XviD to 3ivx then back to XviD (Packed Bitstream removal problem)

I want to remove packed bitstream (Please turn if off by default as release groups are using it without realising it making some stand alones b0rk!) I do my usual graphedit to 3ivx MP4 then back to AVI which strips out packed bitstream. However. When doing this the resulting AVI still has 3ivx as FourCC and decoder. If I uninstall 3ivx then playing back the AVI results in a blank screen. XviD will not playback 3ivx either. I want the AVI as it was before but without packed bitstream and nothing else. Any ideas? BTW just changing the FourCC to XvID makes no difference on the decoding issue.

Nevermind. MP4UI does it properly. If you use Graphedit to mux a 3ivx MP4 file back to an AVI file I noticed that it does not rewrite all the tags that tell the decoder that it's an XviD file. It leaves it set as 3ivx instead which means only 3ivx plays the file (Even though it was encoded in XviD). If you then uninstall 3ivx the video refuses to play as there is nothing there to read the 3ivx tags in the AVI file. MP4UI appears to rectify that.

Hmm. MP4UI writes the correct AVI FourCC and decompressor tags but breaks something in the process. The video is super jerky. :/

OK this gets even weirder. It appears the jerkiness is introduced after packed bitstream is removed and only when playing back with XviD's decompressor. Using ffdshow and there is no jerk. XviD is a fussy and annoying bloody codec! EDIT: Oops! Yeah just read the reply. You are correct of course.

btw its not xvid 2 3ivx 2 xvid, its always mpeg-4 what you do here is removing avi hacks ;) and another point when wanting to reconvert to avi: untick the "compress n-vops option" in the 3ivx muxer, cause this can create variable framerate streams in mp4, which are not possible in .avi (will lead to sync issues) - check if the input and ouput avi have the same framenumber to be sure

I did some tests last week with GraphEdit de-muxing known XviD and 3ivX streams out of an MP4 container to an AVI container. When I checked the AVI's 4CC with Gspot they were both described as being mp4v. May I ask someone to confirm which Mpeg4 encoders offer packed bitsream encoding and which ones don't. As far as I know: - DivX - does but does not give you an option of not using it. XviD - does but does give you the option of not using it. 3ivX - not sure FFvfw - not sure I wonder if it's worth the time and effort creating some kind of bar chart listing the current functions and features of the most popular Mpeg4 codecs? Cheers

Maybe someone could create a utility that switches off the packed bitstream information that XviD writes. It's a pity that one cannot use the XviD decoder to play mp4 files (except when one remembers to switch off pb before encoding).

About the pb utility, I was thinking more along the lines that one of the XviD team would do that :) About ffdshow vs. XviD, I'm having some colors mismatches in ffdshow. Part of it was due to MPC, but I still find XviD rendition closer to the original. I have not, however, player with all the switches of ffdshow to bring it to my liking... So, yes, it's my fault ;)

What iDCT did you use in ffdshow? Was it something other than "XviD"? If yes, try with iDCT="XviD" (in the "Miscellaneous" tab). But probably you knew that already...

@SeeMoreDigital: actually my Xcard doesn't complain about packed bitstream because the 3ivx muxer strips them from the final .mp4 file :) The problem arises when I try to watch the file in my computer using the XviD decoder. @Jawor: thanks for the tip. I'm still messing around with ffdshow. LigH gave exactly the same suggestion yesterday.