Is XVID HD worth it?

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iceman-uk
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Re: Is XVID HD worth it?

Post by iceman-uk »

Geeba wrote:Are you running with component leads? Is your Xbox outputting 720p currently?
Yes on both fronts. Hooked up to a 720p HD capable TV.

I'll give the samples Buzz posted a try (thanks!). I also have a BR rip which I want to try with his ffmpeg settings. I'm curious as to how smoothly it will play and how long it takes to transcode.
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sixties keith
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Re: Is XVID HD worth it?

Post by sixties keith »

i use the ffmpeg method and i cant stress enough how good it is.

the length of the encode generally is affected by the computer specs your using but for me its basically real time ie 1 minute of video takes about 1 minute to encode.

saying that the changes are great. i used the method to watch a nice 720 rip of the latest ufc on fox and it looked great.
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iceman-uk
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Re: Is XVID HD worth it?

Post by iceman-uk »

sixties keith wrote:i use the ffmpeg method and i cant stress enough how good it is.

the length of the encode generally is affected by the computer specs your using but for me its basically real time ie 1 minute of video takes about 1 minute to encode.

saying that the changes are great. i used the method to watch a nice 720 rip of the latest ufc on fox and it looked great.
Sadly the ones Buzz posted played but not smoothly as I'd like.

According to this matrix, I might have better luck with 960x540 (aka HRHD)
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/wiki/XBMC_F ... esolutions

I know that a PAL DVD appears nice and crisp so I tried to convert my 720p mp4 to PAL DVD using this:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -threads 2 -i movie.720p.BluRay.x264.mp4 -f dvd -target pal-dvd movie.mpg -aspect 16:9
It was a pretty nice sharp picture as the source encoding was a good hi-def rip. The Xbox played this smoothly and it was fairly quick to convert (20 mins, dual-core CPU) but the downsides were:

* aspect ratio was not handled by XBMC correctly, it was 1:2.35 I think. Might have been my ffmpeg settings.
* could not seek anywhere into the file
* resultant transcode was 3G in size (versus 1G for source file). Again might be my ffmpeg settings.

I could spend sometime into optimizing the ffmpeg settings but I think Buzz is right, hi-def and Xbox don't go well together. I think DVD is as far as I would push it. HRHD might be a possibility but I am sure this would push the CPU and the fan noise would be more prominent.
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BuZz
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Re: Is XVID HD worth it?

Post by BuZz »

iceman-uk wrote: Sadly the ones Buzz posted played but not smoothly as I'd like.
they play at full speed on my system. can't help without more info. are you referring to frame drops, or just the fact that the video is 24fps (which is due to the source material).
iceman-uk wrote: According to this matrix, I might have better luck with 960x540 (aka HRHD)
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/wiki/XBMC_F ... esolutions
well, 720p works fine (with the codec/examples illustrated - I used to use it all the time before I started using my Pi for 1080p etc). not sure why you had issues. Worth noting that data/chart is out of date too.
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Re: Is XVID HD worth it?

Post by iceman-uk »

BuZz wrote:
iceman-uk wrote: Sadly the ones Buzz posted played but not smoothly as I'd like.
they play at full speed on my system. can't help without more info. are you referring to frame drops, or just the fact that the video is 24fps (which is due to the source material).
I think the confusion was that I was using DVDPlayer (the default). I just tried "true_skin.mkv" again and If I use DVDPlayer I get ~10fps. With mplayer and it plays smoothly at 24fps. This is with the file stored on local HDD. I am very impressed and will try streaming it via Samba in due course.

I then transferred a 720p BR rip mp4 file and that did not play very well using mplayer, and oddly a bit better but not smoothly using DVDplayer.

Goes to show that it's all in the encoding.

Please can you remind me again of the ffmpeg settings used for "true_skin.mkv"?
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Re: Is XVID HD worth it?

Post by BuZz »

They are designed for playing back on dvdplayer. mplayer is deprecated. not sure why you are not getting full frame rate - I do here.

post a debug log perhaps.
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REPLY TO UNCREATIVE TITLE Reply

Post by 2 Bunny »

BuZz wrote:They are designed for playing back on dvdplayer. mplayer is deprecated. not sure why you are not getting full frame rate - I do here.

post a debug log perhaps.
The "FF MPEG" command line tool works for me too. Perhaps he's having problems because he's not using the right command combination.
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Re: Is XVID HD worth it?

Post by BuZz »

he was using some example videos I encoded/uploaded, and they play at full frame rate on my system.
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Re: Is XVID HD worth it?

Post by cots2 »

BuZz wrote:I can post my mediatomb config if useful although you may want to use another upnp server.
If you're still willing please do. Can you also recommend a guide to setting up MediaTomb because I've never used it.
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Re: DIVX Reply

Post by DivideByZer0 »

2 Bunny wrote: Mon Dec 31, 2012 5:23 pm
BuZz wrote:i use (commandline ffmpeg)

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i some_1080p_infile.mkv -scodec copy -acodec copy -vcodec mpeg4 -b:v 3000k -maxrate 5000k -bufsize 4096k -s 1280x720 -f matroska -y outfile.mkv
single pass (as I transcode in realtime using mediatomb), but results look decent.
Thanks a ton for that. I've been looking everywhere basically forever to find a way to convert HD videos to play on the Xbox in 720p with minimal frame drops, and that did it for me. Is there any way to convert more than one video that way in the command prompt?

- 2 Bunny
I got this to work for Windows:

Code: Select all

for /f %i in ('forfiles /c "cmd /c ffmpeg -i @file -scodec copy -acodec copy -vcodec mpeg4 -b:v 3000k -maxrate 5000k -filter_complex scale=iw*min(1\,min(1280/iw\,720/ih)):-1 -bufsize 4096k  -f matroska -y C:\YOUR_FOLDER\\@fname.mkv\"') do %~i
The for /f %i strips some problematic quotes from the @fname/@file syntax. Make sure ffmpeg is on your PATH, of course. The -filter_complex part downscales vids to 1280x720 while retaining aspect ratio, but doesn't upscale videos, which is nice because I was converting some videos that didn't play on Xbox but I didn't want to waste space by upscaling them.

For YOUR_FOLDER, you can put an absolute or relative path there, but make sure that the final backslash is doubled (so that it doesn't escape one of the would-be stripped quotes from @fname.mkv) You can also remove the path stuff entirely and just write to @fname.mkv, in the same folder.

Occasionally, I would get an audio codec error. Setting -acodec libvorbis worked nicely for these videos.

It should be possible to do this recursively with a bat file if you need to. You can set the /s flag on forfiles (put it before the /c) to run recursively, but that doesn't reconstruct the directory structure on the other end; everything will go into the same folder.
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