What is the best format for xbox 360 extender & converter?

[bob808]

I have a fully working mediacenter but am adding a couple of xbox extenders into the mix and they don't like my mkv files very much. I had a look around and a number of older posts suggest m2ts file format instead of mkv - is this still the best practice.

Also, what's the best programme to convert to m2ts (or whatever the recommended format is) without losing any quality? I have a lot of tv series and movies in mkv so being able to setup on a bulk process and leave it to it would be great.

[Shackleford]

I use mkv2vob to remux to m2ts. It will allow you to add an entire folder as well. However Xbox won't play full bitrate blu ray rips well without some kind of compression.

[bmblank]

I don't have any blue rays, but on my dvds i use handbrake to compress video_ts folders to mp4 (m4v) files. Video quality is still pretty good considering it'll compress a 5 gig videots down to 500 Meg.

[bob808]

Thanks, I have started using mkv2vib and so far so good

[skwayb]

To get the best results with functional FF/REW on the Xbox Extender, you need to convert the content to WTV or DVRMS format. You can use other formats like mp4, mkv, etc as long as you have the correct codecs on the Media Center but the Xbox Extenders can only handle so much bitrate also and only AC3 audio (no DTS, no HD Audio).

Here is a good post on extenders. http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=8&t=4744


The specs listed below are a little outdated as the Xbox360 can do 1080p at 14Mbps and use AC3 (Dolby Digital 5.1) audio for a total bitrate of 15Mbps. But we are pushing what it can do so it can get pixelated with any network issues for a few seconds and then go back to normal. If your network is gigabit and your mediacenter is an i3 or higher you will probably never see this happen but once in a blue moon.

Here is what I wrote - It seems to work better if you have a gigabit network to get this to play correctly even thought the Xbox only has 10/100 connection.

First off remember MKVs are just a container for a codec. So you can have just about any format in it. Also, make sure you don't have too many reference frames. Or it will not play smoothly on the Xbox. Make sure you don't go more than the 4.1 Profile for encoding. Use mediainfo and see how many reference frames the MKV has. If it is more than 1, it will run poorly on the Xbox.

I re-encode all of my Blu-Rays to h.264 1080p with a combined total bitrate (audio and video) of 15 Mbps using a 4.1 Profile. Plays smooth 99% of the time. (unless temp. network issue). The official H.264 Bitrate is 10 Mbps on the Xbox but I find that 15 Mbps works fine. I use RipBot264 to re-encode the Blu-Ray to an H.264 MKV and encoding the Video at 14336 kbps and encode/convert the Audio to Dolby Digital at 640K since Extenders don't support DTS (Passthru usually is too high bitrate and puts you over 15 Mbps) That will get you an MKV at 15 Mbps. Since I am playing these on Extenders, I usually then convert the MKV to the WTV container format using DVRMS Toolbox. They play a lot better on the Extender and have better ff/rew plus Thumbnails for seeing different sections of the video when you are ff/rew. But you can leave them as a MKV if you don't care about that.

Here are the official list of supported Codecs and bitrates.
AVI support
◦The Xbox 360 console supports the following for AVI:
◦File extensions: .avi, .divx
◦Containers: AVI
◦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: Dolby® Digital (2 channel and 5.1 channel), MP3
◦Audio max bit rate: No restrictions

H.264 support

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.

WMV (VC-1) support

The Xbox 360 console supports the following for WMV:
◦File extensions: .wmv
◦Containers: ASF
◦Video profiles: WMV7 (WMV1), WMV8 (WMV2), WMV9 (WMV3), VC-1 (WVC1 or WMVA) in simple, main and advanced up to level 3
◦Video bit rate: 15 Mbps with resolutions of 1920 × 1080 at 30 fps.
◦Audio profiles: WMA7/8, WMA9 Pro (stereo and 5.1), WMA Lossless
◦Audio max bit rate: No restrictions

[jerky33]

It's not pretty, a bit like making sausage, but the result is media file that I find plays back excellently on 360 extenders.

