How to play x264/Xvid/DivX movies on standalone DVD player?

x264, Xvid and DivX are getting more popular today. I was once really confused by DivX and XviD items. Then I did lots of search and reached some useful information below which contains the basic knowledge concerning DivX and XviD and how to play DivX and XviD movie on DVD player. Hope you will find the answer here.

Part1 Basic knowledge about DivX/XviD.
1. What are DivX and XviD?

DivX
DivX® is a digital video codec (whereas codec is an abbreviation for [co]der/[dec]oderhence describes a program to encode and decode digital video. The purpose of encoding video data is to reduce redundancies – that means to make it smaller for faster transmission over computer networks or for more efficient storage on computer disks.) that boasts high-quality viewing experience on any device or platform — from your PC to your phone to your living room TV. Over 100 million devices that support DivX video have shipped worldwide from major manufactures, including DVD players, gaming consoles, mobile phones and more. All these devices can play other MPEG-4 videos as well. The main advantage of DivX is not its quality, but the fact that you can use special profiles for portable devices when converting your videos.

XviD
XviD is another MPEG-4 video codec.

x264
x264 is an MPEG-4 AVC codec. Most portable devices can play MPEG-4 ASP videos, not MPEG-4 AVC videos. However more and more newer devices support MPEG-4 AVC videos, which are superior to MPEG-4 ASP.


2. What's the difference between DivX and XviD?
DivX is a well known video codec that is used in many video and audio recording nowadays. It has become popular, especially in ripping audio and video disc, due to its lossy MPEG-4 compression that allows it to save movies and songs in very small file sizes with very little noticeable loss of quality.

XviD, as you probably know, is just DivX written backwards. This was meant to poke fun at DivX which is the primary competitor of Xvid. Origin wise, Xvid was an offshoot of DivX’s attempt to provide an open source version of its software called OpenDivX.

Xvid is free and most professional video rippers prefer to use either Xvid or x264 to DivX. DivX is mainly popular among amateurs.

3. Why do we need DivX/XviD movies?
The DivX/Xvid Video Codec is a popular video codec. With the help of this codec, you can significantly reduce the size of your video files without much impact on visual quality. Over the past few years, DivX has developed a complete DivX codec and DivX Media format (DMF) that supports DVD and VOB. This format features multiple audio tracks and video streams, subtitle tracks, chapter points, interactive video menus and other advanced characteristics. DivX Media format hasn't become popular and most professionals use AVI, MP4 or MKV instead.

5. How to play DivX/XviD videos on PC?
With the VLC player, you can enjoy your DivX/XviD multimedia files quickly. The player directly supports the common video and audio you will find in DivX/XviD files, such as DivX/XviD video itself, AC3 audio and MP3 audio, all without the need for DirectShow filters or special codec to be installed.

Part 2 How to play DivX/XviD movies on standalone DVD player?

The first thing you should do is to check to determine if your DVD player supports XviD and/or DivX® playback. If your DVD player supports XviD and/or DivX® playback then you simply need to burn the movie to a DVD and it should play right away. Watching a DivX/Xvid movie on your TV or on the go is easy with a DivX Certified® device. To make sure your device can play DivX video, look for the DivX logo on your product or in the product manual.

Please note that not all DivX videos can be played on a DivX Certified device, the file needs to be converted to DivX using special profile for standalone players.

How to burn DivX/XviD movies to DVD Disc and play them on standalone DVD Player?

Step 1. Download and install a Video to DVD Burning Software.
We recommend 3 popular DVD Maker software here.
DVDFlick, ImgBurn, Microsoft Windows 7 DVD Maker (NOTE: Windows DVD Maker is included in Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Ultimate, find it in Start -> All Programs -> Windows DVD Maker.)

DVDFlick is a freeware program that can convert DivX/Xvid and many other video files to DVD-Video discs.

Note, that you lose quality when converting DivX/Xvid files to DVD-Video discs.