MPEG-2 to DivX Converter

Convert MPEG-2 to DivX: What This Page Covers

This is a walk-through for people holding DVD-era MPEG-2 footage — a .mpg/.mpeg/.mpeg2 program stream, usually ripped from a disc or pulled off a set-top recorder — who need it in DivX so a DivX-certified living-room player will read it off a USB stick or a burned disc. DivX began life as an implementation of MPEG-4 Part 2; DivXNetworks was founded in 2000 and released OpenDivX on 15 January 2001, and the codec spread because standalone players started shipping DivX decoders years before they shipped H.264 ones.

Two things about this particular conversion trip people up, and both are covered below: the output arrives with a .divx extension rather than .avi, and the quality slider on this page is not the x264-style CRF slider it looks like.

How to Convert MPEG-2 to DivX

1. Upload Your MPEG-2 File: Drag the file onto the page or click "Add Files." Several clips can be queued and they all run with the settings you pick.
2. Choose a Rate-Control Mode Under File Compression: Open Advanced Options. Quality Preset is the safe choice and opens on Very High (Recommended); Constraint Quality and Specific file size are the two modes worth switching to, for the reasons in the walk-through below.
3. Set Resolution or a Time Range (Optional): Video resolution starts on Keep original. Preset Resolutions sets height only, Width x Height sets both, and Trim takes a Start time plus a Duration if you only want one segment.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: Which Rate-Control Mode to Use

The Video Codec list on this page offers DivX and nothing else, which means every rate-control mode you see is being applied to an MPEG-4 Part 2 encoder. That encoder does not use the 16–51 CRF scale that H.264 and H.265 use — it uses a qscale from 1 to 31 where lower is better quality, and the slider under Constant Quality and Constraint Quality is labelled "CRF" even though it is driving that qscale. Do not carry an x264 habit across: a "23" that would be a sane H.264 default is near the bottom of a 31-step qscale.

The short version: leave it on Quality Preset, or move to Constraint Quality and set both the slider and a Max bitrate. Moving the Constant Quality slider on its own will not change your output.

Rename the Output Before You Try to Play It

The file you download is named .divx, and the bytes inside it are an AVI — the RIFF/AVI structure Microsoft introduced in 1992, carrying an MPEG-4 Part 2 video track. It is not the later DivX Media Format container. Most software players ignore the extension and play it anyway; most hardware players do not, because they enumerate files by extension. Renaming clip.divx to clip.avi costs nothing and fixes the majority of "my player doesn't see the file" reports.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The player lists no files on the USB stick" — rename the download from .divx to .avi, and keep the filename short and ASCII. Old players often index only 8.3-style names on FAT32.
• "Moving the quality slider changed nothing" — you were on Constant Quality. Switch to Constraint Quality and fill in Max bitrate, or use Quality Preset.
• "Horizontal comb teeth on motion" — your MPEG-2 is interlaced, which is normal for DVD-Video. Nothing in this pipeline deinterlaces, so the field structure is re-encoded exactly as it arrived and the combing is baked into the DivX file. Deinterlace in a desktop editor before uploading if you need it gone.
• "The picture is squashed or stretched after resizing" — anamorphic 16:9 DVD material stores 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL) with a display flag rather than square pixels. Any resize here rewrites the pixel aspect to square, so the flag stops rescuing the shape. Set Width x Height explicitly instead: 854x480 for NTSC 16:9, 1024x576 for PAL 16:9.
• "Output dimensions are one pixel off what I typed" — the encode uses 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, where each chroma sample covers a 2x2 block of luma, so odd widths and heights are rounded to the nearest even number.
• "The 5.1 soundtrack came out in stereo" — the Audio Codec default for this target is MP3, which is a two-channel format. Pick AC3 (or DTS/EAC3) from the Audio Codec list if the disc's multichannel track matters to you.

MPEG-2 and DivX Side by Side

If you are modernising a library rather than feeding one specific old player, convert MPEG-2 to MP4 instead — H.264 in MP4 is more efficient than MPEG-4 Part 2 and plays on phones, TVs and browsers that will never touch a .divx.

