[MEncoder-users] divx v's x264

[J. M.]

Alex Samad <alex <at> samad.com.au> writes:

> > FMP4 isn't Divx, it's MPEG-4 (ASP, Part-2, etc.)
> 
> hmm, I thought I was doing divx (i am a newbie at this)
> from man mencoder 
> 
> mpeg4 MPEG-4 (DivX 4/5)

It is intentionally confusing. :-) What it actually means is that MPEG-4 is the 
standard used also by the popular DivX codec which many people are familiar 
with.

DivX is actually a company and a (trademarked) brand name of various products 
made by this company. Like the DivX Pro Codec, which is a commercial software 
product that encodes and decodes video in the MPEG-4 ASP format.

What you're using in MEncoder is FFmpeg (libavcodec) MPEG-4, which is a free 
software product that encodes and decodes video in the MPEG-4 ASP format (that 
is, it is the same format as with the DivX Pro Codec, Xvid and many others). 
That is, video encoded with FFmpeg MPEG-4 (and DivX, Xvid etc.) is not "FFmpeg 
video" (or "DivX video", "Xvid video" etc.), it is MPEG-4 ASP video. Which is 
compatible with other MPEG-4 ASP decoders (for example, video encoded with 
FFmpeg MPEG-4 can be decoded with DivX etc.).

The same also with x264 - there are no "x264 files" as you call them. x264 is a 
software product that encodes video in the H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) format. So video 
encoded with x264 is not x264 video, it is H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) video. Which is 
compatible with other H.264-compliant products.