[MEncoder-users] What happened to divx?

[Rich Felker]

On Sat, Jun 25, 2005 at 01:05:57AM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> Pete Davis wrote:
> 
> >>Guillaume POIRIER wrote:
> 
> >>>a simple ML search would have given you the answer. use the
> >>>option "-fourcc"
> >>
> >>Correction: that's "-ffourcc", shorthand for "force fourcc". This
> >>is also in the man page. Mind that to the best of my awareness
> >>fourccs are case-sensitive; if the arrangement you were using
> >>before was giving you "DivX" or "DIVX", you won't necessarily get
> >>the same results if you specify "-ffourcc Divx".
> >
> >Okay, well not that it's a huge deal, but it's just one more
> >parameter in a long list of them. I guess my question is, why did it
> >change between pre6 and pre7?
> 
> As I remember the discussion, because FFmpeg/libavcodec's MPEG-4 is not
> actually the same thing as DivX's MPEG-4 (and even where they are
> compatible, perpetuating the "MPEG-4 and DivX are different names for
> the same thing" falsity is a bad idea), and it was decided to give
> FFmpeg's MPEG-4 its own fourcc.

To be more specific, players which accept the DIVX fourcc very often
only support a small crappy subset of mpeg4..

> >I guess I was just kind of surprised because my scripts that worked
> >just fine in pre6 are suddenly causing me headaches in pre7.
> >
> >Is there any way to set the default?
> 
> Not that I'm aware of - other than putting "ffourcc=DivX" or the like in
> your MEncoder config file (and I'm actually not sure where that file
> would be located).

It should be ffourcc=DIVX. DivX is not a correct fourcc.
And the file is ~/.mplayer/mencoder

Rich