Everything you wanted to know about MPEG-4 / DivX, but were hesitant to ask Part 2
Codecs
A codec (co dermatomyositis dec oder) is an encryption method and application for recording video data in a file, eg AVI, and decrypting the information, respectively, for playback of already recorded AVI files.
The most popular today is the commercial DivX codec. The non-commercial XviD competes with it (respectively, the name is the reverse spelling DivX).
Containers
During the widespread adoption of Windows 3.1x, Microsoft created an AVI container to store synchronous audio / video data. AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave. AVI is a container format that can contain compressed video / audio data using different codec combinations. So if MP3 and JPG files are obtained using only one type of data compression (MPEG Audio Layer 3 and JPEG), then the AVI file can contain several types of compressed data (for example DivX for video and MP3 for audio) . All AVI files look the same “on the outside” (they have the extension .AVI), but “on the inside” they can differ significantly.
A long time has passed since the creation of AVI, and today it is the most popular format for presenting videos. The rise in popularity was largely due to the advent of DivX.
MKV is less popular than the AVI container format. It got its name from the abbreviation of the Russian word “Matryoshka”, which symbolically reflects the principles of his work. The main advantage of MKV is its total openness. MKV has a number of advantages over AVI, however, according to the latest information, DivX Networks, which is a leader in the development and promotion of new formats, plans to use a new container, which will still be built on the basis of AVI.
History of MPEG
MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) is the name of a group of ISO experts that develops standards for encoding and compressing audio and video data. Standards prepared by the committee receive the same name.
The first to appear on the market was the MPEG-1 standard. It was developed in 1992 to compress video to CD-ROM and formed the basis for Video-CD. The quality parameters of the video data processed by MPEG-1 are in many respects similar to ordinary VHS video, therefore this format is mainly used when it is inconvenient or impractical to use standard analog video media. The format has become widespread in Asia and has seriously replaced VHS devices.
In the MPEG-2 standard, compared to MPEG-1, multi-channel sound was added, image resolution was increased, and encoding quality was improved. As a result, MPEG-2 has become widespread in the DVD and satellite broadcasting industry.
MPEG-3 was supposed to be the new standard, but in the end it only slightly expanded the capabilities of MPEG-2.
