Is it possible to encode an ATV2 friendly H.264 avi with VirtualDub?
#1
Hello there,

Long time XBMC user here, finally got around to replacing my original XBOX XBMC setup
with an Apple TV 2, running the latest 5.1 software, jailbroken with SeasonPass and XBMC Eden 11.0 installed.

Kudos to XBMC and FireCore team for easy jailbreak, setup and a gorgeous new
version of XBMC to play with.

My main use for XBMC is to stream music, pictures and home videos, via a wired connection
to a Dlink DNS 321 NAS on my trusty 100Mbps wirted network, mounted via SMB. nothing fancy.

I have a bunch of SD home videos on MiniDV which I capture and encode with VirtualDub.
I really like the quality I get using the built in x264 encoder to produce H.264 AVC Avis at around
3500Kbps. Unfortunately VirtualDub does not do AAC encoding so I end up using Mpeg 2 for
audio (shows up as mp3 audio in XBMC)

Much to my chagrin XBMC on ATV2 doesn't play these H.264 encoded APIs smoothly.
I was hoping to get hardware accelleration, but lookng at the 96% CPU usage obviously
I'm not getting it. Considering these are SD I'm surprised how choppy they are, to the
point of being unwatchable. I know the avi's are good as they play fine on the PC I encode them on.

I can get acceptable playback from the same videos encoded with Xvid, but not perfect (still drops
a lot of frames) and not as high quality to my eye. My network is fine as I am able to play
back pretty much any SD video smoothly on my old XBOX install, which is sitting on the same
switch, using SMB. Also I don't have Firecore's Media Player installed.

So my question is it possible to tweak the x264 and or audio compression settings in VirtualDub to get ATV2 to use
hardware accellerated playback? Here's the mediainfo and xbox.log of my H.264 avi:

General
Complete name : D:\Users\Mantown Admin\My Videos\2012-04-NYC\h264\NYC-April-2012.12-04-19_19-04.00.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 33.0 MiB
Duration : 1mn 13s
Overall bit rate : 3 787 Kbps
Writing library : VirtualDub build 32842/release

Video
ID : 0
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames
Codec ID : H264
Duration : 1mn 12s
Bit rate : 3 500 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.338
Stream size : 31.2 MiB (95%)
Writing library : x264 core 115 r1947kMod b5a8ad7
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x13 / me=umh / subme=7 / psy=1 / fade_compensate=0.00 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=3 / sliced_threads=1 / slices=3 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc=abr / mbtree=0 / bitrate=3500 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00

Audio
ID : 1
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Mode : Joint stereo
Codec ID : 55
Codec ID/Hint : MP3
Duration : 1mn 13s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 32.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 1.67 MiB (5%)
Alignment : Split accross interleaves
Interleave, duration : 34 ms (1.01 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 500 ms

And here's my xbmc.log of opening and playing the video:
[url=http://pastebin.com/mB1kMBTq
]xbmc.log[/url]

Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Colin
Reply
#2
not to be rude or anything like that, but maybe you should go to an encoder forum with this question.

if you want a Atv friendly encoder for H.264 (x264) i suggest you use Handbreak
Image
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#3
don't stick h264 in an avi Smile mkv's are best.
Reply
#4
davilla: could you tell us why exactly ? im a codec noob for that matter, but i like to avoid any pitfalls when i can Big Grin
Reply
#5
a five second google yeilds
http://blog.dvdfab.com/avi-vs-mkv-which-is-better.html

A good tutorial How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
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Is it possible to encode an ATV2 friendly H.264 avi with VirtualDub?0