DivX ;-) Revolution (General Comments on Media Players and Files)

Name: steve101101

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Product:	General Comments on Media Players and Files
Date:	29/03/01 (1077 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: DVD movie on a single CDR with surprising Quality.

Disadvantages: The legality is questionable!

Well, as you all read from Mr Whitei's Post DivX ;-) movies are the latest thing.
Although one question which should be brought up is the legality of such a format.

What is DivX ;-)???

DivX is a new way to encode movies. Currently DVDs are encoded in the Mpeg2 standard and they're size is very big, i.e. for a typical movie you are talking about 5-6 Gigabytes. DivX is different as it uses better encoding techniques which can reduce this by a factor of about eight.

Is DivX ;-) Legal???

Not really. DivX is a hacked version of Microsoft’s new Mpeg 4 codec (thus the cheeky wink ;-) ). It is illegal to use and to distribute. But it is a really good codec.

Why should I use DivX???

Well, a lot of people argue that they should be allowed to make a single backup of any disc they own in case of damage. DivX allows you to backup a DVD movie onto a single CD-R with surprising quality.

Is it illegal to copy DVD's ???

The answer is yes it is illegal. DVD manufacturers do not want you copying the movies. A copy of a DVD movie is not like VHS. The quality is not likely to degrade, and can be replicated over and over without loss of quality.
First of all, before a movie can even be converted to this format (DivX ;-)) it needs to be ripped from the DVD. This, as a lot of people may know, is the copying of the movie files from the DVD disc to the harddrive removing the CSS encryption which has been placed there by the dvd producers in order to prevent copying. There are programs available on the Internet to do this and one that has been in the spotlight recently is DeCSS. This software was coded by a German programmer who reversed engineered a copy of Xing DVD-Player to get the CSS encryption key. His aim for doing this was to allow people who run linux operating systems to playback DVDs, as there is currently no software available on linux for doing this.
The code was then taken by
a Norwegian programmer who made a program with an easy to use graphical user interface so any Joe bloggs could use it to decrypt DVDs.
The MPAA (The Motion Picture Association of America)were outraged by this software and have basically made it illegal to use the code of this software or use the software or even link to it. This has then reciprocated and caused outrage in the programming community who argue that making programming code illegal is infringing on basic human rights because they believe that programming code falls under freedom of speech and expression.
All this aside, if you do choose to download this software and if you do rip a dvd to your harddrive then it is illegal. You are breaking the copyright laws stated on the disc.

I don't care if it’s illegal, How do I do it???

If you do not care and want to break the law then the next stage is to get yourself a good DivX codec. The codec basically allows you to encode and decode divX movies. Visit www.divx-digest.com in order to download a good codec. One I would suggest is the DivX 3.11 Alpha codec or above. You can download software for playing back the movies. In some cases the software you download is quite good at playback but you can use Ms Media Player which will use the DivX codec to playback the movie.
Next is getting yourself the encoding utilities. I would suggest visiting www.afterdawn.com for downloading a DivX rip pack, which will rip and encode the movie in about 6-7 hours depending on the overall performance of your computer.
The rippack will contain all the utilities needed to make a good quality divX movie.
The bigger the size you want the DivX movie to be then the better quality it will be. If you give 650mb - 700mb (size of a blank CD-R) of space to a DivX movie then you will be very close to DVD quality if you use the right codecs, any bigger then you will be at DVD-Quality.
Encoding DivX movies is not something to rush into. It is
best to do some research on it first and get an idea of what you are doing. Visit www.divx-digest.com and read the articles on the site, it won't take long and you will be then well on your way to backing up your DVD Movies!

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