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Xbox360 Forums => Xbox 360 General Forums => Xbox360's Multimedia Features => Topic started by: Xbox-Scene on November 08, 2006, 01:21:00 PM

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: Xbox-Scene on November 08, 2006, 01:21:00 PM

How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Posted by XanTium | November 8 15:21 EST

From joystiq.com:

Quote

Last week's Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update added support for the Windows Media Video (WMV) video codec. The feature was a welcomed gain for non-Media Center users who have been limited to photo and music sharing between their Windows PCs and Xbox 360s -- and to anyone who's longed to watch video files on 360 via a thumb drive or CD/DVD.

Unfortunately, licensing fees and digital rights concerns have limited the patch to WMV-support only.
Windows Media Center users have enjoyed on-the-fly transcoding for some time, courtesy of Transcode 360(info). While the developer says he expects "someone to knock up a transcoding solution not too far down the line" for Windows Media Player 11 and Windows Media Connect (read: not Windows Media Center), he suggests that it won't be him doing it.

So, until Microsoft adds support for more codecs or offers up an application capable of transcoding (to WMV) and streaming on-the-fly (okay, that will never happen), we're forced to manually transcode our non-WMV files into WMVs and then, if we wish to stream, point our 360s at the WMV files (on our PCs). That's the solution. Now, we're gonna show you how it's done.

Read the whole HowTo on joystiq.com

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: kidkinetix on November 08, 2006, 12:46:00 PM

Too bad, this is just a conversion guide, not a real time transcode / stream.

I like the solution though, very straightforward and no thinking involved

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: djzzib on November 08, 2006, 01:05:00 PM

Sad... I really enjoyed streaming DIVX TV episodes through the "sixty" , as my daughter called it, when I missed the airing... WMV is just blah to me.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: rasstar on November 08, 2006, 01:06:00 PM

This is great just tried it and you can begin playing before the transcoding is complete. Som eapplications would tell you the file is in use but this is nice.

QUOTE(djzzib @ Nov 8 2006, 09:12 PM)

Sad... I really enjoyed streaming DIVX TV episodes through the "sixty" , as my daughter called it, when I missed the airing... WMV is just blah to me.

What is wrong with WMV? It's the same damn quality sometimes even better. Because the videos you download is not coded with wmv that's a problem right? If you record your own shows which i doubt you do why not record them using wmv.

This post has been edited by rasstar: Nov 8 2006, 09:08 PM

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: blue_calx on November 08, 2006, 01:08:00 PM

I really wish there was a method to transcode 5.1 AC3 to 5.1 WMA...VLC won't do it and none of the other utilities will out there will as far as i know

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: kencix on November 08, 2006, 01:08:00 PM

what's the best app, to convert divx movies to wmv???

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: rasstar on November 08, 2006, 01:09:00 PM

QUOTE(kencix @ Nov 8 2006, 09:15 PM)

what's the best app, to convert divx movies to wmv???

I uses AoA DVD ripper and the quality was superb.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: xmos on November 08, 2006, 01:27:00 PM

as long as there's no folder browsing support i'll stick to my xbox 1 with xbmc anyway, finding my unlabeled media files is like finding a needle in a haystack

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: tutu on November 08, 2006, 01:47:00 PM

QUOTE

Unfortunately, licensing fees and digital rights concerns have limited the patch to WMV-support only.

1) Licensing fees = there are open source MPEG 4 codecs as well as alternative licensing options (e.g. market place purchase)

2) DRM concerns = wrong again, as we can just convert our files to WMV.

So whats the point in holding back the media codec support of the 360?

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: rasstar on November 08, 2006, 02:09:00 PM

QUOTE(blue_calx @ Nov 8 2006, 09:15 PM)

I really wish there was a method to transcode 5.1 AC3 to 5.1 WMA...VLC won't do it and none of the other utilities will out there will as far as i know

I just did a file that used 5.1 AC3 and it workd fine and I still have dolby digital on the 360. This works really well and it takes less than 10 minutes to complete a 40 minute tv episode plus you can begin playing right away.

This post has been edited by rasstar: Nov 8 2006, 10:13 PM

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: Caldor on November 08, 2006, 02:47:00 PM

Windows media encoder 9 is the best way to transcode into WMV on WMV8.9.9-AP and WMA8,WMA10P. Multithreaded too. In cases where it wont accept the source format I would use mencoder as a last resort.

The 360 uses only one thread while streaming video and in fact has two decoders - one for HD-DVD mode which is only enabled with the HD-DVD plugged in. Therefore VC-1 has to be set for specific peak and avrage bit rates and frame rates for a given resolution.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: rasstar on November 08, 2006, 02:53:00 PM

QUOTE(Caldor @ Nov 8 2006, 10:54 PM)

This works much better and faster. No time wasting setting up options. It transcodes it with the same settings as the original and they look identical. Plus with WM encoder you cannot look at the file while it is encoding.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: Bizquick on November 08, 2006, 03:32:00 PM

This is joke. MS needs to add support for DIVX. You know I bought a Dvd player that plays Divx files just cause I know one day my Xbox1 will die and I wont have a good chance of finding a replacement. And sometimes its easyer to teach my wife how to just burn the xvid files on to dvd than to explain how to use XBMC. but this honestly is a joke that we can have our old Xbox 1's actualy do more than what the new great Xbox360. if MS wanted to they could take XBMC and modifiy enough of it to work on the x360 and add it to the dash or sell it as a product. Its really sad that MS is not helping the open source just cause they want to make money off it. It makes me like the Idea of using Mac's and linux alot more.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: DMAddict on November 08, 2006, 03:35:00 PM

Like xmos, I'll just keep using my xb1 for streaming.

