What video fomat plays best on xbox..?

[sealeysonic]

Hi all.....what video fomat plays best on the xbox......?

The reason i say this is i want to rip a few music videos off youtube and play them...now they seem to be MP4 and never play....Ive used online converters to convert them to AVI but its very hit and miss....most still dont work....they struggle to play the sound or video and nomal rates...Ive seen the Guide on how to convert MKV files but have its a bit beond me....anybody know of some free software that can convert mp4 to avi for use on the xbox...?

Thanks

Mark

[BuZz]

when you say "never play", do you mean they play too slow or not at all ? They should play fine so long as they are not h264 and HD. the youtube plugin itself works and 380p video plays back fine - you shouldn't need to convert anything unless you want to play back 720p video in which case you would be best off with ffmpegs "mpeg4 (part 2)" codec or possibly xvid.

I can't help further without a debug log showing a video not playing (full log with budegging enabled posted via xbmclogs.com or similar)

btw - mkv and mp4 are containers that hold the audio/video data btw (which can be a variety of formats). avi is also a container - what is more relevant is the codecs inside (as all three containers are well supported on ffmpeg - they all have slightly different capabilities though).

[sealeysonic]

The mp4 file dont play....only about 1 frame a second...even in 420p...720p too.....i had some films in AVI fomat and they play fine.

Never been able to do the Debug log thing....never really had to intill now.

Thanks for the reply

[spicemuseum]

My guess would be that Sealey's mp4 file containers hold H.264 video (MPEG 4pt10, AVC) at a bit rate/resolution/coding scheme combination exceeding the capability of the XBOX. But that's a guess.

Sealey, you really do need to post a debug log if you want help. Or do some investigation yourself into your mp4 containers' contents.

One setting that helps in *marginal* cases (where the xbox is struggling when there's a lot of movement/bright colours in the image) is the skip loop filter setting - set it to "skip everything".

[spinnersp]

you can get a program called "mediainfo",google it(one word). then you can right click on a media file,select mediainfo fron the context menu, and it will give you all the info about the file

[freestile]

Im not sure I can answer this, but I tried the free avc converter on mac and its worked great. I had a set of files which will play on the xbox, but would have no video, and just play sound but no video at all. The extensions say HD.mp4- The dimensions are 1600 × 900-Codecs H.264, AAC for the files that dont play. Anyway the AVC converter has presets for different devices such as ps3-xbox 360, xox one, ps4, wii , all kinds of phones and tablets etc etc. The first conversions I did on the above mentioned files were done with the univesal apple format preset which says it was 640x480 xvid format. I didnt like the quality on that one so I choose the wii preset which was mjpeg-720x480-PCM, which I think might have been a little better then the apple xvid preset, but I wanted a little better so I tried a preset which was for an iphone 4/4S X264-960X640 AAC,Stereo, which rather nice ,but according to

http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/wiki/What_i ... n_it_Do%3F

On a standard XBox the following HD formats are supported:
480i/480p/576i/576p output at 480p (Not Scaled).
480i/480p/576i/576p output at 720p (Upscaled).
480i/480p/576i/576p output at 1080i (Upscaled).
The following video resolutions are NOT supported, at any output resolution:
720p
1080i


so I seen a kindle fire preset and htc flyer presets with dimensions of X264-1024x600,AAC,Stereo,44100Hz, without going past the 1080I looks great. If I could I would set it to 1080x720 or something, but not sure if I could do that. I havent posted a debug log for a while, but just thought I would in case anyone wants to look at it , http://pastebin.com/SqhibUP5 although I'm thinking it had to do with the 1600 × 900-Codecs H.264 being the culprit, but I could be wrong.

[spicemuseum]

presets with dimensions of X264-1024x600,AAC,Stereo,44100Hz, without going past the 1080I looks great. If I could I would set it to 1080x720 or something, but not sure if I could do that. I havent posted a debug log for a while, but just thought I would in case anyone wants to look at it , http://pastebin.com/SqhibUP5 although I'm thinking it had to do with the 1600 × 900-Codecs H.264 being the culprit, but I could be wrong.

You're not, that's the culprit.
Note the "1080" refers to the vertical resolution (pixel count), not horizontal. Don't be tempted to change the aspect ratio by artificially limiting the horizontal resolution to 1080 pixels - i.e. 1080x720 is 4:3, which is the shape of old (1990s) almost square CRT tellies. For H.264 video, 1024x600 (between SD and HD) should be okay on the old box at modest bit rates.
Alternatively, convert to MPEG4-2 (ASP, H.263) XVID/DIVX video at modest bit rates and you can push to 1280x720 (720p).
Either of these video coding schemes can be contained in an MPEG4-14 (.mp4) container.

