I just learned that a new version of DivX (version 6) is available when I found a file on BitTorrent that mentioned DivX6 in the filename. Fortunately, the file uses the fourcc DX50 which implies that the bitstream syntax is the same as the previous version. Version 6 of the encoder likely features general improvements to the encoding engine but packs the data into the same bitstream (which is apparently compatible with ISO MPEG-4). The DX50 data decodes fine with FFmpeg.
Yearly Archives: 2005
Truly Cheesy FMV
In my multimedia research I have purchased a lot of used video games and investigated a lot of full motion video (FMV) formats. Some of the material is beyond appalling. But I have finally found the cheesiest FMV of all:

Quite good, too.
Open Source QDesign Is Here!
A significant milestone in open source multimedia: A group of highly dedicated and talented multimedia hackers has successfully reverse engineered the QDesign Music Codec (fourcc: QDM2) and released an open source decoder implementation. As usual, it is a piece of the FFmpeg project and the source code is available in the FFmpeg CVS repository, just waiting to be plugged into any libavcodec-using application. Be sure to pass the proper extradata through to the decoder.
There are very few QuickTime files that can not be played using open source software.
Thanks to all the folks who were involved in this effort: Ewald Snel, Benjamin Larsson, Alex Beregszaszi, and Roberto Togni.
Final Fantasy Fanboys Rejoice!
Kostya has ironed out the details of the Duck TrueMotion 2 video codec format and finished the FFmpeg decoder. Now it is possible to natively decode all 100+ AVI files on the PC version of Final Fantasy VII:

Check out the FFmpeg CVS repository.