Sunday, June 10, 2007

The DivX Belt - A Few Thoughts

When an idea moves from thought to concrete action it can be overwhelming. There were people I wanted to talk to and things or concepts that I need to catch up on.

It is like a keg of beer. You want the beer. Hopefully in small controlled amounts. But it can be overwhelming if you put you mouth over the spigot and let it rip. Pixelodeon is a little like that.

I was helping out volunteering so I got a chance to get more info on the DivX stuff. Now there are times to whip out the camera and times when you need to respect personal space and conversations.

There was a great conversation I wished I could have recorded on the frustrations of mathematicians and content producers having needs and divergent paths of communication. It was wonderful. Didn't record it.



There there was the belt. Couldn't ignore the belt. The belt made me think of things. I'm still working on what those things are and will let you know when I have them figured out.

As for the presentation? Um. Let me say first I really appreciate the free software and promise to give it fair shake. And the T-shirt, a girl can't have too many X-large T's for sleeping and other activities.

Well here is the thing. I wanted to learn about why I should add a DivX video to my blog. I wanted to know why I should add another format when I'm already doing .wmv and .mov.

What would be the advantages and disadvantages of using the format? How do I educate newbies and visitors to my site about downloading the codec so they can view the videos?

I don't have an answers cuz we just watched videos. I love that Gnarls Barkely video and some of the others I didn't know about. I wasn't expecting to view videos. I wanted to know about the company and the features that I as a vlogger might need to know about.

I'll get my answers if they have them on the website. I just think an opportunity was missed.

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1 comment:

  1. Good questions!

    Personally I struggle with the same issues and dont find too many hugely compelling reasons to recommend everyone starts using DivX. Here are some of the reasons why you might want to use DivX, but like I said I dont find any of them to be that comelling:

    1. There are quite a lot of hardware DVD players that can play DivX files burnt onto disks, and probably a few portable media players too. But has any viewer ever requested having your stuff in DivX format so they can use it on these devices? Methinks not, all DivX will say about it is stuff like 'theres more than 50 million DivX devices out there'.

    2. Stage6, DivxS video hosting site/community might be a place to post your video in DivX format to find a new audience. I dont know how many people use the site, it does look rather nice though

    3. There is a DivX browser plugin available, its not at all bad and features a prominent 'download' button in contrast to many other players. But its yet another thing for users to download, although it might suit users who are alergic to installing quicktime of using wmv.

    Other reasons would include the fact theres a group of humans who've been using DivX for years to rip DVDs, its where DivX originally got popular but for obvious reasons they cant really go on about it much. If lots of these users were also potential viewers, they might favour the DivX format, but in reality I dont know if this is a real factor.

    As for technical reasons why DivX is better, their format probably offers a few nice things in terms of being able to create menu's and subtitles, quality is probably better than origianl mpeg4 but probably not much or at all better than h264 or latest wmv/VC-1.

    DivX definately have a struggle on their hands to remain relevant, and the rise in devices that support totally standard mpeg4/h264 is another factor that works against them, as Divx dont use .mp4 containers but rather their own format that is modified .avi, and many hardware comapnies arent going to bother paying DivX to get their devices certified, when the trend these days is h264 all the way.

    As for the belt, mmm groovy. For years I have been thinking about the much promised, but so far not available, flexible screens, which could one da mean out clothing could incorporate rather lush video. Who needs an ipod if you can just watch someones blog on the t-shirt of the person standing in front of you on the train? :)

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