Maximum Bitrate for M2TS MPEG2 & AC3 with extenders

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TheOsburnFamil

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Maximum Bitrate for M2TS MPEG2 & AC3 with extenders

#1

Post by TheOsburnFamil » Thu Jan 10, 2013 1:43 am

Gang, I'm looking for some insight on m2st containers with mpeg2 & ac3. I keep reading tons of info that the Xbox extenders can handle it natively w/o any codec or splitter installs and on the media center extenders.
Yet, every bd rip I've tried the past two days results in pretty bad choppy playback. Is there some special trick to this that I'm just missing? Are any of you using m2ts for you bd rips and playback on extenders? If so, what's your process?

Thanks!
Matt O. ...tivo what? ...dish dvr--uh... huh? ...cable dvr fees--you're kidding, right?

masonstorm1979

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#2

Post by masonstorm1979 » Tue Feb 12, 2013 1:55 pm

Your best bet is to rip to MKV and then use DVRMSToolbox to change the container over to WTV format. The process takes around 10mins a film depending on hardware and provides full native playback of content on Xbox 360. The container WTV can handle MPEG2 and H264 MPEG 4 content with AC3 (Dolby Digital) audio. It gets a little bit more complicated if you have content with DTS audio but it can still be done.

If you need any help with this let me know. Trust me it works a treat and I convert all none compatible content into this format. I don't bother with AVI, MP4 and WMV as they can be played natively anyway.

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TheOsburnFamil

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#3

Post by TheOsburnFamil » Tue Feb 12, 2013 10:30 pm

I would love some further insight here. While I'm onboard with the notion of the WTV container-- I don't see how you're able to do non-reencoded video. Even if you strip out the HD audio and just use AC3, a native bluray with mpeg2 or h264 will have WAY higher bitrates then an extender can handle. If it's just a single HTPC, sure-- no problem. But when you have a headless HTPC and all you use are extenders, bitrate becomes the limiting factor.

The best I have yet to come up with is MPEG2/AC3-->WTV. As long as the MPEG2 stream gets re-encoded to around 15MB bitrate.

I'd love to hear how you're doing it if it's different though!
Matt O. ...tivo what? ...dish dvr--uh... huh? ...cable dvr fees--you're kidding, right?

lithium630

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#4

Post by lithium630 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 2:51 am

Why are you using mpeg2? All my movies are H264 WTV file and play flawlessly on the Xbox and Echo. I keep the bit rate at 10k

barnabas1969

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#5

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 7:05 pm

What do you guys recommend for transcoding DTS to AC3 in an MKV file? Any free options?

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#6

Post by jagrime2 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 8:03 pm

I abandoned previous software and have been using MakeMKV to rip blurays and then transcode using Handbrake for playback on my extenders (the setting I use converts the video to H264 MPEG 4 and the audio to AC3). I keep the original native MKV file for playback on the HTPC to get full 5.1/7.1 audio using passthrough. I only have 20 or so blurays but this seems to work well using xbox extenders, however I wasn't able to play any of them properly on my Echo . I have since returned the Echo so I am not sure if new firmware has corrected the playback issues.

....
Meant to mention that I previously used DVDfab to rip and transcode with mixed results (using the Xbox profile). Sometimes the files would be to large depending on the movie (over 5GB) and wouldn't playback properly on the xbox extenders. I have found if my file size is under 4GB I have no problem with playback as long as I am using the proper codec.

barnabas1969

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#7

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:00 pm

jagrime2 wrote:I abandoned previous software and have been using MakeMKV to rip blurays and then transcode using Handbrake for playback on my extenders (the setting I use converts the video to H264 MPEG 4 and the audio to AC3). I keep the original native MKV file for playback on the HTPC to get full 5.1/7.1 audio using passthrough. I only have 20 or so blurays but this seems to work well using xbox extenders, however I wasn't able to play any of them properly on my Echo . I have since returned the Echo so I am not sure if new firmware has corrected the playback issues.

....
Meant to mention that I previously used DVDfab to rip and transcode with mixed results (using the Xbox profile). Sometimes the files would be to large depending on the movie (over 5GB) and wouldn't playback properly on the xbox extenders. I have found if my file size is under 4GB I have no problem with playback as long as I am using the proper codec.
OK, care to share your MakeMKV and Handbrake settings/script/whatever?

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#8

Post by lithium630 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:36 pm

barnabas1969 wrote:What do you guys recommend for transcoding DTS to AC3 in an MKV file? Any free options?
I just started using Popcorn for that. Someone suggested it in another thread and so far its been great. It's very easy to use.

http://www.videohelp.com/download/AC1876.ZIP

barnabas1969

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#9

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:55 pm

lithium630 wrote:
barnabas1969 wrote:What do you guys recommend for transcoding DTS to AC3 in an MKV file? Any free options?
I just started using Popcorn for that. Someone suggested it in another thread and so far its been great. It's very easy to use.

http://www.videohelp.com/download/AC1876.ZIP
Cool. Does it have a command line interface?

lithium630

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#10

Post by lithium630 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 10:44 pm

I've been using the GUI. I'm not sure if it supports command line.

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jagrime2

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#11

Post by jagrime2 » Thu Feb 14, 2013 7:49 pm

barnabas1969 wrote:OK, care to share your MakeMKV and Handbrake settings/script/whatever?
MakeMKV I use default settings. On Handbrake, I use the High Quality settings and uncheck the large file size box -- this may be the same as the normal setting??. The settings down convert all audio to AAC and H.264 video. Everything is placed in a mp4 container and play fine over the network.

I used to use Auto Rip n Compress but had some issues with and have started doing the conversion manually (I don't rip many movies).

Also from the Xbox website it states that the max bit rate for H.264 support is 10 Mbps verse 5 Mbps for MPEG-4.

The Xbox 360 console supports the following for H.264:
File extensions: .mp4, .m4v, mp4v, .mov, .avi
Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime
Video profiles: Baseline, main and high (up to level 4.1)
Video bit rate: 10 Mbps with resolutions of 1920 × 1080 at 30 fps
Audio profiles: AAC, 2-channel, Low Complexity
Audio max bit rate: No restrictions
MPEG-4 Part 2 support

The Xbox 360 console supports the following for MPEG-4:
File extensions: .mp4, .m4v, .mp4v, .mov, .avi
Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime
Video profiles: MPEG-4 Part 2 (Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile)
Video bit rate: 5 Mbps with resolutions of 1280 × 720 at 30 fps
Audio profiles: AAC, 2-channel, Low Complexity
Audio max bit rate: No restrictions

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