DivX 5.0.1 Fixes Major Issues from Version 5.0

DivX and DivX Pro 5.0.1 were released as bug-fix updates for DivX 5.0, addressing many of the known issues from the previous version.

The update improved psychovisual modeling so that saved bits could be reallocated more effectively, helping the codec produce better visual quality when that mode was used.

DivX 5.0.1 also improved a workaround for a DirectShow issue where the requested bitrate was not always respected during one-pass encoding. This affected applications such as video capture tools that accessed the codec through the DivX DirectShow interface.

Several important bugs were fixed in this release. The divx.dll library now decoded DivX 3.x content properly again, resolving problems such as blank frames in applications like VirtualDub that used the VfW interface.

The release also fixed a crash related to basic deinterlace functionality on Pentium 4 processors, along with a problem where using data partitioning and psychovisual modeling together could create severe visual artifacts.

Another fix addressed purple and pink artifacts that could appear when encoding video at resolutions not divisible by 16. DivX 5.0.1 improved support for resolutions divisible by 4 or 8, although encoding at dimensions divisible by 16 was still recommended for better efficiency.

The DirectShow filter was also updated to correctly use overlay with Matrox Millennium video cards on Windows 2000.

Looking back, DivX 5.0.1 was an important maintenance release during a key period for digital video. In the early 2000s, DivX was widely associated with compressed video distribution, CD-sized movie files, and the growing popularity of PC-based video playback and encoding.

Original site: http://www.divx.com