[MEncoder-users] What are the differences between Xvid and libavcodec?

[Gábor Farkas]

Guillaume POIRIER wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 12/19/05, Gábor Farkas <gabor at nekomancer.net> wrote:
> 
>>Guillaume POIRIER wrote:
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>On 12/19/05, list-catcher at hellburner.com <list-catcher at hellburner.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>What are the differences between Xvid and libavcodec?
>>>
>>>
>>>http://mplayerhq.hu/~michael/codec-features.html
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>What features
>>>>should I not use in order to have playability on windows players other
>>>>than mplayer?
>>>
>>>
>>>You should either not use them at all if you wish your video to be
>>>playable by a vanilla install of windows, or install ffdshow
>>
>>or tell them to download vlc.
> 
> 
> Hehe! I can sense a big hairy beast with yellow teeth.... ^^
> 

^_^


btw. i really meant it. some weeks ago i spent some time on creating 
files that are playable on every platform. at the beginning i thought 
that .mp4 files with h264 video and aac audio should be playable on 
win+mac using quicktime, and on linux using mplayer. but then i found 
out that quicktime is terrible on this, and it mostly only plays mp4 
files that are created using quicktime :)

so at the end i settled with h264+vorbis mkv (or h264+mp3 avi), and 
simply tell everyone that they should get vlc to play them.

why?

people can be divided into 2 groups:

1. the ones that can already play that video file. for them, no 
instructions are necessary.
2. the ones that cannot play the file. for them, vlc is nice, because:
	a. it's there on all the platforms for which i care (osx, linux,windows)
	b. it's a GUI app, not a codec. so they install it and use it. it can 
be confusing to explain to someone nontechnical user what a codec is.

(of course i use mplayer personally, but it would be quite hard to sell 
it as an user-friendly application :)

ok, let the beasts come :)

gabor