Killer Codec Raises the Bar for Internet Video Quality

Can Divx, the scrappy independent company with the highly efficient video codec, help revolutionize not only the way video content is distributed, but how it’s created?
Co-founder and CEO Jordan Greenhall thinks so. On a post-IPO visit to New York, Greenhall stopped at the Film & Video offices to pitch his vision of a Divx-enabled media future. Greenhall is hoping that Divx compression, combined with new content portals like the company’s Stage 6 initiative [stage6.divx.com], can help the next generation of content creators effectively develop and promote their own skills – and network in an accelerated way with people who need their services on a given movie or music video project.
Stage 6 is sort of like YouTube, but using the Divx codec instead of Flash video. Content creators upload their movies, and members of the community can watch them and leave comments. Greenhall says the site is all about “creating engaged content brands” – meaning that if your own content is compelling, the Stage 6 audience will start to value you as a content creator. “You need to build your personal brand,” Greenhall says. “What do you do, and what do you do well? You need to focus on using tools and services that enable you to have as much forwardness as possible. If you’re behind the scenes, it’s hard to create your personal brand.”

Random clips viewed at Stage 6 are light years ahead of their generally lower-resolution, artifact-riddled YouTube counterparts. Greenhall envisions everyone from cinematographers to VFX artists using the service to post showreels and generate interest in their own work, perhaps eventually incorporating a system of “reputation points” that would allow users to filter their searches according to a given craftsperson’s stature in the online community. Greenhall thinks it could be a way for professionals in production and post to explicitly promote their best work, and connect to clients who value their specific skills and sensibilities. “Your reputation is going to be tied to you in a very clean way,” he says.

Divx is still best-known for its codec technology, but Greenhall noted the company is split down two distinct paths. The “Ox” group is engaged in licensing the technology. But the “Tiger” group is organized around Internet strategies like Stage 6, as well as a recent deal with online image repository Photobucket.com to add Divx-encoded video to its own content mix.

Despite outsider status in the consumer electronics world, the company is having some luck pushing adoption of its technology. In the third quarter, Greenhall said, 20 percent of all DVD players sold in the U.S. play Divx files. (In the more Divx-friendly European market, the numbers are much higher – he claimed 96 percent of DVD players sold in France during the same time period were Divx-enabled.) And the company is having limited success adding Divx video-recording capability to still cameras, with Pentax and Casio offering models that allow “hours of DV-quality video” to be recorded in the Divx format.

Greenhall believes one important hurdle is changing the way consumers and (especially) content owners think about media. Specifically, he says it will take time to change the attitude of movie studios and record companies so they’re not placing as much importance on physical media and are instead concerned with managing purely digital access to movies and music. “It’s a transformation of the fundamental economy of content,” he argues.