DivX
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- This article is about the video codec DivX. For the pay-per-view DVD system, see DIVX.
DivX is not to be confused with DIVX, an unrelated attempt at a new DVD rental system employed by the US retailer Circuit City. Initially the DivX codec was called DivX ;-), including the smiley emoticon, as a sarcastic reference to the failed DIVX system.
A typical movie on DVD is 6 gigabytes in size; with DivX this can be compressed to around 600 megabytes which fits on a CD-ROM. The loss in quality is minor, except for scenes with lots of action. Various programs are available which can produce a DivX file from a normal video DVD (this process is known as "ripping"). The resulting file can then be stored on hard disk, burned on CD-R or DVD-R, or be shared on peer-to-peer networks (the latter is most likely an illegal act without permission from the copyright holders).
DivX 3.11 and earlier versions generally refer to a hacked version of the Microsoft MPEG-4 layer video codec, extracted around 1999 by French hacker Jerome Rota (also known as Gej). The Microsoft codec, originally created for the compression of .asf files, was altered to allow compression to .avi files in the DivX codec. Rota's company DivXNetworks, Inc. later produced a clean room version of the codec, thus avoiding potential patent problems with Microsoft. DivXNetworks has applied for a patent for their new codec, which is fully MPEG-4 compliant.
The current version of the DivX codec (version 5.1) is available through their web site for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh operating systems. It is neither Free Software nor Open Source, but an open source version of the codec--called OpenDivX®--was released by DivXNetworks in early 2001, and this version served as the basis for the open source XVID codec, which is maintained by an independent group.
See also
- 3ivx, another MPEG-4 codec
- XVID, an open-source MPEG-4 codec
External links