xvid codec?
 

I tried to play an .avi and it didn't recognize the format. it said it was (XVID) does anybody know what divx codec that is specifically?

the xvid codec :D
no really, thats an open source divx codec,

you can find it in the SLD codec pack.
search google for it.

Uhh, don't let them hear that! Open Source is true.

DivX and XVid are both MPG4 codecs and the (try to) obey certain standard specifications to be MPEG4 compliant! Saying that it means that practically you should be able to play back any MPG4 encoded stream with any MPG4 decoder (remember coder + decoder = CODEC).
Actually you can use XVid decoder to properly play DivX videos. Vice versa I'm not quite sure, for XVid is under heavy development with changes nearly on a day basis (dev-branch) it's not 100% stable. You can find both a stable and a developer build at http://www.roeder.goe.net/~koepi/.
BTW, it has an amazing quality, give it it a try and encode a little video stream!
Another way is to install ffdshow which is able to decode a lot of different formats, not only MPG4. Also it has stunning postprocessing capabilities, which are definitely useful in case you have a low bitrate 1 CD DVD-Rip!
You can find it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow.
Just download the 2003-01-03 build. Though it's in alpha state it's working very well and you will hardly encounter any problem. Under
codecs tab check corresponding box if you want to decode with XVid (second checkbox from the left) instead. This way you merely use the postprocessing features. Play around.
I hope this explains it. :!:

what shouldn't they hear ?
am I wrong with the xvid codec?

could be ! I only pretend to know something :P

well, XVid is Open Source, and it's got something to do with DivX.
Once upon a time :wink: DivX 4 was an Open Source project, called Project Mayo. One day DivX Networks Inc. closed the source and released DivX 4. Still for free, but no longer as Open Source. Next step was selling DivX 5. The XVid project is based on the last Open Source source files of Project Mayo. And the Sigma MPEG4 codec is, hm, "based" on the XVid sources, "based" because they changed the copyright, a big amount of work... :evil:
To come to the point, saying "XVid is another Open Source DivX codec" is not exact. "XVid is another Open Source MPEG4 codec, based on early sources of DivX 4" is more specific.

BTW, I've encoded a lot of videos with XVid last summer and changed the FourCC to divx, and DivX played all of them.

MFG
Marcel