I've been experimenting with OGM for my movies and now convinced to dump using AVI. But I saw that DivX and QuickTime 6 support the MPEG 4 file format. Was wondering which was better to use? OGM or MP4?

Last time I checked divx player wasn't capable of aac audio playback, besides they've dropped mp4 export feature in encoding section...
QT isn't best solution for mp4 playback as well, IMO, at least for windows.
But mplayer handles mp4 just perfectly, besides using movix ( http://movix.sourceforge.net/ ) you can produce bootable multimedia cd's, isn't it fun?

Can't say which one is better to use, I would personally prefer mp4 from those though (I do actually), except you can't put chapters/subs in it like you can do with ogm, AFAIK, at least with current implementations.

Personally, i'd go for OGM. The ability to use Vorbis audio, chapters, and subtitles are why OGM is my preferred container format. (You could give Matroska a look as well )

Edit: Grammar

True. I personally suggest using the 3ivX MP4 splitter filter + the CoreAAC direct show filter + ffdshow. Works perfectly here.

I personally would choose MP4 over OGM. There are already some hardware set top boxes supporting MP4 (Kiss, etc.), while I hear no plans of supporting OGM.

Besides, MP4 is being rumoured to be the format of choice for the new generation of DVD-HD movie discs. (that explains Sony supporting AAC on their newest Home Theater Receiver)

MP4 may be the format of the future, but without a real editing program any video container is in fact hard to use ...

Same here untill recently.
Now it's mplayer. And it is 'feel the difference' (all caps).
Why hassle with ds when you can get pure ff?

Matroska wasn't mentioned in original post (somehow), but it also better choise than ogm already, methinks.
I'm experimenting both actually, no regrets so far.

I'm enjoying OGM movies (Xvid and Vorbis or dts) with different languages, subtitles and the possibility to burn 800MB on one CD using XCD.

I am currently using OGM with DivX and Ogg Vorbis. I tried using MP4 with DivX and aac but couldn't get it to work? Does anyone know of any step by step instructional sites which I can go through?

I'd believe that there will be mp4 editing programs in the near future.
You were at some point talking about mp4->matroska->mp4 utility, so that free software could be used to edit the stream in matroska form and then change it back to mp4. Any idea when such a conversion tool could become available?

First make sure you have the 3ixv mp4 splitter and CoreAAC filter installed.
I created MP4 with Nero AAC multichannel audio like this:

- DVD2AVI -> .avi (video)+.ac3 audio

- Besweet with BeSweetGui: use ac3-decoder, compress dynamic range, output to 5.1 aiff (or 5.1 wav, but then you need the special wav.dll Nero plugin from Rarewares). You may need to adjust the audio delay in besweetgui.

- Encode the 5.1 wav or aiff with Nero AAC with some vbr profile to .mp4 file.

- Download the the new MP4UI: First load the .mp4 audio and then add the .avi video. MP4UI may give some message that MPEG visual object stuff is missing (don't remember now exactly), just accept to add it and make sure MP4UI optimizes the stream.

Now you should have a working audio/video mp4 stream.

Something like VirtualDub would be good...

3ivx? Why not DivX or XviD???

Eeh, the 3ivx MP4 splitter filtter is just a splitter, which "splits" the mp4 stream to video and audio so that directshow aware players can understand and play the .mp4 content. Then you can use specific directshow filters to playback the streams, for example CoreAAC can be used to handle the aac audio stream.

Really sorry !

I was thinking of something else while readying your post.

Anyway, would it matter if I used XviD or DivX for the video if I wanted the mp4 files to be playable in external players for the future?

The first step is already done and could be released soon .... we have the first 'native' MPEG4 mkv files playing, including AAC audio.

2nd step was now that Cyrius modifies VirtualdubMod such that it can not only handle unknown audio mkv files for editing, but also unknown video formats ( for VdubMod, being a VCM/ACM based tool a matroska 'native' MPEG4 stream is an unknown format ). No idea how difficult this was to do, and if we could at least get some kind of preview working ( keyframes only ), by using the VCM codecs from DivX or XviD for decoding

3rd step was then a MKV reader/parser for mp4creator .. i talked to Bill May of CISCO already about this and he would be happy to have the ability in the tool he said, but nobody in te team can do it for the time being, so he invited us to add this ourselves, and send him the patch. Not really on the top of our priority list, but as soon as chapters and audio switching from the DSF are done, we are a bit more flexible

I keep you updated ....

No. (Almost) all MPEG-4 capable players that can decode DivX should decode XviD as well.

Unless you have an advanced profile XviD.. I don't think many (if any) hardware decoders can decode advanced profile DivX or XviD at the moment.

I just extracted a dvd to vob and a3c files. I converted the a3c 5.1 to wav 2 channel. I tried playing it in foobar and got an error???

I then tried converting it to aac and got an error.

The strange thing is, I can convert it to Ogg and mp3 with no problems and will even play in foobar.

Does anyone know why the wav file will not play and why I can't convert it to aac???

edit

the wav file playes in winamp 2.91 and realplayerone

I converted the 5.1 ac3 to 2 channel wav with headac3he-0.23a

Does anyone know if the quicktime mp4 files will work with the mp4 container with divx movies?

e.g. muxing the audio and video with mp4ui!