Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"DivX has released DivX 7 for Mac which is a free download that provides everything you need to enjoy high-quality digital videos on your computer, including high definition H.264 (.mkv) videos with AAC audio and videos created using all previous versions of DivX technology."

This is optimized for Mac OS X 10.4, and is a free download. The download includes 6-month trial of DivX Pro Codec and a 15-day trial of DivX Converter. Purchase price is $19.99 USD and you get full versions of both. The DivX site has more info on the download as well as how it all works.

"When Techspansion closed its doors in October of last year, there were hordes of individuals clamoring for a slice of easy video-conversion pie to fill the void in their now-empty hearts. Many did not find consolation in the fact that Handbrake supported universal input within a scant two months. An application that offers every configuration option available is all well and good for many fine folks; but there are some of us that want this type of thing to be simple. What I and others desired so greatly was a video-conversion app for the rest of us -- and that application was VisualHub. "

It appears the author may have found his simple video-conversion app. I have used Visual Hub in the past to convert files for my PSP, but when I started using the iPhone and my Apple TV, I switched to Handbrake pretty exclusively. My main reason, to be honest, was simplicity. I don't have a lot of experience converting video so it needed to be simple for me to use it effectively. Video Monkey, although inspired by Visual Hub, was written in Cocoa and seems to be just that simple to use. The bonus is that it also supports H.264 encoding as well as Dolby surround tracks for the Apple TV. I may have to give it a try just to see how it compares to Handbrake.