For Blurays
Requirements:
-AnyDVD HD (from slysoft.com, pay)
-RipBot264 (from http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127611, free)
-DVRMSToolbox (from http://babgvant.com/files/folders/dvrms ... 20437.aspx, free)
-(Optional) BDInfo (from http://www.cinemasquid.com/blu-ray/tools/bdinfo, free)
-Optional Media Update - installed on 360's to be used as extenders
-Shark007 codec package - installed on WMC PC (HTPC) (from shark007.net, free)

(I prefer use my desktop PC to generate the video files then copy them to my HTPC after the fact.)
Install AnyDVD HD to allow the Bluray you are going to copy to rip to be decrypted hence removing the copy protection and allowing RipBot264 to have full access to the M2TS files.
If you're not sure what M2TS files include the movie in question use BDInfo to scan the Bluray disc and view results.
Once you've directed RipBot to the correct M2TS file and have selected the proper video stream set the video quality mode to CQ (Constant Quality) and the CRF value to 19, then set the Audio Profile to 5.1 Aften AC3 384 kbps [cbr] if you would like to normalize the audio set that option here as well.
Update the output file accordingly and ensure that the file type is .mkv then click Done.
(You can also burn-in subtitels if necessary, but I'm not going to get into that here.)
Execute the RipBot job, once completed you'll have a bluray quality mkv file with 5.1 Dolby Digital audio.

This file as it is will look great on a PC that has Shark007 installed on it but will play poorly on any media center extender, if it plays at all.

Finally I use the todvrms.exe file included in the DVRMSToolbox to convert the mkv to a wtv file using a bat file (shown below).
Copy the contents shown below into a text file and save it as a .bat file, then update the 3 lines with the folders listed in them (lines 5, 7 & 8)
to the proper installation folder for DVRMSToolbox (may not need to be updated if you are running a 64-bot OS and installed the app to default directory) as well as the input and output folders for your movie files.
Then run the batch file and enter the file name of the .mkv file you wish to convert (as noted in the batch file do not include the file extension.

Once in wtv format copy the file to the WMC/HTPC machine (I store my TV and movies on a local 3TB HDD).
You should now have a file that will look great and playback great on both the WMC PC and any 360 extenders connected to it.

-------------------------------------------MKV to WTF Batch file (Copy below this line)-------------------------------------------
echo off
color 1f

c:
cd "\Program Files (x86)\DVRMSToolbox\Applications"

set Path2Input=c:\MovieWorkFolder\TranscodedMovies\MKV's
set Path2Output=c:\MovieWorkFolder\TranscodedMovies\WTV's
cls

echo.
echo.
echo __ __ _ ____ __ _
echo ^| \/ ^| ^|/ /\ \ / / ^| ^|
echo ^| \ / ^| ' / \ \ / / ^| ^|_ ___
echo ^| ^|\/^| ^| ^< \ \/ / ^| __^| / _ \
echo ^| ^| ^| ^| . \ \ / ^| ^|_ ^| (_) ^|
echo ^|_^| ^|_^|_^|\_\ \/ \__^| \___/
echo.
echo __ ___________ __
echo \ \ / /__ __\ \ / /
echo \ \ /\ / / ^| ^| \ \ / /
echo \ \/ \/ / ^| ^| \ \/ /
echo \ /\ / ^| ^| \ /
echo \/ \/ ^|_^| \/
echo.
echo.
echo Enter name of MKV file to convert to WTV
echo Do not include the .MKV at the end of the file name
echo.
echo.

@REM This prompts you to enter the name of the movie file that you would like to convert.
set /p movie=
cls

echo.
echo Attempting to convert MKV to WTV
echo.
echo Movie is %movie%
echo.
echo Please Wait...
echo.
echo.

todvrms.exe "%Path2Input%\%movie%.mkv" "%Path2Output%\%movie%.wtv" -v -wtv -w 20

echo.
echo.
echo Ensure that no errors were reported by ToDVRMS
echo.
echo Enjoy!!!
echo.
echo.
pause
-------------------------------------------MKV to WTF Batch file (Copy above this line)-------------------------------------------

[foxwood]

This file as it is will look great on a PC that has Shark007 installed on it but will play poorly on any media center extender, if it plays at all.

Finally I use the todvrms.exe file included in the DVRMSToolbox to convert the mkv to a wtv ...
You should now have a file that will look great and playback great on both the WMC PC and any 360 extenders connected to it.

