Anyone know a codec that is like Divx but comes with windows xp? I mean I want a small size and good quality. And cinepak or whatever its called gives me huge sizes.

There are hardly any codecs that come with windows. You're pretty much stuck with MPEG, I think.

The only two that I know Windows XP has for sure, off the top of my head, is Intel's Indeo video 3.x/5.x codec and the Cinepak codec. If you've got WMP9 installed, you'll also get the MS MPEG 4 codec. That's a bit better.

Both the Indeo and Cinepak produce absolutely horrible results, unless you don't mind cranking up the keyframes-per-second and quality settings. But then you get video that's a hundred megs in size, which isn't suitable for download. :)

Use Windows Media Video 9. Assuming they have an internet connection the decoder version should be able to automatically download.

For high bitrate (>600kps) video streams the difference between WMV9, DivX and Xvid is very hard to tell, and the choice is really up to encoding speed, features, portablility and your particular fanboy base. However when you go below 600kps WMV9 quickly becomes the far superior codec. It produces *very* good quality video at low bit rates. I can take a 320x240 talking heads clip down to just 32kps and still produce video equal to medium quality MPEG1.

ok WMV9 it is then!

I figure most people with somewhat mmodern computers should be able to read the file

its a pain having to explain to people they need to get and install divx

wmv work on mac?

Quote: Original post by angrytofu
wmv work on mac?

Microsoft did at one time say they where going to be making it supported on Media Player for Mac. I'm not sure if its out yet or not. It most likely will come out eventually, since Microsoft wants it to be as widely used as possible (they have it standardized, so that anyone who pays the licencing fee can make a 100% compatible WMV9 decoder. This is in the DVD2 standard too)

EDIT: It appears that if they have the latest version of Windows Media Player for Mac they can Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X