Xbox 360 now supports x264?

[Unrealistic]

I don't have MKV spitter installed nor have I ever heard of it to be perfectly honest. Not sure what problems you guys had under 64 bit, but as I said, I just did three things to do this. I have to be on 64 bit as I have 12GB of RAM. :p

[+Jester124 Subscriber²]

I don't have MKV spitter installed nor have I ever heard of it to be perfectly honest. Not sure what problems you guys had under 64 bit, but as I said, I just did three things to do this. I have to be on 64 bit as I have 12GB of RAM. :p

Did you install any codec packs. MKV's have never worked for me without installing Haali codec or the divx tech preview. Been testing since beta. and the 12gb, nice really blows my 2gbs out of the water... lol

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Okay AB, you are correct, as it is downmixing to 2.0. It does however play the 1080p video!

It's because for some peculiar reason the 360 won't support H264 and AC3 5.1 together. I think MS could enable this in an update though, as AC3 5.1 is supported, just not along side H264

Source: http://a8t8.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2...8!188.entry

As you can see it's downmixed to 2.0 with H264. People who want 5.1 sound right now currently transcode their H264 encodes to MPEG2 in the likes of TVersity and the other media servers.

[Draken]

Tested on:

12.3GB MKV file, x264, 1080P

Windows 7 RTM

Works perfect :) , thanks for the heads up

[+Jester124 Subscriber²]

@ Viper

http://a8t8.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2...mp;sa=381242486

this was the tutorial i found to get MKV's Streaming to the 360 through media center on x64. It never worked good for me but i think it's more of my pc being to outdated and damaged to stream under win 7 64bit.

[Unrealistic]

There is a work around for the 4GB file limit when playing off local storage. HFS file format system (Apple).

Awesome Draken!!

[tomwarren Veteran]

Not working for me on RTM...

[Unrealistic]

Tom W: 64 bit or 32 bit?

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

...

Some 1080p content exceeds those bitrates, AVC which is the second line is uncompressed so off a Blu Ray it will be 25-40Mbps. H264 encodes are typically around 10-15Mbps, but some go higher. 720p encodes won't exceed such rates.

...

AVC is the first line, MPEG-4 AVC = H.264. The second line is for MPEG-4 ASP (Advanced Simple Profile), a popular implementation of ASP is called DivX.

I also don't see why the Xbox would be limited to 2 channel audio when playing H.264 (in a .MP4 container), the actual audio codec (AAC-LC) isn't and supports 5.1.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

AVC is the first line, MPEG-4 AVC = H.264. The second line is for MPEG-4 ASP (Advanced Simple Profile), a popular implementation of ASP is called DivX.

I also don't see why the Xbox would be limited to 2 channel audio when playing H.264 (in a .MP4 container), the actual audio codec (AAC-LC) isn't and supports 5.1.

Yeah thanks for the correction.

As for the limitation, I don't know why either but it's the way it is. I posted a chart on the previous page showing the container/codec limitations. It's probably because MS want to use WMA 5.1 as that's their own codec.

[BajiRav]

It's because for some peculiar reason the 360 won't support H264 and AC3 5.1 together. I think MS could enable this in an update though, as AC3 5.1 is supported, just not along side H264

Source: http://a8t8.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2...8!188.entry

As you can see it's downmixed to 2.0 with H264. People who want 5.1 sound right now currently transcode their H264 encodes to MPEG2 in the likes of TVersity and the other media servers.

That table doesn't apply to the Media Center Extender part (which is what the OP is talking about). Your table is for the dashboard. I think we had covered this in the past. AVCHD now works fully in Xbox 360 MCE when connected to a Windows 7 system.

On my system I jut change the container of the MKV (H264+AC3) to MTS (H264+AC3) and it streams and plays nicely. Fully 5.1 sound and HD picture with absolutely no transcoding.

The Xbox 360 MCE codec/container support is same as Windows 7 mentioned here and here.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

That table doesn't apply to the Media Center Extender part (which is what the OP is talking about). Your table is for the dashboard. I think we had covered this in the past. AVCHD now works fully in Xbox 360 MCE when connected to a Windows 7 system.

On my system I jut change the container of the MKV (H264+AC3) to MTS (H264+AC3) and it streams and plays nicely. Fully 5.1 sound and HD picture with absolutely no transcoding.

The Xbox 360 MCE codec/container support is same as Windows 7 mentioned here and here.

It will be transcoding if it needs to,

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/06/...-video-transc/1

MCE doesn't bypass the codec support of the Xbox 360, the extender (piece of hardware you're viewing on, in this case Xbox 360) ultimately determines if the video gets transcoded or passed straight through.

Currently getting 3rd party codecs like DivX and Xvid working within Windows Media Center has worked well enough with 3rd party solutions, but the next best thing is native support. We'd already gotten the official word that H.264 support was included in Windows 7, but a tipster has lead us to believe that the pre-beta version of Windows 7 also includes native support for DivX. In addition, MKV is also expected to be supported; but that isn't the best part. Because although we've always been able to add these codecs to Media Center anyways, the real crux has been when you try to watch the very same content on an extender -- like the Xbox 360. So in an attempt to bring the entire Media Center experience to the extenders it appears Microsoft has added native transcoding. So now if Media Center can play the file, it can also convert it on the fly to a format that your extender supports. Of course like all betas, there's no guarantee these features will make it into the final build, but we sure hope they do.

Source: http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/11/05/windo...nd-transcoding/

On the fly transcoding can be done by most decent PC's nowadays, of course on the fly transcoding varies hugely in quality depending on the application doing it. Also any form of transcoding will result in some loss of detail.

