DivX Playback FAQ

Can I play a DivX on a Playstation/DreamCast/other console?
Can I play a DivX on a standalone player?
Can I play DivX/AVI files on my Hollywood Plus / DXR3?
Horizontal lines when playing back
How can I fix freeze-frames? audio goes on while video is stuck
How do I play an aborted DivX download or aborted encoding session file?
Jumping forward/backwards takes an awful lot of time
My just created AVI won't play in Media Player
My video is still interlaced no matter what program I use
Quartz.dll error when playing a movie
Playback is choppy

There's now a special player for the DreamCast. This player is still in the early stages of development. There's also solutions for the PS2 and Xbox, but those solutions require a modchip (which might be illegal in some countries).

Yes. However, you'll need a special DivX compatible DVD player. Note that at the moment (July 2003), no standalone is perfect. DivX3 playback is somewhat limited and there usually are problems in high bitrate scenes, DivX4/5 and XviD playback is okay as long as no GMC and QPel encoding options are used.

DivxPlus will help you achieve that. Unfortunately at the moment the program only works when you have a revB or later card and there are many still open issues. So if it doesn't work look for help in the realmagic newsgroup or get a GFX card that has TV Output (that latter one is a safe bet).

I had this error, too. Strangely the files were fine on another pc which leads me to believe that the issue is driver related. You could try to get new drivers for your video card, and to reinstall the DivX codec.

In many cases Avidefreezer will help you fix the problem. In Nandub you can activate anti-freeze during encoding and if that doesn't help you have to reencode the part in question then join it together with the main movie again (for that you have to cut the movie into pieces). Read my guide on joining avis on how to join without synch problems.

Run DivXFix on the file.. this will fix it. However if you plan to add to this file - for instance you have downloaded the first part and want to watch it but there's more parts to come - keep the original file.. you'll have to merge the additional parts with the original un-divxfixed file.

This behavior is dependent if your keyframe settings. The media players "calculate forward" from the last keyframe to the position you want to go. So if you have a movie that has a keyframe every minute and let's assume a keyframe at 5:00 and you want to jump to 5:59 there's a lot of calculations to be done. The more keyframes the faster searching will go. To insert more keyframes load the AVI in VirtualDub, check pop up extended options, then in the next window select rederive keyframe flags. Then set audio and video to direct stream copy and save the AVI again.  

Use DivX fix on it, after the process it should work just fine. It could also be that the movie is larger than the filesize limit of your operating system (that's 2GB in Win9x/ME). You can try to open the file in VirtualDub and split but if that doesn't work you're basically screwed. Maybe (and that's a wild guess here which I can't verify) you could split the AVI at an arbitrary position using a general file splitter and then run DivXFix on the parts. Most likely the AVI configuration in your registry is screwed up and after adding avifile.reg to your registry things will be fine again and new files are playable.

Some movies are encoded in a really fucked up - excuse my French - way and they will look interlaced even when you play them on your computer. In these cases the only thing you can do is to run it thru a good deinterlacer (something like Smart Deinterlacer in VirtualDub).

Quartz.dll error when playing a movie

Get un updated copy of quartz.dll - use FTPSearch to find one. Then replace the quartz.dll in the windows - system directory with the copy you downloaded. Another problem seems to be the mp3 codec. If you make more than one movie without closing FlaskMpeg in between all the other files may have that error - this means among others that you can't use FlaskMpeg's splitting option I'm afraid.

Playback is choppy

MPEG-4 decoding uses a lot more CPU time than MPEG-2. Hence you should have some decent hardware under the hood. The higher the resolution the more CPU time it takes. You can lower the filtering during playback to lower CPU consumption by right clicking in Media Player during playback, select properties, advanced, select the DivX codec an press properties again. Then move the top slider to the left.

Also make sure that you're encoding at the right framerate. For instance if you have an NTSC source that has a low FILM content and you enable Force Film the output might be choppy. If you select 23.976fps in FlaskMpeg even though you have an interlaced NTSC source playback will be choppy as well.