[MPlayer-DOCS] manpage and HTML docs - FFmpeg MPEG-4 vs. DivX

[Jakub Misak]

On Tuesday 23 of November 2004 12:00, Diego Biurrun wrote:

> I totally agree that FFmpeg deserves all the credit and praise it can
> get, definitely much more than it currently receives.

So explain what FFmpeg and libavcodec is in the docs. Promote it. Explain 
it's a crucial part of MPlayer, that libavcodec is what they're actually 
using for playing what they call "DivX movies" (they don't know it, they 
dowload & install DivX and think it's useful for something). I think 
newcomers have no idea what libavcodec is, and if you don't explain it 
clearly, well... No wonder it's DivX that gets all the attention and the 
obscure FFmpeg officially doesn't exist.

> What I fear is that people might look for a possibility to encode
> "DivX" and then turn away from FFmpeg because they fail to see such a
> thing.

That's why there should be an explanation in the docs. Mentioning DivX 
(as in "compatible for example with DivX and many other MPEG-4 codecs") 
is OK, it's just a matter of using the right words. Explain the 
difference between MPEG-4 and DivX, and more generally between standard 
and implementation. Some nice examples could be made, something they may 
be more familiar with. Like when users encode MP3s with the LAME codec, 
they don't encode to "LAME format", and they don't have to decode it 
with the LAME decoder, they can decode it with any standard MP3 decoder 
if it's really standard MP3. Or when they create .txt files with Notepad 
(OK, or vim...), they don't write "to Notepad format" and they don't 
have to view the file in Notepad. And the same with MPEG-4 - when they 
use libavcodec MPEG-4 for encoding, they shouldn't say they encode "to 
DivX" just because DivX is a more famous product than libavcodec. Many 
users still say that. And DivX is still more famous.

Now, I don't know if DivX (made by DivXNetworks) will be (more or less) 
MPEG-4 forever, they may introduce something proprietary and wider in 
scope (not just the video codec) in the future. But that's a different 
discussion.

> It's not such a big deal, just read DOCS/tech/patches.txt, we'll
> assist you with any further problems you might have.

I'll read it and perhaps could try to make a patch after all... But no 
guarantee, as I have no experience with this, I'm afraid I might screw 
up something.

Jakub