DivX To The Left Of Me, Windows To The Right, Here I Am Stuck In The Mpeg With You

August 28th, 2007 Davis Posted in Media, Movies, Technology, DivX, TV, VOD, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Microsoft, DRM, Netflix |

One could argue that there has never been a better time to be a digital media enthusiast. As the digital revolution continues to unfold, consumers are finding an increasing number of choices in how they want to consume their media. Getting VOD to the television set has taken a lot longer than I expected, but over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of progress towards digitization. While we still don’t have the holy grail of entertainment (everything on demand), we are getting closer to an on demand environment.

With these choices also comes restrictions. If I buy a song on iTunes, I can’t play it on my Windows “Smart” phone. If I want streaming movies on Netflix, I have to use Microsoft’s browser. While a lot of these obstacles are easy to overcome, this lack of connectivity does frustrate consumers and slows mainstream adoption.

In thinking about my own digital entertainment setup, I’ve set two primary goals for my media library. I want to my video files in DivX or XviD, so that I can use DivX certified devices and I want my media to be in .wmv, so that I can also stream my content to my Xbox or play it on my cellphone.

Currently, I’ve got three or four different digital file types on my computer, but most of the content is in the Mpeg format. I’ve used digital conversion tools in the past, but I’ve never tried to convert all of my media at once, so I wanted to try some of the different conversion software packages, in order to see which ones might be the best at least halfway decent.

When I first went to look for solutions, the sheer number of choices was pretty intimidating. In total, I tried out 7 different pieces of software, but two of them wouldn’t even install. At the end of the day, I was hoping to be able to recommend a solution to my readers, but none of them offered me exactly what I was looking for.

DivX Converter 6.5

Since the immediate goal of my exercise was to get my Mpeg files transferred over to DivX, I figured I would start with the company’s own software before trying anything else. In order to get the converter software, I had to download and install the program from DivX’s website. The install ran pretty clean and other than an optional Google toolbar plugin, there isn’t much in the way of ads. DivX gives you full access to the software for 15 days and after that you have to pony up $19.99, if you want to keep using it.

Of all the conversion software that I tested, DivX was definitely the easiest. Once I installed the program, all I had to do was drag and drop my files and then hit convert. The software was very intuitive. Running on just a half a gig of ram, a 200MB conversion took about 25 minutes to complete. Not as fast as I would have liked, but DivX does offer you a way to queue up your files, so that your computer can do the heavy lifting when you’re not using it.

Had DivX’s software been a little bit more robust, I would have spent the money to go pro, but unfortunately the software has one major weakness. While DivX is more than happy to help their customers convert just about any format into the DivX format, they aren’t as eager to help you get it into .wmv or other third party codecs. I can’t really blame DivX for creating a one way conversion tool, but since it still didn’t help me get my movies to my Xbox, I kept looking.

Windows Media Encoder 9

Because DivX’s converter wouldn’t allow me to convert my files into .wmv, my next stop was to check out Microsoft’s solution for converting into Window’s format. One of the nice things about their encoder software was that it was the only one that was actually free* (Windows software and additional plugins may be required)

The download for the software didn’t contain any ads, but Softie does make you download some bullshit “authentication” plugin before you can actually use the product. The software is designed to help cut down on piracy, but the real end result is that customers are inconvenienced unnecessarily. After trying to verify my own copy of Windows, I continued to get error messages, but was finally able to get my secret code by running their plugin as a standalone app.

One of the things that I really liked about the Windows encoder was that it gave you the option to customize the end product based upon how you intended to use the media. I could encode directly to .wmv, but they also gave me the option of making a smaller file for my cellphone or a larger HDTV file for the living room. Since my goal is to get the videos to my living room using WiFi, I selected the SD version and started the conversion.

One of the things that I noticed when I started to use the program is that once you start the encoding process, it’s a resource hog. This could just be because my PC is already a dinosaur, but from the minute I hit convert, my computer was pretty much worthless. This isn’t a big deal if you are converting files overnight, but if you’re trying to multi-task, it can be frustrating to deal with lagging speeds, while you are waiting for your file to complete.