[freestile]

Cool Spice Museum. That Sounds good to me. And @sealeysonic this AVC(Any Video Conerter) converter seems to work good for being free. I cant vouch for the windows version, but its doing good on osx.

[sealeysonic]

Interesting reading....thanks guys let me see what i can do.

[sealeysonic]

Well i bit of progress....downloaded some movies(fast and furious) and there in MKV format....24.fps...cpu 41%-61%...but will only play with xbmc 3.3(my backup xbmc) looks like i will have to look into this Debug log stuff and post it etc.

[spicemuseum]

Right, they're in a Matroska (MKV) container, but what video coding scheme? At the level of CPU loading you're quoting, either:
- it's H.264 (e.g. x264) at a low (SD) resolution, or bitrate, or both, or
- it's H.263 (e.g. xvid) at something no more than 720p resolution with modest bitrate, or
- it's H.262 (e.g. MPEG 2) like DVD, or
- it's something else

[sealeysonic]

Thanks for the reply....useing MEDIAinfo.....

Code: Select all

Unique ID                                : 215692859353195824804642886211410550959 (0xA244EF0477129127B65F0A32FA2F60AF)
Complete name                            : mydvdrip.mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 2
File size                                : 1.12 GiB
Duration                                 : 1h 46mn
Overall bit rate                         : 1 498 Kbps
Encoded date                             : UTC 2013-12-02 22:32:01
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v5.8.0 ('No Sleep / Pillow') built on Sep  2 2012 15:37:04
Writing library                          : libebml v1.2.3 + libmatroska v1.3.0

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L2.2
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Muxing mode                              : Header stripping
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 1h 46mn
Bit rate                                 : 1 049 Kbps
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 288 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 2.500
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.211
Stream size                              : 779 MiB (68%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 133 r2334 a3ac64b
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x111 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1049 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Muxing mode                              : Header stripping
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 1h 46mn
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 448 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 342 MiB (30%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

[edit - cleaned up by admin - note for long information posts, it is best to use an external pastebin service.]

[spicemuseum]

Cool. My first guess was right - it's H.264 (x264) at a relatively low resolution ...and very wide cinema aspect ratio. Bet the black bars at top and bottom of the telly are massive!

[sealeysonic]

on our 42" tv its fine....the black bars are not very big....

[Olivz]

I was surprise to find my original soft modded Xbox able to play 1080p video movies smoothly. So because I'm kind and love xbmc4xbox I'm gonna tell you how to do it.
1st- you need a working xbmc4xbox enabled to 1080p TV out xbox
The problem never was the original Xbox but the video file itself. So we need a video converter! The best and easiest to use that I found is a Android app called : Media Converter. I did try on Linux and such but ... anyway.
Some say xvid format is the best but on my Android app it is called: (mpeg4, mp3).avi
So 2nd- go to expert mode and select (mpeg4 , mp3) .avi output (on Android device)
The secret for 1080p or 720p on xbmc for original Xbox is the bit rates !!
-For the video bitrate choose 3000kbs
-For sound choose a bit rate around 96kbs (if you want surround sound don't go too high on bitrates!)
Don't forget to select 1080p preset (keep aspect ratio)
-On the Xbox. In xbmc4xbox enable 1080p (TV,dashboard & video)
-disable cache & high pixel shader v2 (for better results) choose any other than v2 to avoid crash!
-Disable fast decode (cause over heat) as well than full codec
Sorry , I was French Canadian but people usually understand me . I hope that could help! And Voilà!!

-On windows or Mac, the official divx converter is also good (up to 1080p) without h264/265.

[Olivz]

So as a quick update info; 1080p play very well in (mpeg4, mp3) .avi
I said video bitrate to 3000kbs but 4000kbs is better.
Audio I said 96kbs but higher wasn't a problem! The only thing is that xbmc4xbox doesn't support mp3 surround sound! (Maybe in a nearly update).
Project mayhem 111 dashboard work great with 1080p. If the video bitrate is higher there's probably no problem but to put the 1file larger than 4gb the ftp and usb wouldn't probably work correctly!! At 4000kbps video quality is nicer than mpeg loop disabled setting movie

[spicemuseum]

Note the XBOX cannot output 1080p video, the max output resolution it can support is 1080i (interlaced scanning). It is a physical hardware limitation of the video display sub-system.

For reference, the best quality video output for moving pictures is 720p (progressive scanning).
For static images, such as photographs, or the XBMC4XBOX dashboard and menus, 1080i looks great.


(BTW, hello old friends - yes I'm still here! Merry Christmas!)