prevent divx5 from playing back divx3 content!

[Fluffy]

I use Divx 5.0.2 for both encoding and decoding and i am very happy with the results of Divx5 and a 2 pass encode using Gordian Knot (I've never been able to get as good a result using divx3) As for Decoding, Im also quite pleased with 5.0.2. At first i thought that Divx5 wasn't very good at all for encoding, until i found those magical check boxes in the advanced properties of Divx5.0.2 I With the boxes checked, I've found a massive improvement in quality and a large drop in processor usage. (90% on an athlon XP 1900 to 20%) I still cannot fathom why those boxes are not checked by default, I guess some older computers don't support them or they might cause stability problems (not that I've ever seen them.) The best method of playback I've seen however is using Linux and SDL support under Mplayer. But Linux is another whole can of worms I'm not going to get into.

[cantharides]

My experience is that divx 4.xx or divx 5.xx isn't fully backward compatible with divx 3 alpha. One should never use divx 5.xx to play divx3a compressed movies. This results in an uncorrect display of colors in some movies. It is as if certain parts of the movie are displayed in 256 colors. (seen at certain backgrounds, like walls etc,...).
When installing and using both codecs this problem is solved.

[Enchanter]

With the boxes checked, I've found a massive improvement in quality and a large drop in processor usage. (90% on an athlon XP 1900 to 20%)

On the quality issue, I think it depends on different movies. I've had great results with these MPEG-4 tools on some movies, but on others, these tools served only to degrade the quality (puzzles me but it happens).

On the performance issue, I have to disagree with you. On all movies that I encoded with these MPEG-4 tools, higher CPU power is required for decoding, more so when QPel is enabled. Your statement on the decoding requirement being as low as 20% is hard to take in. Perhaps some of the original settings have been changed?

[khp]

Originally posted by Fluffy
until i found those magical check boxes in the advanced properties of Divx5.0.2 I With the boxes checked, I've found a massive improvement in quality and a large drop in processor usage. (90% on an athlon XP 1900 to 20%)

Err, there is no magic check boxes anywhere in the divx5 encoder or decoder properties pages. Come to think of it there is no advances properties page anywhere either. There is an 'Advanced Parameters' tab in the encoder configuration, but it only contains two check boxes, both of which only relates to mp4 file creation. I asssume you are referring to the check boxes in the 'quality settings' tab in the decoder properties page.
And I guess it's worth mentioning that 'Smooth Playback' should always be unchecked, because it often causes freeze frames. And you might want to uncheck 'Double Buffering' since it causes a 1 frame delay in the video playback.
On a properly configured system, enabling yuv and overlay extended mode, should have no impact on quality and only reduce cpu load by about 10-20%. The only setting that could resonably change the cpu load from 90% to 20% is the quality slider, in the PostProcessing tab.

Edit: I'am sorry if this seems like I'am bashing you, this is not my intention. I'am only trying to point out some weak points in your statements.

[admin]

In regards to enabling yuv/overlay extended mode, I noticed that when I was trying out a new beta graphics card driver, I had trouble with DivX playback if one of these two options (I forgot which) wasn't selected.

Most likely, the graphics card driver was buggy, and hence, non yuv/overlay mode could cause playback problems.

Updating the graphics card driver is probably the more sensible thing to do, if you're having trouble with these options selected or deselected.