Question about divx.

Doug2006 · Post by **Doug2006** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 1:12 am

I made an instructional dvd with ulead 10 and now I have corel x2. I got by with the first project accepting defaults and using what ever the program offered. Now I would like to advance a little. Namely I would like to have more of a useful menu system. This means that I would like to put the three dvds I now have down to one dvd with a menu that would have maybe 20 or 30 chapters. So I figured I would convert my stuff to Divx and work with that. I am extremely happy with the quality of the Dvix and the size of the files. I assumed and thought that since divx worked with X2 I could use this program. But I am having trouble. If I take 2 gigs of divx clips and put them in the burning or output menu creation part of x2 it says that the size is now 15 gigs. These clips are all ready in Divx and just need to be made into a disc with a menu. It seems that X2 will output the files into divx but there is no provision to put them in a format with a menu. I have the divx author program but had some problems with that and when I went to their forum I got the feeling that no one uses divx author but there must be another program to do this. Why would you put your files into divx if you can not have a menu? Am I missing something here. Doug

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 1:50 am

Unfortunately, although you can create a DivX video file, you cannot make a DivX disc that has a DVD-like menu structure. That's not just a limitation of Video Studio either - there simply is no standard for a DivX disc with a menu system.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 2:00 am

...there simply is no standard for a DivX disc with a menu system.

Sorry, 2 Dogs, but there is -- it is the DivX Author program that Doug2006 mentioned and said he was having trouble with. But as far as I am aware, that is the only program capable of making menus for a DivX disc.

Now Doug2006's problem seems to revolve around the fact that he is thinking of a DivX disc as being equivalent to a video DVD. It is not. It is more like an archive DVD which just happens to have video files stored on it, in this case DivX files. So when you put it in a DVD player which is rated to play DivX, the player will first look for normal video DVD code, and not find any. It will then look at what is stored on the disc and say to itself "Hey those are DivX files and I can play them'. And it proceeds to do so. There are a lot of DVD players these days rated to play DivX movies.

But a further problem, and limitation of DivX Author, is that only a very small proportion of those DVD players (listed on the DivX website) can see/read and play the menus made by Author for DivX discs. So its utility is extremely limited. That is a pity because Author actually creates menus that look very similar to standard video DVD menus.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 3:13 am

Yikes!

My embarrassment is only tempered by the lack of implementation of the DivX menu structure in most players then!

Sadly, I doubt that it ever will be widely supported either, since the focus now seems to be on Blu-Ray, and DivX itself has been bettered first by Xvid, then H264 and X264.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 3:29 am

High Def DivX is still pretty good, though...