I'm new to all this and I've been scouring around looking for video editing stuff on the net. (Rather than actually learning the basic kit I've actually got! Typical?)
Anyway I got the DivX codec (3_11 alpha) from somewhere and some time later unzipped it and installed it.
The next time I went to open the much praised
freeware editor, VirtualDub, I got a very stern warning to the effect that I had a
dangerous, unstable and hacked codec on my sytem.
A contributor (Hendrik) to another thread mentioned that DivX is hacked. Yet there are often links - on these messsage boards and elsewhere - to it. So what is its status and
why was VirtualDub warning me against it?
(A question for another time: what do people use VirtualDub for?)
Thanks for any enlightenment.
Hi NNSW,
Yes... as i think I may have mentioned before DivX is an improved version of the MS Mpeg4 codec.
Specifically... MS put in some things to stop it working properly and the DivX guys kindly took them out again for us.
So, technically, its a hacked codec. The guys at DivX would not deny this. That does not make it dangerous or illegal (note: the MS codec and DivX are both free).
VirtualDub has to put out this message because those kind folks from Redmond leaned on Avery Lee and he is still at college and can't afford to hire lawyers to tell them where to get off.
Ignore the message.
Peter