When This Doesn't Work

Two situations fall outside what a re-encode can fix. Commercial DVDs are usually CSS-scrambled, and a scrambled VOB will not decode here — the disc has to be decrypted before it becomes a file worth uploading. And multi-angle or multi-program discs sometimes produce program streams whose timestamps restart mid-file; those decode as a short clip or a stalled duration. Remux such a source to a clean single-program file first, then convert. If the goal is only to shorten the clip, trim it with the video cutter before converting rather than trimming twice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my converted file end in .divx instead of .avi?

Because the target format on this page is DivX, and the extension follows the format name. The bytes inside are an AVI container holding an MPEG-4 Part 2 video track, so renaming the file to .avi is safe and is what we suggest before copying it to a hardware player. Nothing inside the file changes when you rename it; you are only changing what the player's file scanner sees.

The quality slider says CRF but goes from 1 to 31 — which end is better?

Lower is better. That range is an MPEG-4 qscale, not the H.264 CRF scale, so 1 is near-lossless and 31 is heavily compressed. We do not recommend relying on wherever the slider happens to open — set it deliberately, and set it in Constraint Quality (which also asks for a Max bitrate) rather than Constant Quality, because Constant Quality does not currently deliver the value to the encoder on this codec.

Will DivX be smaller than my MPEG-2 file?

Almost always, and often by a large margin, because the two codecs were designed a decade apart. DVD-Video allows MPEG-2 video up to 9.8 Mbit/s, and discs frequently sit in the 4–8 Mbit/s range for standard definition; MPEG-4 Part 2 reaches comparable standard-definition quality at a fraction of that. The exact ratio depends on your source bitrate and the preset you pick, so treat "a lot smaller" as the expectation and Specific file size as the control if you need a number.

Will this play on my old DVD player?

Only if the unit is DivX-certified — look for a DivX logo on the front panel, the remote, or in the manual. Certified players were built to read MPEG-4 Part 2 video in an AVI container from a disc or USB port. Players without that logo may still read Xvid, which is the other common MPEG-4 Part 2 implementation, so MPEG-2 to Xvid is worth trying if DivX is not listed.

Does converting to DivX fix the interlacing on my DVD rip?

No, and no conversion here does. There is no deinterlacing filter anywhere in this pipeline, so an interlaced MPEG-2 source is re-encoded with its fields as they are and the comb artefacts stay in the picture. This is worth knowing before you re-encode a whole disc: if the combing bothers you, deinterlace first in a desktop tool, then upload the deinterlaced file.

What happens to the DVD's 5.1 audio track?

The Audio Codec dropdown on this page opens on MP3, which carries two channels, so a multichannel source has to be reduced to fit it. If you want to keep a surround track, choose AC3, EAC3 or DTS (DCA) from that list before converting — those are the same families DVD-Video uses for its own soundtracks. If your source has several audio tracks, only one is carried over; ffmpeg's automatic stream selection picks the audio stream with the most channels, and breaks ties by lowest index.

Can I keep the exact 720x480 or 720x576 DVD frame size?

Yes — leave Video resolution on Keep original, which is where it starts. That preserves the stored pixel grid exactly. What you should not do with anamorphic widescreen material is resize by preset or percentage, because scaling rewrites the pixel aspect ratio to square and the 16:9 display flag no longer corrects the shape. Use Width x Height with the square-pixel equivalent (854x480 or 1024x576) if you need a resize.

Should I use DivX at all in 2026?

Only if a specific device demands it. DivX solved a problem — fitting a DVD onto a CD-R and playing it on living-room hardware — that H.264 and H.265 solved better afterwards. If your playback target is a phone, a smart TV, a browser or an editor, MP4 is the right output and the conversion is one page away. Keep DivX for the certified player that will not read anything newer.

Are my files private during conversion?

Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is shared or made public. Because the work happens server-side, the practical limit on a long DVD rip is upload time rather than anything on your machine.