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A line of video codecs that comes in three major revisions and an unknown number of minor revisions.
The first revision, 3.11 alpha, was a crack of one of Microsoft's MPEG-4 versions (all incompatible with the MPEG-4 specification). They were MSMPEG4v1 (MP41/DIV1), MSMPEG4v2 (MP42/DIV2), and MSMPEG4v3 (MP43/DIV3). MSMPEG4v3 was the one that was modified; when Microsoft had released them, they had not wanted them to be used in AVI file, only ASF files, so they locked the codec into only being allowed for use in ASF files. The crack disabled this lockout, enabling use with AVI files.
The second revision, 4.x, was a complete rewrite of the codec by DivX Networks; while being somewhat better than DivX 3.11a, it was not very good.
The latest revision, 5.x, is a very competitive MPEG-4 codec coming in 3 flavors; the free one with full decoding and basic encoding, the ad-filled free one with full decoding and full encoding, and the paid full one with full decoding/encoding with no ads.
v4.x was initially an open-source project, but after the decision to go commercial with DivX, the open source version was continued as XviD.
Alternative Codec: ffdshow
[DivX homepage.]
