[MEncoder-users] Re: DivX in 1.0rc1

[Jakub Misak]

Joshua Crawford <mortarn_lists <at> yahoo.com.au> writes:

> Will you be stripping support for other codecs from mencoder as well?
> 
> This seems a step backwards, and in that spirit I'm downloading 1.0pre8,
> which I somehow missed when it was released.
> 
> Perhaps there could be a '--with-divx4linux' configure option.

I can't see how removing support for an obsolete, inferior and useless
codec is a step backwards. I think removing redundant ancient stuff is 
a great feature. Cleanup is good. For the past 4 years, DivX on Linux 
has only been interesting for people who had no idea what they were 
doing and what DivX really is. People who know what DivX is don't need 
DivX for anything with MPlayer/MEncoder. And people who don't know it 
don't need it either, they just don't know they don't need it. Now that 
the DivX support is officially dead, at least some of these people will 
hopefully get a clue and realize what the difference between software 
and format is. Which would be yet another positive outcome of the DivX 
support removal. Some peple might even discover that FFmpeg exists - this 
has been a very well kept secret for the past 4 years (most people who use 
FFmpeg codecs don't know it, many of them even think it's DivX - even the
MPlayer/MEncoder docs and output used to say that, and still do so to some
extent).