Filed under: Audio, Software, Video, Internet Tools, Universal Binary
DivX 6.5 offers Universal Binary player, encoder
DivX has released what Macworld is calling their first official player for Mac OS X (though I could have sworn I've used DivX software in the past in a pinch). In case you aren't familiar: DivX is an independent video codec that has quite a strong following, and it isn't just for computers; many portable devices and even some DVD players support the DivX codec, offering a useful alternative to the sometimes difficult and clunky DVD burning standard.The company didn't short us on options either - this 6.5 Universal Binary release includes a stand-alone Converter application, as well as DivX 6 codec software for QuickTime so users can convert their video from within any QuickTime-compatible video software. A 15-day free trial of DivX 6.5 is available, at which point you must register for $19.99 to continue using the conversion software; the player, as always, remains free.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
andrew said 10:33AM on 5-26-2006
after installing it, the finder says it is still a "powerpc" program. but the release notes say that there is universal binary in the code. what do you guys think?
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Ben Drawbaugh said 10:51AM on 5-26-2006
The X is capitalized in DivX.
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x264 said 11:15AM on 5-26-2006
Divx and xvid are history. x264 is the best open source video out there!
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Jorge Salvador Caffarena said 11:55AM on 5-26-2006
Yep the player is not universal, the only thing that are universal are the codecs not the applications.
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Dan said 12:14PM on 5-26-2006
Yea, and it KILLS Safari too
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iFelix said 2:17PM on 5-26-2006
"though I could have sworn I've used DivX software in the past in a pinch"
You may have, but in the past there was only a codec, this is the first DivX player for the Mac.
Before now you played the DivX files in Quicktime.
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Ian said 4:52PM on 5-26-2006
Yeah, the Player and Converter are still PPC. After some digging, I went to /Library/QuickTime/DivX Decoder.component/Contents/MacOS
and did:
lipo -info DivX Decoder
and the output was "Architectures in the fat file: DivX Decoder are: i386 ppc7400"
The same goes for the encoder. So I can only deduce that DivX was too lazy to make their apps universal, but were nice enough to port the Quicktime components. This kind of pisses me off, since I have sworn not to install any PPC programs on my MBP, and this one did it while claiming to be a Universal.
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Ian said 4:55PM on 5-26-2006
Alright, the other thing that really bothers me is its automatic checking for updates that you cannot turn off. Blah @ DivX.
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Marcel Bischoff said 9:33AM on 5-29-2006
Plus, the player does crash almost every time I try to launch it. This is useless. Besides, I seriously doubt that the world is ready for yet another video/container format (.divx).
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Tucker said 12:30PM on 5-30-2006
Marcel, divx/xvid are pretty standard and have been for a while now. The files aren't tagged as ".divx", they're typically presented as .avi and will present a codec error in the absence of the codec. I've never bothered with the crap-ass players that come with codecs, VLC is really the only way to go.
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