Anyone who’s ever been to dvdhelp know what a plethora of software is listed there. There are all sorts of extractors and GUI’s and dubbers and imagers and…
Well, I this has to do with the variety of formats for movies available: MPG, AVI, Xvid, DivX, VCD, SVCD, KVCD, MOV, NFO, VOB, RM, ASF, WMA … And all the subtypes of these formats.
I understand that all of them give a certain compromise about filesize vs. resolution ASF. But what I’m wondering is why there isn’t an agreement about a few formats. With audio, it’s pretty much WAV or MP3. Why so many formats for video?
I’m by no means an authority on these things, so I could very well be wrong, but I wanted to offer my best guess…
I would say that file formats are a problem related to any and all types of computer media, whether they are video, images, audio, or even text.
Using your example, it’s not necessarily true that MP3s and WAVs are the only two formats being used. Browsing around random Internet sites, you would find MIDI files, QuickTime audio files, RealAudio streams, Windows Media Audio, AUs, OGGs, RMIs, and more. Just look through Winamp’s supported file formats to get an idea of how many are out there.
It might be true that MP3s and WAVs are more popular than the rest (I don’t know), but then the same could also be said about the video formats… most of those that you find online would be probably be encoded with DivX, MPEG, or Quicktime. I believe (not too sure) that some of the formats you mentioned are subtypes of each other… e.g. all the *VCDs are just MPEG files with different resolutions/birates/etc.
So, basically, I believe that the problem is not limited to video formats. Of course, somebody might just come along and prove me wrong.
I’d forgotten about all those ‘fringe’ audio formats. Thanks.
But there are still standards for a lot of computer related stuff. HTML is one such standard. All browsers will be able the view jpg or gif without a lot of conversion. PDFs are standard for documents. I just wish there was a predominant thing for video.
The owners of Quicktime, Realmedia, and Windows Media all have a vested interest in keeping their data formats proprietary. This allows them to keep control of content creation and playback, as well as providing for effective Digital Rights Management. VCD and SVCD were designed for set-top-box-style players, thus fixing their popularity. VCD is based off of MPEG1, the same video you find in .mpg files, while SVCD is based off of MPEG2, the same video you find on DVDs. Most other video codecs, notably Quicktime, Windows Media Video, DivX, and XviD, are based off of the ISO MPEG4 compression format. The original DivX;-)3.11Alpha codec was simply a hacked Microsoft MPEG4 v2 codec modified to make it usable in any application. In theory, any MPEG4-compatible codec should be able to play video made with any other such codec, though in reality advanced settings and proprietary “container” formats make this impractical.
So basically it’s a turf war? Like BetaMax and VHS?
Which means the end users are the ones who will suffer until there is a concensus among software makers what standard to use?
:sigh:
I guessed that.
If only there was something like Winamp for video files… it’s great when the program is able to play all the file formats and the users never have to think twice about it. It will simultaneously offer them both choice (you can encode your content with whichever codec will work the best) and convenience (regardless of how it was encoded, you just click play and start watching).
Currently, I think the plethora of formats out there is more of a hassle than anything. In the end, they all just play video, and most of them do it about as well as any other format out there… so why do we need them all? shrug But of course, that applies to a lot of other things, too (video game consoles, computer platforms, whatever)
Um, I can see how end users would suffer in your Betamax vs. VHS example, as a VCR was pretty expensive in the mid-'80s. But codecs? They’re free, you only have to install them once, you can install as many as you want, and they only take about 5 seconds to install. Where’s the hassle?
Sounds like you need Media Player Classic. It plays MPG, RealMedia, Quicktime, and AVI files that you have the codec installed for. The only other program I use to play movies is WinDVD. Yes, there are MPEG-2 filters for Media Player, but they tend to screw up the aspect ratio. I don’t like them.
A quick and easy program to figure out what codec a movie was encoded with is AVIcodec.
The problem with the current turf war is that one needs AT LEAST four players installed (Quicktime, RealOne, Windows Media Player, and a DVD player) plus codecs for the additional video formats you want to play to be able to watch just about everything on the market. If the companies were to make their formats interoperable, we could watch everything easily using one player. But they won’t.
Quicktime and Real Player I refuse to install. They are PITA and real has spyware. no way. Screw them. I have a Windows player and Power DVD which I believe would play also windows formats. BTW I also hate WMV.
I forget who said it: The good thing about standards is you have so many to choose from.
You can always dual-boot with Linux. There’s two media players on Linux which can have implemented Quicktime support, Totem/Xine and Mplayer, and of course they are spyware free. The Real player for Linux is also free of spyware.
Installing additional codecs can cause conflicts with currently installed codecs. The XviD codec can cause video to appear upside down. Plus, the codec packs that codecs come in can also install spyware, adware, and other nasties. I agree that it would be much nicer if everyone used DivX as their video codec and mp3 as their audio codec.
The main issue is that codecs should be more interoperable right now. As it is, companies actively work to insure that no one can view their content EXCEPT using their decoder. Codecs like DivX and XviD, however, are mutually compatible, and are designed to remain open. The ISO MPEG4 standard is designed to provide for proper compatibility as well as high compression performance. The only problem is that MPEG4 and MP3 are both rather expensive to implement, both in terms of licensing fees and computational complexity. Hopefully, we’ll see the completion and wider implementation of the free OggVorbis Audio and OggTheora Video Codecs by the Xiph.org Foundation.
Yes, but new versions of the codec come out all the time, and you have to keep uploading the updates…
I find the whole mess quite disgusting, I have to make videos quite often and deciding which codec to use always is a royal PITA; the usual “I can´t play the video” e-mail pisses me off.
That said I consider that DivX, QuickTime and MPEG1 and 2 are enough, DivX for it´s superior compression/quality ratio, Quicktime for it´s exellent tracking abilities (I do 3D animation, and skimming back and forth a test is necessary) MPEG offers the highest quality, and of course has installed as the choice for DVD encoding.
True enough. I try to avoid the codec packs and just download what I need. Gotta disagree with you on the Divx, though. Ever since 5.0 came out, I’ve had problems viewing movies encoded with certain older Divx versions. The color is all screwed up. I’ve tried every Divx version between 5.0 and 5.05 (or whatever it is they’re on now) and I’ve had the same problem. When I uninstall 5 and install a 4.x version, the old movies play fine.
I do all my encoding in MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, depending on the quality of the source. It’s nice and standard and plays on DVD players. I’ve also found (S)VCD encodes to be less prone to exhibit little video glitches than Divx and other MPEG-4 codecs.
If by mutually compatible you mean “A DivX codec will work for XviD encoded video,” then I must disagree, since I just tried to watch a video that I needed to DL XviD for (and I already have the latest DivX).
However, if by “mutually compatible” you mean “everyone should have them installed anyway and they work wonderfully,” then yes, I agree with you and praise you for your massive amounts of intelligence.
