DivX Launches Beta Phase of its Own H.264 Decoder

10 years after DivX revolutionized video on the Internet and seven years after the launch of Project Mayo ("OpenDivX"), which set the stage for DivX 4 and Xvid, DivX Networks is again mixing a new dip. The new project, called Rémoulade by DivX Labs, is developing an H.264 video decoder based on an implementation of MainConcept. DivX took over MainConcept, the German MPEG specialist, last November.

The DivX developers have announced the launch of their decoder's beta phase. Those who wish to take part in the beta test have to own, or create, a DivX account then send a Private Message to DivX. To simplify the procedure, the beta version will soon be made available via e-mail.

The decoder is expected to support all common H.264 profiles – Main, High, High 10 and High 4:2:2 – in addition to interlacing methods (MBAFF, PAFF, and mixed) and multithreading – up to 8 CPUs. DivX says the code was optimized for MMX, SSE and SSE2. Further details are available at the developer's website. A speed comparison with the universal ffdshow tryouts audio/video decoder and the commercial Core AVC – considered the fastest and most reliable H.264 decoder for Windows at the moment – is also provided. The stats for DivX H.264 Decoder Beta 1 show that this new decoder is almost 2 per cent faster and can be scaled better than CoreAVC. The test clips used were encoded with x264, but an H.264 encoder is expected to be released under the DivX label, probably also based on MainConcept.

DivX grew up with MPEG-4 Part 2 and is one of the main reasons why most DVD players can playback MPEG-4-videos. Fortunately for DivX, the Moving Picture Experts Group integrated H.264, a more efficient video compression method, as Part 10 (Advanced Video Coding) in the MPEG-4 video standard, so now the company will be attempting to get the DivX label used synonymously with MPEG-4 – regardless of whether people are talking about Part 2 or Part 10.

Source: Heise Media