The software was relatively easy to use, but when it came to it’s UI design, you could just tell that it was created by Microsoft. The whole thing is built to be useful not look good. For my needs, the UI isn’t all that important, but if Microsoft really wants to make this easy for consumers, they should rethink the layout of their software.

Another drawback to the WMEncoder was that just like DivX’s software, Microsoft is a one way street when it comes to the conversions. If all you care about is Windows, this works, but ideally I was hoping to find something that supported multiple file types. I was also a little annoyed to discover that while Microsoft will let you convert almost any codec into .wmv for free, if you actually want to transcode Mpeg files, they make you buy a $15 plugin.

Cinema Forge

Since DivX and Window’s own solutions were less than robust in letting me work with different codecs, I decided to check out a couple of other third party solutions. The first on my list was Cinema Forge. Their software has received good reviews on Download.com and since they allow you to encode up to 10 minutes of video before having to pay the $24.95 to upgrade, it is easy to test the software out.

Cinema Forge supports a number of different files structures and allows you to convert to MP4 (iPod), Flash, .Wmv, Mpeg, .AVI, Real Video and Quicktime. I didn’t have any problems converting into the .Wmv format, but I did find that when I tried to convert my Mpegs into their .AVI wrapper, that it was stripping out the audio and jarbling it on me. I’m not sure, if there was a setting that I had wrong, but after my third corrupted file, I gave up on the software and moved onto other solutions. I also noticed that my .wmv files wouldn’t allow me to fast forward or rewind the content. I’m not sure if this was because I was using the trial version, but I know that I’m not looking for a conversion solution, that locks down my content.

Jet Audio

When I started this project I wasn’t really looking for a media player, but when I saw that the Jet Audio media player also supported file conversions, I remembered the old adage that there may be more than one way to skin a cat. Of all the software conversion tools that I tried, Jet Audio was by far the best. I don’t know that I’d actually spend money on the software, but if I had to pick one, they seemed to offer the most choices and functionality.

One downside for the Apple fans is that their software doesn’t support Quicktime conversions, but since it lets me convert to .wmv, XviD and DivX, I was willing to check it out. In addition, they also throw CD ripping and burning functionality into the software. The trial version only lets you convert 30 seconds worth of a clip, but it was enough for me to at least test out the quality and I didn’t run into any problems.

Two things that I didn’t particularly like about the software were that they included ads for their own PMP devices inside the program and that the software felt really cluttered. While it was an undeniably powerful piece of code, its UI design is more than a little chaotic. In addition to the conversion and burning tools, they also throw in an entire media player. It’s hard to ding them for offering too much, but there is something to be said for simplicity.

Movavi -

Movavi actually had two different software tools that I tested. They have an online version and a downloadable solution. The online version is really good, if you only need to convert small files. There were no programs to download, no accounts to sign up for and no aggressive ads popping up on my browser.

All I really needed to do was go to their website, upload the file I wanted converted, (or give them the web address of where the file is located) and then sit back and wait for an email telling me that it’s ready to be downloaded. It was quick, easy and painless and would have been my final stop, had there not been the 100 MB restrictions on the online version.

Even without the restrictions though, I’m not surer that you’d want to upload files much bigger than 100 MB. I uploaded a 64MB over a fiber connection and it still took 7 minutes to upload, 5 minutes to process, and about 10 seconds to download. This really isn’t a deal breaker for me, but it’s less than ideal, if you are looking to convert full movies. The online version also does not let you convert into .wmv.

Once I downloaded the software version of Movavi, it did add a bit to the functionality. The issue of uploading and downloading your files goes away, as does the 100 MB restriction. The full software also adds support for .wmv conversions including WMV HD. The pro version costs $29.99, but since the free version allows you to convert 30% to a file, I was hoping to test out the quality anyway. Unfortunately, I tried to convert several different file formats over, but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get Movavi’s software to recognize my media.

Ideally, I was hoping to find an open source free solution, but couldn’t find anything that looked safe enough to download. If someone knows of a good conversion solution, feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll check it out.