What if my video doesn't play?

How come my DivX phone won't play all my videos?

DivX Mobile phones and DivX Mobile Player will play DivX Mobile videos created by DivX software. There are many other video file formats which might play fine on your computer but cannot play on your phone. Make sure you have a DivX Mobile video.

How come when some videos play there's no picture or it's jerky or there is no sound?

DivX Mobile phones play DivX Mobile videos. If your video was not created using the DivX Mobile profile then it is probably too large or too fast for your phone to keep up. You may need to convert your video into a DivX Mobile video to ensure smooth playback on your phone.

I got a video from a random stranger. They claim it's a DivX file but it won't play. Is my phone broken?

Despite claims to the contrary, the video you have is probably not a DivX Mobile video. You should convert the file into the DivX Mobile profile using DivX software.

How come I can play the video fine on my computer?

Your computer is much faster than your phone and it includes support for many video and audio formats. Your phone probably only supports MPEG4 video and MP3 audio in an AVI file. It is very common to find other audio/video formats in AVI files. Just because your file ends in ".avi" doesn't mean it's a DivX Mobile video or even a DivX video at all. It may contain incompatible audio and/or video.

What do I do with my incompatible videos?

You can use DivX Converter or Dr. DivX to convert almost any video into DivX Mobile format. The DivX Converter is easy and robust while Dr. DivX supports more formats and offers more options.

Almost all my encoding is done using Dr. DivX or Virtual Dub but these tools require a significant amount of expertise to ensure good results. On the other hand, almost anybody can use DivX Converter so it's usually my first recommendation.

How come when I use XYZ video converter to make DivX files they still don't play on my phone?

Many video converter or editing programs falsely claim to make DivX videos. Often they use alternative encoders like Xvid, FFMPEG or MEncoder rather than genuine DivX software. For the best results, use DivX Converter, Dr. DivX or DivX Author. Make sure you use the "Mobile" profile setting.

What is the "Mobile Profile"?

Some details have been posted in this forum. See http://labs.divx.com/node/7601#comment-9613 for example.

What's the difference between DivX hardware and software?

DivX video is compressed and it takes powerful algorithms to decompress the video and then decode it into the series of pictures you see that make up a video. Usually, the decompression and decoding is done by specialized hardware built into your phone. DivX Mobile Player on the other hand is a software solution running on general hardware. This means DMP will probably require more battery power during playback and probably cannot play videos as well as a DivX certified phone.

DivX Mobile Player is beta software available for a limited time only. DivX Mobile Player will expire. DivX certified devices will not.

What's a VBV model? (There be dragons here.)

The Virtual Buffer Verifier model is very important to ensure your videos play back on your phone. Again, DivX video is highly compressed. During playback, your phone reads some compressed video and then decompresses it into a temporary buffer. The buffer is then decoded and displayed on your screen. Inside the buffer, the video is decompressed so it is very large. It also takes a lot of time to move all that data into the buffer. Ideally, all phones would have a very large and very fast buffer, but there are practical limits. DivX software takes these limits into consideration when creating your videos to ensure the videos are compatible with your phone. The limits are the VBV model parameters. All DivX Mobile phones must have a buffer at least 655360 bytes large and 600 kbps fast.

If you use a different profile or use non-DivX software then the VBV model will not be correct. The resulting video may play mostly fine on your phone but then stutter or pause at some points when the real video buffer on your phone cannot keep up. To avoid this, DivX software will reduce the quality of some scenes as needed to ensure that the buffer on your phone is never exceeded.

Remember, your phone is required to have at least 655360 bytes and 600 kbps. That's the minimum but many phones exceed those minimum requirements. This means that you can often push beyond those limits and create higher-quality videos for your phone. However, such non-standard videos might not play well on some other DivX phone.

Usually, I don't care about other phones so I will often create large, high quality videos for my phone even though those videos would choke DivX Mobile Player (for example).