[rollins215]

Cranial, yeah, I think you're right. I did a couple of SD DVD's using other software in the past to encode to x264 in an mkv file that played beautifully on the XBox. I haven't been able to get an mkv file with 720p material to play well though other than if I sacrifice quite a bit of quality.

[babanoosh]

Nope. No more AVI. Well, in the Mac version anyway, but pretty sure it's across the board.

Basicaly they're saying, AVI is a dead container.

The rls. scene begs to differ

[Cranial]

The rls. scene begs to differ

THEY'RE saying, not I'M saying

But mkv is a much better container. Multiple audio streams. Multiple subtitle streams. Ability to add camera angle options.

So has anyone given my settings a good going over?

Be good to get some feedback so I can adjust accordingly for the next revision.

[Geeba]

Not really a handbrake user... but I'm needing to convert some MP4 to Xbox friendly rates... would you be able to save your settings as a preset I could import it? I have the GUI version and dont really know what I'm adjusting

[babanoosh]

Not really a handbrake user... but I'm needing to convert some MP4 to Xbox friendly rates... would you be able to save your settings as a preset I could import it? I have the GUI version and dont really know what I'm adjusting

that would be nice.

[Cranial]

Not really a handbrake user... but I'm needing to convert some MP4 to Xbox friendly rates... would you be able to save your settings as a preset I could import it? I have the GUI version and dont really know what I'm adjusting

Okay.

Here is my current version (For Mac GUI):

Handbrake Preset 0.9.6

This is encoding using AC3 Pass Through.

If you encode audio to AAC or MP3 you will need to lower the video bitrate or resolution . I don't do this, so up to you to adjust accordingly.

Keep total encoded pixels below 290,000.

So - 720x400 = 288,000 / 720x576 = 414720

With standard 16/9 encodes this will be fine.

With older or 4/3 encodes I''d suggest doing a single chapter test first to make sure the xbox is happy with it.

Let me know how it goes for you, be good to get feedback on issues.

[Geeba]

Sweeeeet - I'll test tonight!

[sion28]

Handbrake dropped XviD with their latest release. Now you can ONLY encode x.264 with Handbrake, which means I'm not going to use it, since the xbox needs XviD or DivX encodes in order to play 720p HD files nicely.

I guess I'm stuck with XviD on megui. Wish megui supported DivX!

[burog]

Now you can ONLY encode x.264 with Handbrake

sion28, I suggest you to read the whole thread before writing this kind of things.
Or maybe you could just take a look at Handbrake, and you will see that there is an "mp4" encoding option that is different from the H264 one.

With that you can still have 720p files on Xbox, as explained by rollins215 in this thread. The quality is obviously not the one you will get with H264 on a Dual Core machine, but it's acceptable.

[rollins215]

Yeah, the mp4 quality looks about as good as what I was getting with avi in the old Handbrake. I've got no real complaints.

[DenverNEWBie]

Let me know how it goes for you, be good to get feedback on issues.

I tried it both ways. One didn't have sound but that might have been me
The mkv file I created worked fine, using about 81% CPU using the settings you suggested.

John

[rollins215]

Well, keeping up with this thread lead me to decide to tinker a bit.

I tried some other ways to convert a 720p x264 MKV file of a TV episode to something that the XBox could play well and still keep the original resolution (1280x720). I had done this before with the old Handbrake where you could create AVI's and found the sweetspot for creating an AVI that played well was 1500 kbps average bitrate. Any more than that and I was getting dropped frames. I was however not doing the AC3 passthru and I suspect that might be why I was limited.

I discovered that with the new version, if I use the AC3 passthru option and the MKV container, but the MP4 video codec, I get excellent results! Interesting, if I use the m4v container, it works but mplayer has no sound. With MKV, I get sound using both players. Anyway, I tried higher and higher bit rates and am getting great results with no dropped frames. I stopped at 3250 because that was the point where the file size was up to the same size as the original MKV file.

Anyone know if 3250 is overkill?

[Cranial]

I discovered that with the new version, if I use the AC3 passthru option and the MKV container, but the MP4 video codec, I get excellent results! Interesting, if I use the m4v container, it works but mplayer has no sound. With MKV, I get sound using both players. Anyway, I tried higher and higher bit rates and am getting great results with no dropped frames. I stopped at 3250 because that was the point where the file size was up to the same size as the original MKV file.

Anyone know if 3250 is overkill?

Give Constant Quality a go.

I've had success re-encoding 720p files.

Container: MKV
Codec: MPEG-4 (FFMPEG)
Constant Quality 90% QP 4
Audio: AC-3 Passthru
Video Size : 1280x720

Anyone used my x264 settings yet? Working okay?

[Captain_Glen]

Handbrake dropped Xvid support which means your boned if you want to play files on an xbox running xbmc.

I have converted to OGMRip on Ubuntu. You can get OGMRip for pretty much any linux distro. I prefer it to handbrake.

Unfortunately OGMRip is not cross platform, which means you will have to find something else for mac and windows.

You could always run ubuntu in a virtual machine with virtual box.

[Cranial]

Handbrake dropped Xvid support which means your boned if you want to play files on an xbox running xbmc.

Okay, not so happy with this statement. It's kind of generic, and a lot short sighted. Read the thread, try the options, there's other non xvid worlds out there.