DivX5 guide

DivX5 is the latest MPEG-4 codec by DivXNetworks. It is the successor of the popular DivX4 codec that brought easy 2 pass encoding to the people but sometimes had issues with image crispness and filesize prediction. DivX5 is brand new so you may see many updates in that guide, especially what concerns "optimal" parameters in the codec configuration and the codec itself may also be updated from time to time as we had it with DivX4.

To give you the fastest encoding method possible without too much hassle I chose to use Gordian Knot as frontend for most of the encoding action.

You will need the following software for this guide:

GordianKnot Installer package
Gordian Knot update DivX5 installer or DivX5 pro installer

What's the difference between DivX5 and DivX5 Pro? The latter has advanced the following features that the standard edition does not have: B frames, QPel motion compensation, Global Motion Compensation, integrated preprocessing, resizing and cropping and deinterlacing/IVTC. Basically, you should be mostly concerned about the first 3 features, which result in slower processing speed but also can improve quality. In order to finance the MPEG-4 licensing fees that DivXNetworks may have to pay they've invluded the GAIN program that will display some ads from time to time. If that gets on your nerves I have a free and completely legal way to block these ads but still use the Pro edition: Install either ZoneAlarm or Tiny Personal Firewall and when the application GAIN_TRICKLER_3102.EXE wants to connect to the Internet you create a rule that will block the connection forever. This will stop all ads, plus using a personal firewall helps to prevent attacks from the net but will also stop many active-mail viruses that have been floating around since July 2001. Whenever there's a new application that wants to connect to the Internet and you don't know what it is, block it.

There's a very comprehensive document on the new codec at the official DivX site. It will explain additional stuff like how the playback filter works and give you a complete featurelist.

Step 0: First time setup

You will only have to perform this step once.

Run the GordianKnot Installer package, then run the GKnot latest update installer. then last but not least unpack lame.exe from the zipfile to your GKnot installation directory (normally c:\program files\gordian knot).

Then also install one of the DivX5 codecs.

Step 1: Basic GKnot Setup

This step will teach you how to set up GKnot for a perfectly good looking rip.

Step 2: Audio encoding

Only a few more steps and you'll have a perfect audio file and a frameserver file for video encoding.

Step 3: Video encoding

Configure the codec and encode the video in 2 pass mode using Virtualdub.

Step 4: Join Audio and Video

Nandub can handle both CBR and VBR (ABR is a kind of VBR) audio and is therefore best suited for the task.

Step 5: Splitting

If you created a movie for more than 1 CD you have to split it up now.

This document was last updated on April 25, 2003