DivX codec overview

The DivX codec quickly captured the hearts and minds (not to mention wallets and balance sheets) of webmasters across the globe, due to the fact that the DivX codec manages to achieve what was previously believed to be impossible:

1)      It allows for a highly efficient compression process which shrinks large video files into extremely small sizes.

2)      It achieve #1 whilst maintaining an astonishing clear and crisp quality of audio as well as video content.

What made the DivX codec so special when it first came out was that it actually managed to accomplish what so many others had before it, tried to do with little to no success. Sadly, many such codecs forced the user to make a stark choice between either quality, or the size of the file in question.

Just to clear up an issue that time and time again manages to catch people out,  the term “DivX” is used to refer to both the DivX codec, and also to a media system which was designed to revolutionise the way in which copyright access was permitted, but which subsequently died a death.

The DivX codec was the brainchild of a French software cracker by the name of Jerome Rota who as the story goes, was extremely frustrated whenever he attempted to use the MPEG-4 Version 3 video codec released by Microsoft and was especially irked by virtue of the fact that the Microsoft video codec was not compatible with the later editions of media programs such as Microsoft Windows Media player.

The major Achilles Heel of the Microsoft video codec was that it did not actually enable MPEG-4 files to be loaded or used in conjunction with this and so Rota with the assistance of a fellow software cracker, decided that it was high time to remedy this.