

One other thing, this increased compression is traded off with greater processing power to decompress. You could do MPEG-1 with a pentium 133 or something, but I wouldn't suggest MPEG-4 without at least a pentium 450 or equivalent.

how I got TV out support on my Voodoo 3000

nifty little program called lm_sensors. Lm_sensors...not just for cpu temp monitoring anymore =)

you can get lm_sensors here [netroedge.com] you will also need the i2c package they have there. Screw RTFM, and just make and make install to the i2c source, then make and make install to the lm_sensors source. The default install is what you want, to compile everything as kernel modules and put them into /lib/modules/2.2.16. Then depmod -a

Now, just modprobe i2c-voodoo3, and modprobe bt869. Now, when you are in X, you can use the TV out. But wait...it's all static, how do I get it to work?

You need to add NTSC modelines into you XF86Config. there are as follows

ModeLine "640x480NTSC" 28.195793 640 656 658 784 480 520 525 600

ModeLine "800x600NTSC" 38.769241 800 812 814 880 600 646 649 735

and for all you PAL people (poor saps (^_^) )

ModeLine "640x480PAL" 29.50 640 675 678 944 480 530 535 625

ModeLine "800x600PAL" 36.00 800 818 820 960 600 653 655 750

Now, what I did was make my 640x480 Modeline NTSC all the time. That way, I could activate it by just a ctrl-alt-(+/-), and then programs like snes9x will automaticly use that 640x480, and be in NTSC mode. Remember, if you don't change your normal 640x480 modelines to the NTSC, and want to use them as is, put 640x480NTSC into your "screen" section of your XF86Config file. And also, as always, restart X after you change your config

That's it, have fun =)

WMA under Linux?

If this can be done for a video codec, then can someone please do this for WMA audio and Windows Media's streaming? Microsoft is maybe never going to release WMP for Linux and the number of content providers using this format is increasing every day (namely to the restrictive licensing that Real networks imposes on their software)

This really is a relevant issue. Please don't moderate this down just because it has Microsoft smeared all over it. I (frankly) find it quite amazing the support that you all are giving Microsoft's (broken) MPEG4 stuff!

~GoRK

DivX and MPEG-4 resource page

http://www.digital-digest.com/ dvd/support/mpeg4.html [digital-digest.com]

This is an excellent resource for more information about the DivX codec as well as MPEG-4 compression in general. Now, if only FlasK [go.to] could be ported to Linux...we'd be made in the shade.

damn. too late.

crap, I REALLY wanted to try this, and it's already slashdotted with only 10 replies.

People should remember that this DIVX isn't the same DivX as the stupid dvd pay-to-play clone thing, it's just a video codec.

since DIVX and ASF are supposedly based off the same mpeg4 codec, is there a chance somebody can also hack the .asf format to play on linux? Microsoft has boasted that .asf is based on open Mpeg4 technology, therefore it should, in theory, be possible to hack out a decoder for linux.

One of the main things I find lacking in Linux compared to doze is video support. I have a lot of asf and divx files I really want to play, and I haven't been able to get media player to even run in wine, so native support for these would be a HUGE milestone (from my perspective) in no longer needing to rely on windows for video.

________
1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"

only one question

ugh.. in my opinion, anything that allows this unholy format to become entrenched even further only hurts us all in the end, because if we do not allow it to sink quietly and naturally into the night it will torment us for years with its presence. But i shouldn't have just said that, becuase i fear i will start a flamewar. Ah well.

however, my question is: since DivX is, in some bastardised way, related to MPEG-4, once the real MPEG-4 is finalised will it be possible to adapt the XMPS code as a base for an MPEG-4 codec? Seems like if this is the case, then the time spent developing the DivX codec will have been very very useful. I can't access the page; what liscence is it released under? GPL or LGPL i assume? [go lgpl!]

<font size=-2>note: i'm sorry if i've offended anyone who thinks that DivX is a very useful and effective format for pirating movies or whatever. if you've gotten good use out of the codec, i'm happy for you. i just myself have no use for the thing and think you'd be better off reverse-engineering .doc or trying to apply political pressure on apple/sorensen to let xanim NDA or something. </font>

[and now watch as slashdot, in its typical fashion, responds to everything in this post _except_ the one thing i _want_ responded to..]