[maverick]

Well, I figured it out!

I have been working non-stop on this the past week and I got the settings 99% accurate. There is still *minimal* frameskipping in very complex scenes, but it is nowhere nearly as noticeable as it was. Basically, 9 out of 10 scenes that were previously unwatchable now play sooooo smooooooooth!

So anyways, I realized quickly that I was getting nowhere with Handbrake. Though it's easy to use, I found that the program MeGUI rendered more desirable and more stable results every time. So, the trick was getting a skipless video, at a high resolution, at decent bitrates, with some of the more advanced settings and options of the x264 codec. MeGUI actually comes with a basic Xbox profile for encoding decent quality video, but it still suffered from skipping when at higher resolutions. After hours of cross-analyzing "scene" releases in the H.264 format, and seeing what worked and what didn't, I was able to put together a basic outline of what options and what values I needed to solve the problem. I learned a lot from my experience and I think many many people are going to benefit from my hard work, so I am here to report my results...

So, anyways, I started out by gathering up the software I needed to get the job done. I got RipIt4Me for ripping DVD's, MeGUI as a GUI for x264, x264 for encoding video, NeroAacEnc.exe for encoding audio, and AviSynth v2.5.7 for video preview. I installed everything then started ripping my DVD movie with RipIt4Me. (You can use a different program to do this.) Next, I used MeGUI's built-in D2V Creator and selected the DVD's first VOB video track that contained the movie information. I selected the audio track I wanted (usually the 6 channel AC3 or something comparable) and then queued the job and started it to produce a .d2v file. Next, I loaded my newly created .d2v into MeGUI's built-in AviSynth Script Creator. In here I autocropped the video (to remove black bars) and then applied a Resize of either 720 or 704 for the width and checked the suggested resolution box to autofill the height value. In the filters tab I analyzed my video to see if it needed de-interlacing or not. I clicked the box "On Save Close And Load To Be Encoded" and clicked the Save button, which saves my script and auto-loads it into MeGUI for me. Next it was a matter of making sure Codec is x264 and file format is MP4. Select whatever audio tracks you want and use whatever codecs you want for audio, though I recommend AAC or AC3.

That was all the easy stuff. Next came the Video Profile settings. I configured my own video profile with the following settings:

--pass 2 --bitrate XXXX --stats ".stats" --keyint 480 --min-keyint 24 --ref 5 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 4 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --nf --subme 7 --partitions all --8x8dct --vbv-bufsize 1 --vbv-maxrate 5000 --ratetol 4.0 --me umh --threads auto --thread-input --cqmfile "C:\CQM\EQM_AVC_HR.cfg" --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --nr 150 --output "output" "input"

Match those settings EXACTLY! The box in the video configuration dialog must match this exactly, so get it right and make sure CABAC is on! If you don't want to input those settings manually, just download my profile @ http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?ac...AB5000F19E. A couple variables can be changed if you want...

For Clear DVD Sources :: nr=0
For Noisy DVD Sources :: nr=150
For 23.976 FPS :: --keyint 480 --min-keyint 24
For 25 FPS :: --keyint 500 --min-keyint 25

For the EQM_AVC_HR.cfg CQM file goto: http://www.webalice.it/f.corriga/x264/eqm_avc_hr.cfg
You can alternately use Trellis=2 and not use the CQM at all, but the CQM yeilds better results.

And finally, the bitrate you set is dependant on your video resolution. This is the best way to get Xbox-compatible video at the highest resolution and bitrate possible.

Suggested Bit Rate settings based on Output Resolutions are:

720x256 - 1800 KBps 704x256 - 1909 KBps
720x272 - 1730 KBps 704x272 - 1836 KBps
720x288 - 1660 KBps 704x288 - 1763 KBps
720x304 - 1590 KBps 704x304 - 1690 KBps
720x320 - 1520 KBps 704x320 - 1617 KBps
720x336 - 1450 KBps 704x336 - 1544 KBps
720x352 - 1380 KBps 704x352 - 1471 KBps
720x368 - 1310 KBps 704x368 - 1398 KBps
720x384 - 1240 KBps 704x384 - 1325 KBps
720x400 - 1170 KBps 704x400 - 1252 KBps
720x416 - 1100 KBps 704x416 - 1179 KBps
720x432 - 1030 KBps 704x432 - 1106 KBps
720x448 - 960 KBps 704x448 - 1033 KBps
720x464 - 890 KBps 704x464 - 960 KBps
720x480 - 820 KBps 704x480 - 887 KBps

These settings are probably not perfect, but I haven't had any problems yet...

Anyways, so I saved my profile and pressed the AutoEncode button in the bottom right corner of the MeGUI main window. This brings up the Automatic Encoding window where you *MUST* set the Container to be "MKV" and you *MUST* set Size And Bitrate to "No Target Size (Use Profile Settings)". Press the Queue button and manually start the first job in the Queue tab.

That's it. It will encode audio, then two pass encode video, and then mux them together for a nice and pretty XBMC-compatible H.264 video file.

can you please repost the template for meGUI, the link at "yousendit" is dead. THANKS