Minimum hardware to play DiVX/XViD ?

ROcHE

Senior member
Oct 14, 1999
692
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What is the minimum cpu to play those?

I can have an old Celeronn 400 as an HTPC. Would it be enough?
 

magomago

Lifer
Sep 28, 2002
10,973
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ffdshow. From what I understand they are filters to allow playback so you can encode with them (i maybe totally spouting FUD, someone can correct me) but they work well and are often a little faster so whereas the original divx codec might stutter on a machine, ffdshow will allow fairly smooth playback
 

SickBeast

Lifer
Jul 21, 2000
14,377
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I would be very surprised to see a Celeron 400 play a DivX file flawlessly. That CPU barely meets the minimum spec to play DVD. Does the DivX website not post a minimum system requirement?
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
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Originally posted by: SickBeast
I would be very surprised to see a Celeron 400 play a DivX file flawlessly. That CPU barely meets the minimum spec to play DVD. Does the DivX website not post a minimum system requirement?
I second this notion. Especially with the post-processing features that are a good idea to turn on, I would think you'd want something at least twice as fast.
 

SickBeast

Lifer
Jul 21, 2000
14,377
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Originally posted by: PorBleemo
Sorry to hijack but do any of you know where I can get the codecs without spyware?

You can only get the DixX codec without spyware if you purchase it or pirate it. I would suggest neither as XVID is a far superior codec, which is free and open source. I encode all of my video to this format now. I read a comparison on the internet awhile ago and they said it was unmatched. The best part is it's compatible with just about any hardware that will play DivX since they're both based off MPEG-4.

Check out doom9.org, they have great links to codecs and such. If you MUST have divx without spyware, I'm pretty sure the older revisions didn't have any. Either that or you could use the "lite" version that is missing a bunch of features.
 

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
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Originally posted by: ViRGE
Originally posted by: SickBeast
I would be very surprised to see a Celeron 400 play a DivX file flawlessly. That CPU barely meets the minimum spec to play DVD. Does the DivX website not post a minimum system requirement?
I second this notion. Especially with the post-processing features that are a good idea to turn on, I would think you'd want something at least twice as fast.

Depends on the resolution of the file too - if it's maybe only 352x240, or something small like that (is that called half, or quarter resolution?), then you don't need as much CPU power. But try a full-res DiVX/XViD, like 720x480, and you'll want more like 1GHz.
 

konakona

Diamond Member
May 6, 2004
6,285
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most of stuff i watch lately comes in WMV9 flavor. folks in the upload biz tell us how it is (supposedely) superior to both xvid and divx...
 

Anonemous

Diamond Member
May 19, 2003
7,361
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I used to have a divx box that consisted of a P3-450 and Bare win2k (512 meg ram) with ffdshow installed. It ran xvid/divx/ogm files fine. There would be a bit of pixelation in some videos (dunno if it was a codec/cpu problem) but it would usually appear in the front then go away.

Hope that helps you.
 

Blastman

Golden Member
Oct 21, 1999
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I used to have a Celeron 333 and it played most DIVX?s I downloaded. The limit was ~ 480x320--25fps, ? - (a Tomb Raider divx at that resolution could just play without dropping frames. Lousy movie but the divx quality for that 2hr 700MB movie was really good.

Any combination of higher resolutions and/or frame rates and my C333 couldn?t hack it. The C400 will do a little better but will be limited in resolution and frame rate. Should be just??ok?.
 

Abhi

Diamond Member
Sep 13, 2003
4,548
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From divx.com

Minimum Requirements...

PC ? Pentium II 450mHz
64 MB RAM
10MB available Hard drive - Player
Video Card 16 MB video memory

Recommended is PC Pentium III 600 MHz or higher

I think u ll be able to OC that celeron and hit 500 mhz.... that might help.
 

CigarSmokedByClinton

Senior member
Sep 4, 2000
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My wife's computer is a AMD K6-2 450Mhz, 384MB Ram, 10 Gig hd. And it can not play DVD quality divix back smoothly.

For what it's worth.

Cigar
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
Super Moderator
Aug 22, 2001
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Forced to upgrade to watch full screen pRon!?! :laugh:
 

Gurck

Banned
Mar 16, 2004
12,963
1
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Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
the divx spyware isn't so bad for what your getting.

Gonna disagree here, spy/ad-ware thoroughly disgusts me. Those who write it should receive daily bodily cavity searches by gay men with big hands. They already have incentives to buy the pro version - advanced features and actual encoding. The spyware-laden free version allows for decoding (viewing) only and doesn't sport these advanced features. But they had to jump on the slime-train with the rest of the spyware pushers. F*ck 'em. I have no compunction whatsoever about *coughcoughdon'twannagetbanned* on my friendly local p2p network. I enjoy the ability to backup my DVDs by encoding them into 700mb files, as I don't yet have a dvd burner and won't until there's a more universally supported standard. Also am spyware-free ;)
 

SickBeast

Lifer
Jul 21, 2000
14,377
19
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Originally posted by: Gurck
The spyware-laden free version allows for decoding (viewing) only and doesn't sport these advanced features.

No, the free spyware version has all of the features of the paid version, both decoding AND encoding.

I do agree with you though. Spyware is trash. I would honestly rather have the "I Love You" virus on my machine rather than the DivX spyware. At least the virus would profess its love for me before hosing my machine.
 

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
19
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Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
no kidding. and the decoding quality/divx settings etc matter too. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx

high res divx basically. coral reef at the higher res rapes my 2.4ghz xp

Wow. Very nice quality on those videos. Heh, just looking at the bitrates though:
8000kbps video, 24-bit
447kbps audio, 24-bit, 6 channels
Averages to 1,026,346 bytes per second. (Filesize/time)

That explains it.
Higher CPU utilization than MPEG2 too - my XP2700 (2.2GHz) was in the 65%-80% CPU utilization range. Though I guess if MPEG2 was done at that resolution (1440x1080), it'd need a lot of processor time too.
 

SickBeast

Lifer
Jul 21, 2000
14,377
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Hey, that's not bad. For 2 hours of video at 1080P, it only takes up 6.9GB. I'm basing this off of the Scooby Doo trailer; it's 2 minutes long and is 115MB in size. That's really impressive. It means you can get 2 hours of HD video onto a DL-DVD with the right codec. It almost makes the new HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats look like a waste for simply watching movies.