QUOTE(rasstar @ Nov 8 2006, 12:16 PM)

I uses AoA DVD ripper and the quality was superb.

kinda off topic ? for you rasstar, kinda not. Will AoA convert dvr-ms file to avi? I've always had a tuff time finding a good/easy converter for those file.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: mark403 on November 08, 2006, 04:44:00 PM

QUOTE(rasstar @ Nov 8 2006, 10:16 PM)

you sure you didnt just make a stereo one and *thought it was 5.1" when played on ur 360 ??
only asking because the batch file is onyl set up to create a WMV with 2 channel audio...

i tried doing this transcoding and then muxing in the 5.1 audio from the original file, (ripped out with vDubmod and transcoded to WMA with WME), with windows media stream editor but ended up with garbage.

i spend a little more time over my WMV's, 3 - 4 hours and i got an exact same quality video with the original 5.1 audio in a nice WMV format.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: blue_calx on November 08, 2006, 06:30:00 PM

QUOTE(mark403 @ Nov 8 2006, 06:51 PM)

i spend a little more time over my WMV's, 3 - 4 hours and i got an exact same quality video with the original 5.1 audio in a nice WMV format.

can you please tell me how you did this??? thanks!

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: rasstar on November 08, 2006, 07:24:00 PM

QUOTE(blue_calx @ Nov 9 2006, 02:37 AM)

can you please tell me how you did this??? thanks!

Try the program posted it transcodes really fast. Takes me less than 10 minutes and I get the same quality. For some reason I get no audio in WMP but i get audio with VLC and the Xbox.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: Caldor on November 08, 2006, 11:05:00 PM

QUOTE(rasstar @ Nov 9 2006, 08:00 AM)

Actually with WME you can watch the frames, both in and out to any combination of user preference, in real time as they convert. It is only if users choose to adopt the CLI where no GUI will be presented.

Much better than WMV9-AP? Do you have PSNR or other qualitative test data to support that claim?

Same as the original? Again do you have PSNR or other qualitative test data to support that claim? I highly doubt your using a lossless quantization matrix. Do you know what that is?

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: CarbonR on November 09, 2006, 09:27:00 AM

apparently the link for happy beggars site is down for he batch file. would anyone be so kind as to post a zip/rar file here for me or others. thx in advance.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: feflicker on November 10, 2006, 12:57:00 PM

The real reason MS$ won't allow the codecs we want is because every moron on earth is always trying to find a reason to sue MS$ because they are so huge (the potential payout is always astronomical). Plus, they have deals with movie/tv now, so I am sure they don't want to support formats that are used for piracy against those same studios (even if the codecs have plenty of other purposes--i use hacked mpg codecs, xvid, divx, etc in all my own home movies).

I don't agree with it. But I can see why they stay away from it.

Anyone that argues that WMV is better than XVID, or WMA is better than MP3, you are a moron, and you should really start learning more about codecs and a/v in general. Sure, you can say that this encoding tool is better than that one, but when it comes down to the formats themselves, no question that MS$ formats are pretty crappy in comparison...

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: Caldor on November 15, 2006, 12:41:00 AM

QUOTE(feflicker @ Nov 11 2006, 07:04 AM)

Anyone that argues that WMV is better than XVID, or WMA is better than MP3, you are a moron, and you should really start learning more about codecs and a/v in general. Sure, you can say that this encoding tool is better than that one, but when it comes down to the formats themselves, no question that MS$ formats are pretty crappy in comparison...

You are atleast correct about the legal threats MS faces.

WMV9-AP is far better than xvid, and the results of IQ testing shows I'm not a moron.

You are greatly mistaken. The mpeg4-asp generation of codecs like xvid and divx have been superceeded by VC-1 and AVC. WMV9-AP is Microsoft's VC-1 compliant codec implementation. By any measure of PSNR for example, it will show you how wrong you are when suggesting VC-1 class codecs wont compete with old tech like xvid.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: sillyboydarryl on November 16, 2006, 09:27:00 PM

5.1 ac3 file.. is basically five channels plus the subwoofer..

if you install Windows media Encoder... you'll get a codec that is called Pro (audio)....

when you do the convert.. you need to choose the professional codec.. as it encodes to 6 channels (5 plus subwoofer)

problem is.. most of the dooky programs we use.. dont support that......

very few do...

but lets just say..

I recorded my star wars HD using my HDTV pci card... and then converted it to wmvhd to watch on my 360.. and WOW...

just
W.O.W.

Title: How-To: Transcode and stream videos on Xbox 360
Post by: pig5 on November 20, 2006, 06:56:00 PM

QUOTE(sillyboydarryl @ Nov 17 2006, 05:34 AM)

5.1 ac3 file.. is basically five channels plus the subwoofer..

if you install Windows media Encoder... you'll get a codec that is called Pro (audio)....

when you do the convert.. you need to choose the professional codec.. as it encodes to 6 channels (5 plus subwoofer)
problem is.. most of the dooky programs we use.. dont support that......
very few do...
but lets just say..
I recorded my star wars HD using my HDTV pci card... and then converted it to wmvhd to watch on my 360.. and WOW...
just
W.O.W.

a batch wmv encoder, supports 5.1 wmv

http://galaxies3000.b l o g s p o t . c o m

check it out.

xboxscene.org forums

Xbox360 Forums => Xbox 360 General Forums => Xbox360's Multimedia Features => Topic started by: Xbox-Scene on November 08, 2006, 01:21:00 PM