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[IntensityInTenCities]

Hi guys,

I've just spent 3 hours trawling various sites, trying out many different conversion programs and searching forums for a way to convert an avi file containing a h.264 video stream to an avi that the 360 can play.

Annoyingly, Dattebayo who sub Bleach have started releasing their episodes in this format, and after reading many forums I've discovered that a fair few fansubbers release avi with h.264 inside, as most PCs can play this but of course the 360 can't.

I cannot find any program that will convert the h.264 video stream to divx, Xvid or mpeg4.

Anybody got any suggestions on how I could do this, or any programs that they know definitely do this?

So far I've tried (and failed) with:

AlltoAvi
Avidemux
Windows Movie Maker (hahaha)
AviRecomp
AutoGK
SUPER
Nero Recode
VirtualDub

Any help would be appreciated. I long for the day Microsoft embrace all formats in all containers...

[Scan-C]

First make sure your computer can play the video. If you don't have a DirectShow compatible h264 codec installed you won't get anywhere. Then drop the file in super.
Select the container format (avi), the video codec (xvid or divx) and audio codec (mp3).
For the encoder select ffmpeg.
Get the scale size right for your video with a tool like gspot and set it up in super.
In the Audio settings select 44100Hz and set the bitrate to 128.
Now tick the DirectShow decode box in the upper right and finaly click encode.

[hardcandy]

MPEG 4 and H.264 are the same thing.

"Looking from the MPEG side the standard is called MPEG-4 Part 10 (ISO 14496-10), looking from the ITU side, it is called H.264 (the ITU document number), by which the format is widely known already".

"The Spring 2007 Dashboard update for the Xbox 360 adds H.264 playback support. H.264 is a very advanced video codec used in Blu-ray/HD DVD, and offers better quality and smaller file sizes than DivX/XviD, at the cost of slightly more processing power (and encoding time). Processing power becomes less of an issue with the powerful Xbox 360, and since the Xbox 360 does not support DivX/XviD (and is unlikely to do so), H.264 then becomes an ideal format for those that don't want to use WMV."

It is probably your PC that cannot play it.

This guide shows you how to convert DVD/AVI/DivX/XviD/MOV files to H.264 video for Xbox 360 compatibility

Video Digest

Have you tried TVersity?
Tversity site

[IntensityInTenCities]

Thanks for the replies.

It does play on my PC, and I have all the relevant codecs, so that's not a problem.

I put it though Super again per Scan-C's instructions, to be faced with a error that says that file is damaged. I had a brain wave and realised that there was every chance that the avi's file name (which was quite long) was causing a problem.

I shortened it and put it through Super again, and it works. Thanks again Scan-C!

hardcandy - that press release you quoted is really quite old - the 360 plays DivX & Xvid files now (as I'm sure you are aware). Strictly speaking whilst MPEG-4 part 10 is another name for the raw H.264 video stream MPEG-4 is also the name of the container that a H.264 stream can be placed in. This container is also the only container (and therefore filename extension) that the Xbox 360 will read H.264 data from. Hence, I wanted to convert the avi container to an MP4 container if I couldn't convert the stream.

Tversity was great until the 360 supported Divx/Xvid, then I switched to sharing using WMP 11.

Thanks again both of you for your help. I'm annoyed with myself that it just turned out to be a file name length problem in the end. It is often the simplest things that cause the biggest problems!

[hardcandy]

I'm glad it was something simple that didn't involve several hours of processing video.