Whether watching a movie downloaded from the Net or to compress a video with your PC, the DivX format is inevitable. In this case, you will find all the information you need.
The DivX is the video and MP3 is the audio, a universal standard, that any amateur film encounters a day. Why such popularity? Because the standard DivX allows you to store an entire movie in a file of only 700 MB, the size of a CD with a picture quality acceptable. As for MP3, everything is a matter of "compression". Thus, the image is processed by an encoder-decoder (codec) to occupy less space on the hard disk. The technology used is the MPEG-4, while DVD-video uses the MPEG-2 and Video CD uses MPEG-1.
A case of codecs
As for sound, it is simply the MP3 format that is used in most cases (some DivX incorporate sound in Dolby AC3). To play the videos with Windows Media Player on your PC, you must have the same codec as the one used to compress the video. The most popular codecs are DivX (commercial) and Xvid (free). Fortunately, the installation of these codecs is very simple, thanks to "pack" free and ready for use. Some vendors even offer media players which can read DivX files directly on your computer without installing the codec. Likewise, most DVD players today read DivX smoothly.
If you have a video player, things get a little complicated. Indeed, your device can not directly read DivX. You must then convert it to a compatible format. There is free software that carry out this work.
Once you know how to play DivX, you may want to create one by yourself. So if you have home movies on DVD or recorded broadcasts on television, you will gain some disk space by converting to DivX, and you can even burn them on CD for your family or friends. Again, free software is available. Some can even guide you step by step procedure through the various stages. For short sequences, you do not even need to install software: Internet Web site Media Convert perform the operation in three clicks of a mouse!
Attention to protection
For the more demanding, there is the solution to create a DivX "manually" to get a better quality picture and sound, or even modify an existing video, for example to cut it into several parts. But beware: the manipulation, which we describe in detail here, are aimed at experienced users. Can we convert to DivX? Technically yes, but not legally! No problem for your holiday videos or recorded programs on television. In contrast, most DVD-video are protected against copying process with the CSS (Content Scramble System), which encrypts the data. In this case, you can not convert to DivX as you should "break" the protection, which is considered counterfeiting and punished by law.
How do I know if a DVD Video is protected? Simply place it in the drive or the DVD of the computer, then try to copy the files from the DVD to the hard disk. If you get an error message "Error file system", that means the DVD-video is beautiful and well protected against copying!
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