Is the ToDVRMS job just swapping containers? (I'm guessing that it is, and therefore it only takes a few minutes to run).

Do you need Shark007 installed to play the converted WTV file? (I presume you don't)

Does the WTV file play on other extenders, such as the Linksys DMA2x000? (I'm guessing that it won't, because of bugs in the Linksys code that prevent it playing h.264 content in WTV containers, even though it can play the content when it is swapped to a different container, but it would be interesting to know for sure).

[jerky33]

Is the ToDVRMS job just swapping containers? (I'm guessing that it is, and therefore it only takes a few minutes to run).

Correct that the ToDVRMS process is only changing containers and does not transcode the media streams in the file, with that, it does only take a matter of minutes to convert even large movie files (10-20GB).

Do you need Shark007 installed to play the converted WTV file? (I presume you don't)

It's been a while but if I remember correctly I did need to install Shark007 on the WMC PC for the files to playback properly on both PC and 360. I could be wrong but I've always installed it as a matter of course. :/

Does the WTV file play on other extenders, such as the Linksys DMA2x000? (I'm guessing that it won't, because of bugs in the Linksys code that prevent it playing h.264 content in WTV containers, even though it can play the content when it is swapped to a different container, but it would be interesting to know for sure).

I don't have any experience with any extenders other than Xbox 360's so I can't say for sure, but if what you say is true I would guess that they won't play as they are H.264 based wtv files.

Let me know if these answers make sense or not.

[foxwood]

Do you need Shark007 installed to play the converted WTV file? (I presume you don't)

It's been a while but if I remember correctly I did need to install Shark007 on the WMC PC for the files to playback properly on both PC and 360. I could be wrong but I've always installed it as a matter of course. :/

I'm pretty sure that you don't need to have Shark installed to watch WTV recordings in countries that use h.264 for HD broadcasts. I thought Shark was only being used to split the .mkv file, and it shouldn't be needed for the same conent in a .wtv container.

Does the WTV file play on other extenders, such as the Linksys DMA2x000? (I'm guessing that it won't, because of bugs in the Linksys code that prevent it playing h.264 content in WTV containers, even though it can play the content when it is swapped to a different container, but it would be interesting to know for sure).

I don't have any experience with any extenders other than Xbox 360's so I can't say for sure, but if what you say is true I would guess that they won't play as they are H.264 based wtv files.

Let me know if these answers make sense or not.

Sure. But I'd be interested to see if anyone with a Linksys Extender can confirm that the .wtv files produced in this process don't work. I don't have a copy of AnyDVD HD, so I can't check myself (though I suppose I could grab an MKV file from somewhere else and test it).

[barnabas1969]

I haven't used this exact process to convert them, but I have tried converting Bluray movies to a WTV file with H.264/AC3 encoding and a variable bit rate around his constant bit rate. They play OK on the HP (with clunky skip/FFWD/RWD), but were very unpredictable on the Linksys. I haven't tried a constant bit rate. I'd like to give his method a try. Not sure when I'll have time though.

[jerky33]

Just to be clear, I'm using constant quality, not constant bitrate, in turn it creates a variable bit-rate file. 2-Pass encoding will create a file with a fixed bit-rate and a more predictable size but tends to show more compression artifacts during scenes with large amounts of action. Again I'm using CQ 19, default is 20, lower value results in higher quality video, but I've found there are diminishing returns when lowering this setting below 19 where the files are significantly larger but the video is not obviously of higher visual quality. CQ 19 in my experience renders files virtually the same quality as Blu-ray, and when converted to wtv with ToDVRMS I'm able to smoothly playback, rewind, forward including thumbnail preview while skipping forward and back on both my HTPC and 360 extenders.

Here is a YouTube video showing playback.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWIdYur ... ata_player
This is on my media center PC, but I have the same experience on my 360's.

[Z3R0]

Am I just behind the times on file formats? I've been converting all of my movies to WMV for the fact that there is no upper limit to the video bandwidth and I've been streaming to my xbox 360 with no issues/artifacts noticable on my 60". I've been converting with Expression Encoder using the K-Lite Mega codec pack. Added bonus is that the Xbox handles all of the decoding, offloading any streaming load off of the PC. I've even found that Expression has already been able to handle 4k video.