Xvid (formerly "XviD") is often a video codec library pursuing the MPEG-4 standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features for example b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi masking, trellis quantization, and H.263, MPEG and custom quantization matrices.

Xvid is really a primary competitor with the DivX Pro Codec. As opposed with the DivX codec, and that is proprietary software put together by DivX, Inc., Xvid is free software distributed underneath the terms of the GNU Average person License.This shows that unlike the DivX codec, that's only accessible for any small group of platforms, Xvid can be utilized on all platforms and systems that the original source code may be compiled.

XviD is not a movie format. Since XviD uses MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) compression, any video that is certainly encoded from it is termed "MPEG-4 ASP video" - not "XviD video" - and may therefore be decoded wonderful MPEG-4 ASP compliant decoders. This includes a large number of media players and decoders, particularly all of the ones in line with the free/open source libavcodec library from FFmpeg.

XviD encoded files may be written into a CD or DVD and took part in a DivX compatible DVD player. However, XviD can optionally encode video with advanced features that a majority of DivX Certified set-top players do not support. Files encoded with global motion compensation, Qpel, MPEG quantization, multiple B-frames or files that exceed the VBV limitations may well not play back properly on DivX Certified hardware devices.