HomeDivX 7 Released – H.264, MKV and AAC are in (or are they?)
H.264 encoding is now available in the DivX Converter app
DivX 7 has now been officially released. Of course, the big new feature is H.264 support, both in playback and encoding. The MKV container is used, and AAC audio is supported. The new profile is now called DivX Plus HD.
But those who downloaded and installed the new version might be surprised to see the DivX codec version still at 6.8.5. That’s because the actual DivX codec hasn’t been changed, only the included DivX Converter and DivX Player software have been updated to version 7. There is also the included and separate DirectShow filters for H.264 and AAC decoding.
DivX Converter is a one click conversion tool for DivX encoding, and it now includes support for DivX Plus HD (MKV/H.264/AAC). However, there aren’t any configuration options, so when they say it’s one click, they really mean it and you have no other choice.
So H.264 support hasn’t been added to the DivX codec really, but the DivX package now does support MKV/H.264/AAC, which is a step in the right direction at the very least.
January 7th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
A stand-alone encoder is not yet included as part of DivX for Windows, but this is in development and available from http://labs.divx.com/projectremoulade . There is however a high-performance DirectShow H.264 decoder included in the DivX for Windows package which is significant because no other H.264 decoder with similar performance is freely available so far as I’m aware.
January 14th, 2009 at 12:50 am
H.264 but not MP4, why MKV?
January 14th, 2009 at 12:59 am
MP4 is not a free and open format like MKV, so I can see why DivX went with it. It’s not too hard to convert MKV to MP4 (without re-encoding), see this guide:
http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/DivX_Converter_H264_PS3_Xbox_360_Guide_page2.html