Articles - > Xbox 360 H.264 Conversion Guide

Title:	Xbox 360 H.264 Conversion Guide
Description:	This guide shows you how to convert DVD/AVI/DivX/XviD/MOV files to H.264 video for Xbox 360 compatibility
Author/Publisher:	DVDGuy
Ease of use:	Intermediate
Software Used:	MeGUI, Nero Digital Audio Decoder/Encoder, TVersity
Page Viewed:	491298 times

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karto: Great guide! I've been trying to...
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Page 3 of 8: MeGUI: AviSynth Script Creator

Step 3: MeGUI: AviSynth Script Creator

For more information on all the settings of MeGUI, please refer to the MeWiki website.

This step will use MeGUI's AviSynth Script Creator tool to create an AviSynth script. If you followed Step 2, the AviSynth Script Creator tool should already be started with the D2V file created loaded. Otherwise, you'll need to load the media file you want to convert into the "Video Input" section (see hint below about opening files whose formats AviSynth does not natively support, including MOV files).

AviSynth is able to open almost any video file that you are able to play with a Directshow based multimedia player, such as Media Player Classic or Windows Media Player. You may need to select the "All Files" option when opening the file to be able to see it (eg. FLV files). In most cases, you'll need to install a video codec, an audio codec and a splitter filter for the format you wish to convert.

For example, if you want to convert FLV files using MeGUI, you will first need to make sure you have the required video, audio and splitter filters to make FLV files playable in Windows Media Player. A good way to ensure you have all the right codecs and filters installed is to use the K-Lite Mega Codecs Pack. Download the package, and it will ask you to uninstall any existing filters which might interfere, and then install a set that is very compatible with tools like MeGUI. You can find instruction on how to install the K-Lite Mega Codecs Pack here.

The "Input DAR" is the aspect ratio of the input video. In most circumstances, it should be automatically set for you. Anamorphic DVDs will be set to "ITU 16:9", for example.

For DVD sources, press the "Auto Crop" button to remove the black bars from the input video if it has any (most widescreen DVDs will, but most other files won't).

Next, you have to decide whether you need to reduce the resolution of the output video as compared to the input. In most cases, especially converting from DivX/XviD, you do not need to so uncheck the "Resize" option. For DVD sources, you might need to reduce the resolution, but only if you have file size requirements (eg. to fit a certain amount of video onto 1 CD). For DVD conversion onto a single CD (700 MB) using H.264, you can get away with using the maximum resolution (720x***) - so uncheck "Resize" in this case too.

If you do decide to decrease the resolution, check the "Resize" option and then check the "Suggested Resolution" checkbox too and change the resolution to one that you require. Recommended resolutions for the Xbox 360 include 640x***, 720x***, 1280x*** (720p) and 1920x**** (1080p).

Click on the "Filters" tab. For films on DVDs, you usually do not need to run a deinterlacing analysis. If the content you have is TV based, then you might need to click on the "Analysis" button to see if the video requires de-interlacing. Select "Source is Anime" if that's what you have.

Again, if you followed my advice for keeping the resolution for DVD sources, then you don't need either the resize of the noise filters. Otherwise, if you chose to reduce the resolution, then you can choose how the resize will look like ("Bicubic (Neutral)" is recommended as a middle of the road choice). If the source has lots of noise, you can choose to enable the noise filter and choose how much noise is present in your source (usually not necessary, unless the original source is VHS or something). The other options can be left alone ("Colour Correction" is automatically checked for D2V input sources).

If your source is not DVD, then you can click on the "Edit" tab and edit the AviSynth script manually to enable audio (you don't need to do this with DVD sources if you have followed this guide, since we have already demuxed the audio using D2V Creator). Simply change the "audio=false" entry to "audio=true".

Make sure the "On save close and load to be encoded" option and press the "Save" button to save the AviSynth script (by default, in the same directory as the D2V file, the filename is not important). Don't worry too much about the AviSynth Script Creator tool's preview window - it can be a little buggy where cropping and resizing and concerned. After saving, the AviSynth file should be loaded automatically into MeGUI - MeGUI's preview window does work fine and please make sure the video looks alright, especially for DVD sources with cropping/resize.

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Article Navigation:

Page 1: Introduction + Installation
Page 2: DVD/MPEG-2 Conversion
Page 3: MeGUI: AviSynth Script Creator <--
Page 4: MeGUI: Video Encoding Options
Page 5: MeGUI: Audio Encoding Options
Page 6: MeGUI: Cutting, Bitrate Calculator and AutoEncode
Page 7: TVersity: Playing the MP4 file on your Xbox 360
Page 8: Zune: Playing the MP4 file on your Xbox 360

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User Comments:

Great guide! I've been trying to convert some Xvid to h264 without luck - this guide worked the first time :) I only have one problem - the audio on my converted file is out of sync (<1 sec early). Any ideas what I can do? The source was an avi (Xvid / AC3) in case that matters.

Thank You! I don't like the Zune software as it is way to much bloat and the install is ridiculous when all I want is a streaming program. I recommend giving Tversity a try as I got it streaming the h264 file to the 360 without transcoding to wmv.

Yes, TVersity was updated just shortly after I had finishing writing the guide with a patch that fixed incompatibility problems with the new Spring update. The next version of the guide might use TVersity, although it is slightly troublesome to setup as it requires a port to be opened in your firewall

Also, with Tversity, I was able to stream High Profile without a problem.

