Divx

[neumannu47]

When I first started playing with video on my computer, and before I had a DVD burner, I was using Divx files on a CD playable on my Philips DVD player. Now that I only use MPEG2 and AVI (plus a few WMVs), the whole concept of Divx has disappeared from my brain. It is a very popular format. How are they mostly used? Are people grabbing AVI or MPEG-2 files, converting them to Divx, saving them on CD or DVD, and playing them on home DVD players?

What popular tools are used to covert to Divx? Please help me get back up to speed. (I was totally lost when I started, so I didn't understand what I was doing then. Things have improved since then, but only slightly!!)

[Lester Burnham]

When I first started playing with video on my computer, and before I had a DVD burner, I was using Divx files on a CD playable on my Philips DVD player. Now that I only use MPEG2 and AVI (plus a few WMVs), the whole concept of Divx has disappeared from my brain. It is a very popular format. How are they mostly used? Are people grabbing AVI or MPEG-2 files, converting them to Divx, saving them on CD or DVD, and playing them on home DVD players?

What popular tools are used to covert to Divx? Please help me get back up to speed. (I was totally lost when I started, so I didn't understand what I was doing then. Things have improved since then, but only slightly!!)

I would say DivX / Xvid is most popular for downloaded video, mainly because of the size advantages. So people downloaded TV series and the like, they tend to be DivX / Xvid.

My personal interest, being that I have a couple of PMPs, one of which only really supports mpeg4 on it, but even for the other, space is a premium on these devices. So for conversion of video to play / keep on my PMPs, I convert some of my DVDs.

My standalone DVD recorder also plays DivX / Xvid, so it's easy to be able to play downloaded TV directly on it (either burnt to disk (CD or DVD), or through flash drive, or my HD based PMP (connected via USB)).

For conversion, I've gone through a few processes and apps. I'd say, now, I almost solely use AutoGK for the conversion (to AVI - DivX / Xvid). I have used avi.NET, too, but I'd say AutoGK is the best blend of simplicity, quality, and configuration / personalisation I've encountered.

So I probably do most of what you've mentioned - grab files in AVI (DivX / Xvid) on occasion. Burn them to disk and play them on my standalone DVD recorder. But mainly, I convert mpeg2 (extracted from my DVDs) to play on my PMP.