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With emphasis on shit. Really. I can relate to the rose-tinted memories, but DivX and XviD both encode to MPEG-4 ASP which has a lot of shortcomings that manife

With emphasis on shit. Really. I can relate to the rose-tinted memories, but DivX and XviD both encode to MPEG-4 ASP which has a lot of shortcomings that manifestly result in the infamous sludgy green-purple banding artefacts of the time, no matter how good the chosen encoder is. XviD is the better of those two MPEG-4 ASP encoders, but it simply does not look good in an absolute sense, just in a relative sense compared to the alternatives of the era.

anthk 29d ago
At 1024x768, compared to my Nokia 14" CRT TV it looked good enough.
- daneel_w 28d ago
  It was absolutely a good enough solution compared to the long wait for DVD releases and shelling out tons of money.
close04 29d ago
> just in a relative sense compared to the alternatives of the era This is common sense. Nobody thinks the original iPhone is revolutionary today, but they do think it was revolutionary for the time.
Dylan16807 28d ago
There's no such thing as a codec that looks good or bad in an absolute sense. Codecs boil down to a quality versus bitrate curve. And starving them always looks bad. While the most common kind of artifact will shift between standards, significant artifacts are fundamentally bitrate issues or encoder bugs. If you gave DVD levels of bits-per-pixel to MPEG-4 ASP you could get something that looks nearly perfect.
- daneel_w 28d ago
  > There's no such thing as a codec that looks good or bad in an absolute sense. There are plenty of examples of both awful codecs (software; encoders) and of digital audio/video standards (e.g. Vorbis and MPEG-4 ASP) suffering from material limitations. > If you gave DVD levels of bits-per-pixel to MPEG-4 ASP you could get something that looks nearly perfect. No. Not even if the source is encoded by XviD. Not all problems can be solved by throwing higher bitrate at it. The ASP only supports 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, which is the largest of several shortcomings contributing to the limited quality you can achieve with ASP video material. People on at least an intermediate knowledge level of digital video know what a damning problem 4:2:0 subsampling is and how heavy a penalty it incurs on color and clarity. Your comments mostly hold a suggestion that you kinda have some rough idea about digital video. And that's OK. MPEG-4 SSTP is a very different matter, but that's not what DivX and XviD encodes.
  - Dylan16807 28d ago
    I should have added "general purpose". I know there are restrained encoders for specific situations. Can you list a few of your examples for video? And I don't understand the other example you did mention, isn't vorbis more than enough at high bitrate? 4:2:0 is just fine for video. It is not a heavy penalty. It's OK for you to be rough about this. More seriously, if it's good enough for bluray and UHD bluray then it's fine.
    - daneel_w 28d ago
      Yeah sure, a few example that spring to mind would be... Poor encoder: FAAC/FAAC2, the first open-source encoder for AAC audio, produce terrible audio no matter how much bitrate you let it work with. The AAC standard itself facilitates crisp audio quality at low bitrates, as heard with e.g. Apple's Core Audio AAC encoder or Nero AAC. Poor encoder: Xing, a popular MP3 encoder of the early 2000s, was similarly infamous for producing chirpy and slurry audio even at or above 192 kbps, while bona fide MP3 encoders like LAME do far better on