Until I update the guide for TVersity, for those that want to use it but don't know where to begin, have a look at our earlier Xbox 360 DivX/XviD playback guide, which has TVersity and connecting it to Xbox 360 instructions: http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/Xbox_360_DivX_XviD_Playback_Guide_page3.html

Actually it looks like TVersity is still a bit fiddly when it comes to MP4/H.264 support - it does support MP4, but it will transcode the video to WMV and then stream to the Xbox 360 - huge CPU requirements and defeats the purpose of using H.264 in the first place (poor quality). You can probably modify the profiles and tell TVersity that the Xbox 360 now supports MP4/H.264 files natively, but it's a bit fiddly (see this thread: http://forums.tversity.com/viewtopic.php?t=5138). The next release should hopefully fix all these problems, or until someone comes up with an updated profile. So for now, it's Zune.

Yes, I did the bit of fiddling with the profiles.xml and then made sure to tell it to never transcode and that's how I got the streaming to work.

Just so you know, You also need to have Avisynth 2.5 installed before you can install and update MeGUI. You can grab a copy here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/

I've updated the guide to add in the AviSynth install

I'm converting from Xvix/DivX AVIs to H.264 MP4s, but I keep getting an error after autoencoding saying that I have an incorrect colorspace and it needs to be converted to YV12. I clicked "Yes" and continued, but the MP4 file that is outputted looks washed out when compared to the colors of the original Xvid file. Is this normal and is there a way to fix this? Also, how do I find the bitrate of my original Xvid file so I can set the bitrate in the "bitrate calculator" to 80%-90% of it's original value as you suggest? I would also like to say great guide, it's been very helpful and I would have been completely stuck without it. Now I just how MS update WMP11 to work with MP4s so I can stop using the Zune software.

rapidgame: The "incorrect colorspace" error is normal, just click yes and that should be fine. The washed out colors may be due to your encoding settings, or even your decoder (h.264 codec, player) setting. As for bit-rate, just use 80 to 90% of the original file size of the AVI file.

Thanks for the quick reply DVDGuy :-) I still can't figure out why the colors don't look the same on H.264, but the movies seem to look fine on my TV when I stream them from the Zune software. I'll try looking at the settings in my players to see if there's something I could change. I'm using FFDShow so I don't know if that might be where the problem is. When you say use 80-90% of the original AVI, is that when in the AutoEncode dialog? If I only use 80-90% of the original filesize in the bitrate calculator, that won't take into account the size required for the audio as well, would it? Thanks again for the great guide, I've been looking through Digital Digest and there's some really helpful stuff, definitely going into my bookmarks. I wish I could paragraph my comments, lol. ;-)

rapidgame: Try using Windows Media Player and then using the contrast/brightness/saturation, or just click on the ffdshow-video tray icon and configure the "picture properties" to your liking. When you specify an encoding file size in AutoEncode or the BItrate calculator, both takes into account the audio. If you keep the average bitrate as shown in the bitrate caculator between 800 and 900, quality should be pretty good (for DVD resolution video, 720x***).

Anyone know why I get the following error at the AAC Nero stage. Looking for job processor for job... Processor found! Starting job job1-1 at 11:53:10 PM Starting preprocessing of job... Preprocessing finished! encoder commandline: successfully started encoding Processing ended at 11:53:11 PM ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Log for job job1-1 Channels=2, BitsPerSample=16, SampleRate=48000Hz C:\Program Files\megui\tools\neroaacenc\neroAacEnc.exe -ignorelength -lc -br 96000 -if - -of "D:\Rips\TENEN\VTS_01_1 T01 2_0ch 192Kbps DELAY 0ms.mp4"Error: MeGUI.AviSynthException: m2AudioAC3Source: error in file "D:\Rips\TENEN\VTS_01_1 T01 2_0ch 192Kbps DELAY 0ms.ac3" at MeGUI.AviSynthAudioEncoder.encode() ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The current job contains errors. Skipping chained jobs

I've followed this guide to convert from MKV files. Each source is fine but each output has gray flashes every second or so for the first 5 seconds to 3 minutes of the video. Check out the example here: http://www.echostring.com/videos/dd.avi I've been looking around for advice but so far have struck out. I'm following the tutorial completely and I've tried it on 3 different computers, all with the same results.

I've followed this guide and it works perfectly, as long as I play the files back on the PC. When I stream the files to the 360 though I tend to get audio sync problems which don't exist on the PC. Is there some setting here that can be tweaked for greater 360 compatibility?

I'm now also getting the audio sync problems (lags 1 sec) that karto reported.

rapidgame: Please post your question in our forum. In the meantime, you might have to try and demux the AVI using AviDemux, and then load in the video and audio portions separately into MeGUI

Just a tip that might be worth adding to the guide, you can embed an image in the MP4 file and it will display like album/cover art on the Xbox 360 if using the Zune software as the media server. This would be handy for DVD covers etc and I have tested it and works fine. The easy way to do this is with the freeware http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ which supports embedding JPG into MP4 files. Alternatively the manual way it to use MP4Box as MeGUI does not have any UI for this functionality. mp4box.exe -add "video.264" -add "audio.aac" -itags cover="cover.jpg" "out.mp4"

That's a great tip A8T8, in fact I'm already using mp3tag to embed cover art into our H.264 MP4 trailers. I will add additional instructions to the next version of the guide

I keep getting an mp4box.exe error during the mux mode at 98% anyway to fix this?

That is great, and I always use Moyea SWF to Video Converter to convert swf file to Xbox360