1) Playback Controls

Submitted by kristafromvista on Tue, 06/24/2008 - 18:35

Playback controls & features

The basic playback controls for opening and watching your videos in DivX Player allow you to pause, fast-forward, and rewind or stop playing your video at any time.

In the Normal Mode Video Display, the playback controls are located below the media view where your video plays. In Full Screen Mode, you can show the playback controls in a small pop-up window by clicking anywhere on the playback screen. In Compact Mode the playback controls do not display but you can use Keyboard Shortcuts to control playback.

You can choose to play your video in DivX Player two ways. The first is to locate the file on your computer and choose to open it with DivX Player. If DivX Player is your default program for your DivX files, double-clicking the file name will automatically open DivX Player and begin playing the video. If not, you can right-click the file name; select "Open with…" and choose DivX Player from the list. If DivX Player is already open, you can simply drag and drop the file from its location to the DivX Player GUI.

The second way to play your video in DivX Player is to open the program first, either through the desktop shortcut or your Start menu. Then go to the File menu and select Open, or click the ‘open’ icon in the playback controls bar (to the right of the volume control slider). An Open box will open for you to find your file on your computer. Select the file, click 'OK', and then select Play to watch the video.

New and improved: Trickplay

New to DivX Player 7 is a feature called Trickplay that gives you a faster, more frame-accurate ability to seek during playback of your videos.

Previously, after fast-forwarding or rewinding with the seek bar during playback, your video may have stalled or choppily transitioned to the nearest key frame in the video rather than the exact point where you stopped seeking. This sluggish interruption of your viewing experience has become nearly undetectable in DivX Player 7.

High Definition H.264 and AAC (.mkv) playback

With DivX 7 comes new technology that enables playback of DivX Plus HD videos. DivX Plus HD is a new DivX video profile for MKV files containing high definition H.264 video and surround sound AAC audio. This means even better HD video playback in DivX Player and other DirectShow-based media players (for example, Windows Media Player and Real Player).

For more information on H.264 and why it has been added to DivX 7, take a look at our “What is H.264?” FAQ. Or, for some history and more technical details on how DivX has tested and developed our implementation of H.264, check out the Project Rémoulade page on DivX Labs.

MKV files

DivX Player will be able to play back H.264 video and AAC audio within the MKV file container (no audio-only files). The DivX Plus video profile in DivX 7 software also includes the DivX H.264 Decoder filter and the DivX MKV Demux filter. These DirectShow filters extend playback support for .mkv files with H.264 video streams to all DirectShow-based media players in addition to your DivX Player 7. (Note: The DivX MKV Demux filter does not override any other MKV file splitters installed.)

MKV is a file container that may contain a variety of formats, but most .mkv files contain H.264 video with AAC or MP3 audio. H.264 video in an AVI container can also be played back in DivX Player 7 as it can play back .mkv or .avi files with H.264 and AAC, but .mkv files containing other video or audio formats are not supported.

What’s new about DivX Plus HD Playback?

In addition to the ability to watch awesome high definition video, some of the exciting new technical improvements supporting H.264 in DivX 7 for Windows include:

  • High-performance H.264 video decoding with support for Baseline, Main, High, High 10, and High 4:2:2 profiles, full interlace support, real-time handling of interlaced H.264 video, multithreaded decoding on up to 8 CPU cores and optimizations for MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction sets.
  • Multichannel AAC (LC/HE) decoding
  • Support for .mkv files including:
    • Multiple audio tracks for multilingual audio, directors commentary or isolated musical scores
    • Multiple subtitle tracks for multilingual subtitles
    • Ordered chapters for chaining .mkv files together during playback
    • Support for .mkv file splitting with DMF Demux at a low merit
  • Initial support for SSA and ASS subtitles which can either be stored within the .mkv file or externally
  • Fast frame-accurate seeking