less. Poor encoder: NVENC, Nvidia's on-GPU hardware video encoder, produce very poor H.264 video even at 8-10 mbps, even on the current 8th and 9th generation (RTX 40/50 series). Good H.264 encoders like x264 is capable of producing excellent FullHD video at just 2-3 mbps. Poor standard: Vorbis is a good example of a spec whose limits/mistakes make it impossible to preserve certain combinations of frequencies, resulting in brief passages where parts of the reproduced spectrum deflates, making some music sound as if it lost its breath, so to speak. When fed certain "triggering" audio content designed to expose problems in the spec, Xiph's reference Vorbis encoder will produce ringing sounds. Interestingly also the MP3 spec has similar limitations where certain frequency combinations (usually towards the lower and upper ends) will reproduce with quantized amplitude, even when encoded with LAME, though the outcome is nowhere near as pronounced as it can be with Vorbis. Poor standard: MPEG-4 ASP, being limited to 4:2:0 chroma subsampling and PAL/NTSC resolutions. My beef with 4:2:0 is because of how harsh it is on low-resolution content. MPEG-4 ASP being limited to a maximum of 720x576, and the 4:2:0 chroma coverage being only a quarter of that, is the reason why DivX/XviD content is smudgy even with reproduction filters. On FullHD content a 4:2:0 grid has almost three times higher resolution, which I agree works out on both still scenes and slow panning (the two scenarios where low chroma resolution makes itself most reminded).
robertlagrant 28d ago
It was amazing being able to fit a full length movie on a CD-ROM though.
- AdmiralAsshat 28d ago
  Didn't VCDs do the same thing? IIRC the Sega Saturn could play them.
  - doubled112 28d ago
    I recall that full length movies on VCD were usually two discs to get decent quality. Not needing to get up and switch discs because you could use divx or xvid instead was a real life improvement.
    - doublerabbit 28d ago
      And thats another reason why you had two CD drives in tower cases. My 667mhz AMD-K7 had two CD drives, insert both VCDs and nearly seamless watch a movie. There was the part where you had to double click the media player to make it full screen again however pretty wholesome for its time. Nowadays, it's just not the same and Ai isn't nostalgic at all.
  - SpecialistK 28d ago
    The stock Saturn needed a VCD expansion card to play them, but some of the Japanese-only models like the Hitachi HiSaturn had it built in.
- daneel_w 28d ago
  Agreed!
lightedman 28d ago
"DivX and XviD both encode to MPEG-4 ASP which has a lot of shortcomings that manifestly result in the infamous sludgy green-purple banding artefacts of the time, no matter how good the chosen encoder is." That's the fault of your decoder; I never had that problem playing DivX or XviD videos in VLC.
- daneel_w 28d ago
  If anything it would be an issue with the encoder, but it's not. Both DivX and XviD are prime pieces of software but they live within unbridgeable limitations of the MPEG-4 ASP profile. This or that individual may not care about the outcome, and they may use various post-processing to smooth out the creases, but the limitations are all the same real and inherently visible.
  - lightedman 27d ago
    It would be with the decoder, as the issue will happen in Windows Media Player but not VLC (which has its own implementation of XviD/DivX.)
    - daneel_w 26d ago
      It's just that you have different (or no) post-processing filters running between those two video players. MPEG cannot be arbitrarily decoded, only arbitrarily encoded.

anthk 29d ago

At 1024x768, compared to my Nokia 14" CRT TV it looked good enough.

daneel_w 28d ago
It was absolutely a good enough solution compared to the long wait for DVD releases and shelling out tons of money.

close04 29d ago

> just in a relative sense compared to the alternatives of the era This is common sense. Nobody thinks the original iPhone is revolutionary today, but they do think it was revolutionary for the time.

Dylan16807 28d ago

There's no such thing as a codec that looks good or bad in an absolute sense. Codecs boil down to a quality versus bitrate curve. And starving them always looks bad. While the most common kind of artifact will shift between standards, significant artifacts are fundamentally bitrate issues or encoder bugs. If you gave DVD levels of bits-per-pixel to MPEG-4 ASP you could get something that looks nearly perfect.

daneel_w 28d ago
> There's no such thing as a codec that looks good or bad in an absolute sense. There are plenty of examples of both awful codecs (software; encoders) and of digital audio/video standards (e.g. Vorbis and MPEG-4 ASP) suffering from material limitations. > If you gave DVD levels of bits-per-pixel to MPEG-4 ASP you could get something that looks nearly perfect. No. Not even if the source is encoded by XviD. Not all problems can be solved by throwing higher bitrate at it. The ASP only supports 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, which is the largest of several shortcomings contributing to the limited quality you can achieve with ASP video material. People on at least an intermediate knowledge level of digital video know what a damning problem 4:2:0 subsampling is and how heavy a penalty it incurs on color and clarity. Your comments mostly hold a suggestion that you kinda have some rough idea about digital video. And that's OK. MPEG-4 SSTP is a very different matter, but that's not what DivX and XviD encodes.
- Dylan16807 28d ago
  I should have added "general purpose". I know there are restrained encoders for specific situations. Can you list a few of your examples for video? And I don't understand the other example you did mention, isn't vorbis more than enough at high bitrate? 4:2:0 is just fine for video. It is not a heavy penalty. It's OK for you to be rough about this. More seriously, if it's good enough for bluray and UHD bluray then it's fine.
  - daneel_w 28d ago
    Yeah sure, a few example that spring to mind would be... Poor encoder: FAAC/FAAC2, the first open-source encoder for AAC audio, produce terrible audio no matter how much bitrate you let it work with. The AAC standard itself facilitates crisp audio quality at low bitrates, as heard with e.g. Apple's Core Audio AAC encoder or Nero AAC. Poor encoder: Xing, a popular MP3 encoder of the early 2000s, was similarly infamous for producing chirpy and slurry audio even at or above 192 kbps, while bona fide MP3 encoders like LAME do far better on less. Poor encoder: NVENC, Nvidia's on-GPU hardware video encoder, produce very poor H.264 video even at 8-10 mbps, even on the current 8th and 9th generation (RTX 40/50 series). Good H.264 encoders like x264 is capable of producing excellent FullHD video at just 2-3 mbps. Poor standard: Vorbis is a good example of a spec whose limits/mistakes make it impossible to preserve certain combinations of frequencies, resulting in brief passages where parts of the reproduced spectrum deflates, making some music sound as if it lost its breath, so to speak. When fed certain "triggering" audio content designed to expose problems in the spec, Xiph's reference Vorbis encoder will produce ringing sounds. Interestingly also the MP3 spec has similar limitations where certain frequency combinations (usually towards the lower and upper ends) will reproduce with quantized amplitude, even when encoded with LAME, though the outcome is nowhere near as pronounced as it can be with Vorbis. Poor standard: MPEG-4 ASP, being limited to 4:2:0 chroma subsampling and PAL/NTSC resolutions. My beef with 4:2:0 is because of how harsh it is on low-resolution content. MPEG-4 ASP being limited to a maximum of 720x576, and the 4:2:0 chroma coverage being only a quarter of that, is the reason why DivX/XviD content is smudgy even with reproduction filters. On FullHD content a 4:2:0 grid has almost three times higher resolution, which I agree works out on both still scenes and slow panning (the two scenarios where low chroma resolution makes itself most reminded).

robertlagrant 28d ago

It was amazing being able to fit a full length movie on a CD-ROM though.

AdmiralAsshat 28d ago
Didn't VCDs do the same thing? IIRC the Sega Saturn could play them.
- doubled112 28d ago
  I recall that full length movies on VCD were usually two discs to get decent quality. Not needing to get up and switch discs because you could use divx or xvid instead was a real life improvement.
  - doublerabbit 28d ago
    And thats another reason why you had two CD drives in tower cases. My 667mhz AMD-K7 had two CD drives, insert both VCDs and nearly seamless watch a movie. There was the part where you had to double click the media player to make it full screen again however pretty wholesome for its time. Nowadays, it's just not the same and Ai isn't nostalgic at all.
- SpecialistK 28d ago
  The stock Saturn needed a VCD expansion card to play them, but some of the Japanese-only models like the Hitachi HiSaturn had it built in.
daneel_w 28d ago
Agreed!

lightedman 28d ago

"DivX and XviD both encode to MPEG-4 ASP which has a lot of shortcomings that manifestly result in the infamous sludgy green-purple banding artefacts of the time, no matter how good the chosen encoder is." That's the fault of your decoder; I never had that problem playing DivX or XviD videos in VLC.

daneel_w 28d ago
If anything it would be an issue with the encoder, but it's not. Both DivX and XviD are prime pieces of software but they live within unbridgeable limitations of the MPEG-4 ASP profile. This or that individual may not care about the outcome, and they may use various post-processing to smooth out the creases, but the limitations are all the same real and inherently visible.
- lightedman 27d ago
  It would be with the decoder, as the issue will happen in Windows Media Player but not VLC (which has its own implementation of XviD/DivX.)
  - daneel_w 26d ago
    It's just that you have different (or no) post-processing filters running between those two video players. MPEG cannot be arbitrarily decoded, only arbitrarily encoded.