Fixing Broken Xvid/DivX on Linux
I got a broken Xvid file that locks up all imaginable Linux-based movie player at the 47th second (yep that’s Totem-Xine, Xine-UI, MPlayer, and VLC). Based on my belief that the file is only partially broken and my desire to watch the movie right away I went out to find a Linux-based Xvid/DivX fixer.
A Synaptic search for DivX or Xvid only shows up library packages. None of them talks about fixing broken files. Then I went to Google and found DivFix. It should run on Linux with some extra libs from Borland (download provided). It runs but segfaults whenever I try to do anything useful with it. Too bad.
More googling sent me to *gasp* DivFix++ which is supposedly a complete rewrite of DivFix. I downloaded the pre-compiled Linux binary but it won’t run! Silly me since I didn’t read that the authors only provides a 64 bit binary and no 32 bit version. I tried the source but compiling from source just isn’t my cup of tea. The final solution… I downloaded the Windows version which *surprise surprise* ran almost flawlessly under Wine.
Unfortunately all DivFix++ did was trim the file up to the 47th second. The file was really broken :(
The point of this post is that I’m rather surprised how hard it is to find a DivX fixer application for Linux. I used to think that there lies a powerful Linux-based DivX command line utility somewhere on the net. Its kinda sad that my solution is actually running a Windows app under Wine. Anybody knows about a good Linux-based DivX/Xvid utility?
solaris 
It’s better now, supports x86 & 64bit and both RPM and DEB package. And fixed files are good. :)