Due to the codec support on the 360 I can pretty much guarantee you any combinations of H264 and AC3 will result in the H264 video file being transcoded to MPEG2, as MPEG2/AC3 5.1 is the combination the 360 supports. If you want H264 passing through untouched your audio will be downmixed to 2.0.

[BajiRav]

It will be transcoding if it needs to,

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/06/...-video-transc/1

MCE doesn't bypass the codec support of the Xbox 360, the extender (piece of hardware you're viewing on, in this case Xbox 360) ultimately determines if the video gets transcoded or passed straight through.

Source: http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/11/05/windo...nd-transcoding/

On the fly transcoding can be done by most decent PC's nowadays, of course on the fly transcoding varies hugely in quality depending on the application doing it. Also any form of transcoding will result in some loss of detail.

Due to the codec support on the 360 I can pretty much guarantee you any combinations of H264 and AC3 will result in the H264 video file being transcoded to MPEG2, as MPEG2/AC3 5.1 is the combination the 360 supports. If you want H264 passing through untouched your audio will be downmixed to 2.0.

There is no transcoding for AVCHD on Win7MCE. I think I will notice the HD transcoding on my PC :p , but there isn't any for AVCHD (~ MKV with H264/AC3). When I play a AVCHD file on my Xbox 360, it plays properly with 5.1 sound.

Although you are right that it will transcode if it needs to, but it doesn't need to for AVCHD.

Win7MCE has nothing to do with native codec support of Xbox 360.

If you Xbox 360 MCE is hooked to a Vista box, it won't even play Divx,Xvid because VistaMCE does not support it.

You should try before guaranteeing anything, because in this case you will be wrong.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

There is no transcoding for AVCHD on Win7MCE. I think I will notice the HD transcoding on my PC :p , but there isn't any for AVCHD (~ MKV with H264/AC3). When I play a AVCHD file on my Xbox 360, it plays properly with 5.1 sound.

Although you are right that it will transcode if it needs to, but it doesn't need to for AVCHD.

Win7MCE has nothing to do with native codec support of Xbox 360.

If you Xbox 360 MCE is hooked to a Vista box, it won't even play Divx,Xvid because VistaMCE does not support it.

You should try before guaranteeing anything, because in this case you will be wrong.

Yes in fact you're right if you create AVCHD, the problem only exists if you're streaming MP4 (the container MKV files would be 'changed to' in Windows 7)

Windows 7 media center to Xbox 360 media center extender

• AVCHD videos plays without issue
  
• H.264 in MP4 with AAC-HE, AAC-LC or AAC LC-5.1 audio play without issue
  
• H.264 in MOV with AAC audio plays without issue however if there is no AAC audio it will not play the video
  
• XviD/DivX videos in AVI play without issue
  

H264 still won't work with AC3 5.1 if that's the case, which is why Unrealistic has his audio downmixing to 2.0.

[Aergan]

Just going to duplicate my post in other topic (I know you guys have already covered some stuff, been testing this for a while myself since RC release):

For Windows 7 / WMP 12.0 / WMC please view the following:

http://a8t8.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2...8!797.entry

That's your bible to what will and wont stream to your Xbox 360 from Windows 7.

To simplify, if you want to stream AVI (Xvid, Divx or MPEG4 based) you are fine to do so through Dashboard or WMC.

Dashboard relies on WMP12.0 library, make sure any devices are set to be always allowed to share and that you manually override default share permissions to stream to include all rated files otherwise you'll only be able to access Star ratings of 4+ or whatever the default is. If you can't get it to display you can cheat but creating a short cut to your device in your main local library, this will cause the WMP robot to follow the path and the storage location (So long as it's a folder path e.g. D:\Music contains shortcut to H:\MP3\).

HD through WMP12.0

Mkv files will stream on 32bit Windows 7 RC natively but performance issues on 1080p during the live transcode (And buggy). DivX Labs have a technical preview demo that you can sign up for and test. Performance is good but quality on video is so so on 1080p content. Does not work well if file has been badly encoded or contains errors.

Mkv files dont stream correctly on 64bit Windows RC natively, many issues with stability (Tends to crash the Xbox 360 MC). DivX labs dont have a 64bit version available yet but they are working on it.

MP4 files will only work if they are in 2.0 AC3 for sound and not non-standard h.264 resolutions. Also MUST be < 4.47-ishGB in size or will not play / crash on seek.

In Windows 7 sometimes you need to make sure that WMP is running to kick the Media sharing service in. Sometimes your library will vanish for no reason in 64bit Windows 7 RC requiring the aforementioned step on startup.

HD through WMC 32bit / 64bit

Abandon using "Transcode 360" as it's prone to the above limitations for HD *if* you can get it working.

MP4 / h.264 / AC3 2.0 up to 6-8GB is ok, seeking broken on larger than 4.47GB.

m2ts (Known as AVCHD) / h.264 / AC3 5.1 is the holy grail for streaming, very reliable and of course full sound support. AAC causes out of sync issues with video, DTS doesn't work 9/10 times.

To transcode existing files to m2ts, get TsMuxer and MeGUI.

TsMuxer can convert mkv with h264 / AC3 directly at about 3-15mins per movie, otherwise you'll have to demux and reencode the audio if not AC3.

MeGUI is needed if DTS or AAC stream so you can convert to AC3, check Doom9 or Google for guides on how to do this.

Just to expand, Windows 7 32bit Build 7229 / Xbox 360 in WMC mode, m2ts file with h264 video stream & AC3 5.1 profile (at 640kb bitrate) playing fine on 12.1GB movie with full 5.1 sound at 1080p for me.

[Draken]

now that Audio mentions it :huh: ....... I think MCE is transcoding my MKV video, quality is much better playing it with my PC (Same display), I'm going to convert it to WMV-HD ;)