Knowing vs Testing: What will play?

[bornagainpenguin]

Obviously there are some shortcuts, like generally if I have an *.avi it will probably be fine. And common sense dictates that if the file is 1280p by 720p it will prbably have issues. But I've also got some *.MP4s which read as AVC (h264) and seem to be playing just fine. Other than playing through every movie to check for compatibility, how do I know what what will play without issues?

Is there a way to test ahead of time, so I know what will have to be re-found or re-encoded and what can simply be copied to the internal hard disk?

[sixties keith]

best to stick to xvid/avi if you want them to play straight away. i find alot of mp4 are simply encoded to too high a bitrate to play smoothly on the xbox without conversion. however i have found other mp4 files which i have download and are small usully 20 minute episodes usually play well.

Buzz also had a method using ffmpeg to convert 720p mkv files which play with a moderate bitrate but in my eyes looks really well.

Someone on here will surely know the specific bitrates etc but this should give you a rough idea as to where you stand.

[bornagainpenguin]

best to stick to xvid/avi if you want them to play straight away.

Yeah, that much I pretty much counted on. The first pass through the library has been simply adding the AVIs that I know to be encoded with xvid\divx.

i find alot of mp4 are simply encoded to too high a bitrate to play smoothly on the xbox without conversion. however i have found other mp4 files which i have download and are small usully 20 minute episodes usually play well.

Yeah, I can see that. Unfortunately for me, this box is intended to be a simple music video\music and movie box for parties or whatever. No TV episodes are going to be included because that would (IMHO) add too much complexity to the whole thing. I have a lot of shows so I'd quickly run out of space. If I have space when I'm happy with the movies and music collection I may go back and add some games but that's not really a priority for me.

Buzz also had a method using ffmpeg to convert 720p mkv files which play with a moderate bitrate but in my eyes looks really well.

Oh I have a Handbrake preset I can use based on some of Buzz (and other people's) posts. I haven't tried it yet with my movies but I imagine it should be okay for the most part.

Someone on here will surely know the specific bitrates etc but this should give you a rough idea as to where you stand.

That information would be appreciated because as I said in the original post I'm finding some of my h264 videos to play back just fine. So far seems to be only the ones encoded at really odd-ball resolutions and only SD resolutions at that. The xbox will declare some videos as HD even though not 720p, and those will have issues even if they "should" seem to work based on the other videos. It's weird. I'm assuming the oddball sized HD files are those encoded to the HD-DVD standard? Dunno.

Thanks for the response.

EDIT: adding some specifics...

Eorin Shinbu:

codec: h264
aspect: 1.777778
width: 512
height: 288
Quality: cpu stays at 29.xx - 39.xx No drops

The Geisha Boy (1958):

codec: avc1
aspect: 1.764706
width: 720
height: 408
Quality: cpu averages between 54.xx - 79.xx no drops

[spicemuseum]

Specific re-encoding guidance using FFMPEG for best results on an xbox here:
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... t=20#p8823

General guidance on what works (and what doesn't) here:
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... vid#p25308
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... vid#p22504
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... vid#p19093
...amongst others.

[Dan Dar3]

I would try to use a tool like MediaInfo, it appears it can be run in command line so I would recursively go through all media and produce a text report per file, then either write a DOS/shell script or even use Excel to import the information from those files and produce a summary, sorting by whatever you want - picture height, width, bitrate, codec etc. Then go through the sorted list and use the half-method to select movies to try and play on your XBMC4Xbox to find the point where everything below will work with no re-encoding, while everything above that will probably need to be re-encoded.

http://superuser.com/questions/595177/h ... nder-linux
http://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo