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"Is there any program that can import XviD video clips and combine them to make one video from several smaller videos without losing quality?"

Virtually any video editing application will let you combine several video clips into one larger video. The downside is they almost always recompress the video, which makes it look worse than the individual clips did before you started. One of my favorite tools for combining AVI video clips without any recompression is VirtualDubMod. The only trick to making sure you don't recompress the files is to make sure they are all encoded with the same settings to begin with.

To make this tutorial work, you need to download VirtualDubMod and unzip it.

Combining Files with VirtualDubMod

After opening VirtualDubMod, open the first clip of your series of video clips from File > Open video file or drag and drop the clip on the VirtualDubMod window. In some cases, VirtualDubMod will recognize consecutive clips and import them all, but this doesn't always work so you may need to do the next step and add the clips manually.

Next, choose File > Append Segment to add the next clip in the sequence to the end of the first clip. Repeat this step as many times as necessary to import all clips.

When you have all clips added to the VirtualDubMod timeline, go to the Video menu and choose Direct Stream Copy from the menu.

This is the setting that keeps VirtualDubMod from recompressing your video, which will help maintain the existing image quality of the video.

Finally, choose File > Save As, name the combined movie, and click Save. The whole process should be reasonably quick and the quality of the movie should look the same as the original.

With the December 4, 2007 update, Xbox 360 now directly supports streaming DivX AVI movies from your desktop. All you need is Windows Media Player 11 or the Zune software. I personally prefer Windows Media Player 11, because it also supports playing back Amazon Unbox videos on the Xbox 360.

Here's what you need to do to configure your computer to share video, music and photos with your Xbox 360. Make sure your Xbox 360 is turned on and connected to your home network before beginning.

Download DivX Web Player
Create an embedded DivX Video

DivX has long been a popular movie download format, but streaming DivX video online was never really possible. DivX Web Player solves this problem by providing a browser plugin to stream video inline. Unlike past DivX efforts that hit Windows first and often take some time to filter into the Mac community, DivX is coming out of the gate with support for browser playback on both platforms simultaneously. The DivX team makes it easy to setup, providing a simple Web form where you paste in a link to your video, put in the width and height and they generate the code for your Web page. The first time someone watches an embedded DivX movie, they need to install the browser plugin, but after that, they are good to go. If you're simply interested in watching streaming DivX content online, you can download the plug-in so your computer is already prepared when you first encounter embedded DivX.

Todd writes, I am running WinXP Media Center 2005 Edition SP2 on my P4, 1GB Ram, home machine. I recently did a Windows Update and part of that was to update Windows Media Player. I was using Version 10 already, so it was just a small update (but, if recall correctly, it was classified as "critical"). After the update, WMP would no longer play .avi files in color...only in black and white. It handles everything else just fine. Media Player Classic, VLC, BSPlayer, and Nero Showtime all handle the files just fine. I am using FFDshow for most of my codecs and I can find nothing wrong there nor can I find a way to rollback that particular WMP update.

It shouldn't require a Windows Media Player rollback in order to fix your problem. In all likelihood, this problem doesn't impact every AVI file on your system, only ones using a common codec like DivX or XviD. Sometimes updates to Windows Media Player disrupt the way a specific codec is addressed by Windows Media Player and you need to re-install that codec in order to return things to normal. These are generally third-party codecs not officially supported by Windows Media Player with their own custom integration with the player. Before proceeding you need more information.

The first step in solving your problem is to download the codec information application GSpot. This will provide detailed information about specific AVI files impacted by the problem. Open one of the files with GSpot and make note of the codec information provided.

After determining which codec is associated with the quirky AVI file, download the latest version of the codec and re-install the specific codec to solve the problem.

This solution will also fix video playback with no audio, as well as fixing video playing back upside down.

DivX MCE Hack

One of the big gripes everyone has about using an Xbox 360 as an extender for Windows Media Center edition is lack of DivX support. If you can't live without your DivX movies, one solution is to convert them to WMV, which makes them available as part of your compatible media library. Another solution is to use the Brains N Brawn hack to convert DivX files on the fly and stream them to your Xbox 360 using Media Center Extender.

You need some basic understanding of Windows Media Encoder to make the hack work and there are a handful of installation files required, but if you follow the included directions, you'll be streaming DivX movies to your Xbox 360. With any luck, someone will write a plug-in to do this more automagically in the near future. If you can find the right codecs, this could work for other incompatible formats as well.

Tim asks, "I watch a ton of movies from the Internet and most of them have this annoying DivX Video logo in the bottom corner. Is there anyway to get rid of that logo without redownloading or re-editing the files?"

By default every movie encoded using Dr. DivX or the newer DivX Create Bundle displays a watermark during the first few seconds of playback. In theory this is great free advertising for DivX which introduces a bunch of new eyes to their encoding product. Who knows if it actually works. Occasionally that watermark gets in the way of things like subtitles but it's generally harmless. If you're annoyed by it, DivX offers a fairly simple method for making it go away.

For versions 5 and 6 of the DivX codec, you find the watermark configuration in the same location. From the Start menu, choose All Programs and navigate to:

DivX > DivX Codec > Decoder Configuration Utility

To disable the watermark in DivX version 5, check the box next to Disable Logo on the Quality Settings tab.

For version 6 it's necessary to uncheck the box next to Show DivX logo watermark on the Toolbar tab.