Xbox 360 H.264 Conversion Guide

The Spring 2007 Dashboard update for the Xbox 360 adds H.264 playback support. H.264 is a very advanced video codec used in Blu-ray/HD DVD, and offers better quality and smaller file sizes than DivX/XviD, at the cost of slightly more processing power (and encoding time). Processing power becomes less of an issue with the powerful Xbox 360, and since the Xbox 360 does not support DivX/XviD (and is unlikely to do so), H.264 then becomes an ideal format for those that don't want to use WMV. Please note that some people have had success with playing back standard resolution MOV (QuickTime) and certain high resolution MOV (QuickTime HD) files directly without further re-encoding, so you might want to try this first. QuickTime HD files are already encoded using H.264, but some are encoded using settings which are incompatible with the Xbox 360's H.264 support. The PS3 also supports H.264 playback, and you can view the PS3 version of this guide here - the PS3 has an advantage over the Xbox 360 in that it supports AAC 5.1 channel audio (although with limited decoding support).

Make sure you are able to playback H.264 clips on your computer first. Consult our H.264 Playback Guide if you are unsure.

This guide uses MeGUI to provide the H.264 conversion from a DVD source or from other file formats (AVI/DivX/XviD/MOV/HDMOV - many other formats, such as MPG, are also supported). MeGUI is one of the newer tools that's been designed with H.264 encoding in mind. This guide is very similar to the MeGUI H.264 Conversion Guide, except it simplifies a few things and the H.264/MP4 file produced has Xbox 360 compatibility in mind. It also covers how to playback the MP4 file on your Xbox 360 using the TVersity or Zune software.

This guide is aimed at intermediate users that already have some knowledge in regards to video conversion. As such, basic knowledge of things such as framerate and resolution is recommended (and since you are here to experiment with H.264, this assumption is not all that unrealistic). You will also need to know some network basics for Xbox 360 to Zune software connection, such as knowing what your network IP address is, configuring your firewall or port forwarding if your computer is not on the same LAN as your Xbox 360.

Software you'll need (all freeware):

• MeGUI
• Nero Digital Audio Decoder/Encoder
• TVersity or Zune Software

Hardware you'll need:

• Xbox 360

Step 1: Installation

The first thing you need to do before you can even install MeGUI is to download and install Microsoft's .NET Framework version 2.0. It's a fairly large file and installation could take more than half an hour.

The next thing you need to download and install is AviSynth.

You can now go on and download MeGUI.

Install MeGUI. Start it up and most likely, it will prompt you to update the software used by MeGUI - click "Yes" to launch the update Manager.

Press the "Update" button to start the update process - MeGUI will automatically download and launch the install for the required software. You will most likely get a "1 file had problems" error, this is because the "neroaacenc" software cannot be downloaded automatically from MeGUI due to copyright reasons (it is freeware, but you need to go through Nero's software agreement first before you can download it). Go to this page, select "Agree" to download the ZIP archive. There are several files in the ZIP archive, but the files we need are NeroAacEnc.exe or NeroAacEnc_SSE.exe. As the name suggest, the "SSE" version is optimized for processors that support SSE instructions (which is most of them, including all Intel Pentium III or newer CPUs and AMD Athlon XPs or newer). Extract one of these .exe files to your "megui\tools\neroaacenc" folder (eg. "c:\program files\megui\tools\neroaacenc\win32\neroaacenc.exe").

When all the updates are completed, you can now close the MeGUI updater.

If you've extracted neroaacenc, you might need to access the "Settings" option from the "Tools" menu, and go to the "Program Paths" section. For "NeroAacEnc", use the browse button to locate where you extracted the neroaacenc executable file (eg. "c:\program files\megui\tools\neroaacenc\win32\neroaacenc.exe"). Press "Save" to close the settings window.

Also, MeGUI often doesn't update to the latest x264 version, so you will have to do this manually. First, from within MeGUI, go to the "Tools" menu and select "Settings". Go to the "Program Paths" section and see where MeGUI accesses the x264.exe file.

Then go to our x264 software page and check the latest version - if it is newer than the version listed in MeGUI, download and save the x264.exe to where MeGUI accesses the x264.exe file to replace the old file (usually c:\program files\megui\tools\x264\x264.exe).

Step 2: DVD/MPEG-2 Conversion

The instructions in this step are for conversion from a MPEG-2 source (eg. DVD, SVCD). If the file you want to convert to H.264 is not a DVD or MPEG-2 source (eg. AVI/DivX/XviD/MOV), you can skip to "Step 3" right now.

If you are using a commercial DVD, you will need to rip the DVD to your hard-drive. Because ripping a commercial DVD may be illegal in your country, we won't cover these steps here.

The next thing we need to do is to use MeGUI's D2V Creator tool to create a D2V file needed for MeGUI/AviSynth to handle MPEG-2 files. This step is required only for MPEG-2 files - all other types of inputs do not require a D2V file and can be loaded straight into AviSynth and as mentioned before, you can skip this step and go to the next page/step (Step 3: AviSynth Script Creator).

Start MeGUI. I like to first clear the job queues of previously finished jobs. This is optional, but it might help to make things clearer. To do this, click on the "Queue" tab and then click on the "Clear" button.

From the "Tools" menu, select "D2V Creator". In the "Video Input" section, load the first VOB file of the movie titleset (the rest of the files in the set will be loaded automatically). You will get an error message about not being able to find DVD Decrypter generated info files, this is fine (as we did not use DVD Decrypter's IFO mode) and press "OK" to skip this error.

Select which audio track(s) to demux - you can select more than one track if you want the encoded file to have multiple audio tracks. Alternatively, you can just select the demux all the tracks and then choose the correct audio track(s) later on.

The default save directory is the same directory as your loaded DVD VOB files - change this if you want to. Select both the "On completion load files", "and close" checkboxes and press the "Queue" button. You are now returned to MeGUI - click on the "Queue" tab and press the "Start" button to start the D2V creation. When processing has finished, the status of the queued job will read "Done" and the created D2V file will be loaded into the AviSynth Script Creator ready for the next step. This can take a while, so please be patient - the status window's progress bar may not move, but don't worry, DGIndex is working.

Step 3: MeGUI: AviSynth Script Creator

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).

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.

Step 4: MeGUI: Video Encoding Options

We'll now set up the H.264 encoding options in the x264 encoder. This step has the most options to configure, and this is where Xbox 360 compatibility is determined. This guide won't go into detail about all the options, just the ones you need to ensure Xbox 360 compatibility - and if you need further explanation of the options, refer to our x264 Options Explained article.

In the MeGUI "Input" section, select "x264" as the "Codec". We do not need to set a container as we will do that later using the "AutoEncode" function.

Xbox 360's H.264 video support is limited to the following (you don't need to understand what it all means):

• AVC Profile: Baseline, Main or High Profiles
• Maximum bitrate: 10 Mbps (although testing shows stuttering only occuring above 20 Mbps)
• AVC Level: 4.1
• No B-Pyramid and P4x4 support

For the "Video Profiles" option in MeGUI, you should see several pre-defined encoding profiles for H.264 encoding (a profile is a saved set of encoding settings). When this guide was last updated, the process was to take one of the "CE" profiles and then add the above restrictions to make new profiles. But with the new version of MeGUI, new profiles were made and one specifically for the Xbox 360 (and the PS3) was produced. To compare the new "PD" profiles with the old "CE" profiles, please refer to this page.

There are two profiles available to use, the "PD-PS3-Xbox360" profile and the "PD-PS3-Xbox360_Fast". The "Fast" profile will provide faster encoding at the expense of quality.

The problem with both of these profiles, however, is that they are both High Profile profiles, meaning that software like Zune will not support them (the second section of this guide will cover how to connect your Xbox 360 to your PC so you can play/stream files off it, and using Zune is one of the options). This is easily solved though, because you can press the "Config" button to open the profile editing area. Next, select the "PD-PS3-Xbox360" or "PD-PS3-Xbox360_Fast" profiles, depending on which you want to edit. Change the "AVC Profile" setting to "Main" or "Baseline". Then press the "New" button, and enter in a new name for the profile.

We can determine which of these profiles we should use for our encoding. You can use the Baseline profile for all encodes, it's the fastest and it will be the most compatible. Using the Main Profile will improve quality (at the expense of encoding speed, and some compatibility issues). Using one of the "High Profile" profiles will further improve quality (and reduce encoding speed), but compatibility might be an issue (we had no playback problems once we disabled "B-Pryamid"). The main compatibility issue is that High Profile files will not show up in the Zune software, and therefore, not show up on the Xbox 360 for playback - the only way around this at the moment is to copy the file to a USB drive or CD/DVD media and play the file from there (hopefully a software fix will solve this problem in Zune).

It is recommended that you use one of the "High Profile" profiles (eg. "PD-PS3-Xbox360"), as this would ensure maximum quality. You can always share the file with your console using TVersity, which will support High Profile encodes.

Select the profile you want to use (eg. "PD-PS3-Xbox360") from the "Video Profiles" drop down menu.

Step 5: MeGUI: Audio Encoding Options

Now it's time to set up the audio encoding options. If you've followed this guide for DVD conversion, then the demuxed audio track we selected in the D2V Creator should already be loaded in (if not, load in the .ac3 file that was created). If you are not converting from a DVD source, then you can either load in a separate audio file or if you edited the AviSynth script (set "audio=true"), then load in the AVS file into the "Audio Input" section (meaning both video and audio inputs are the same AVS file). Repeat if you want a second audio track by clicking on the "2" select option.

Now we select an audio codec to use. The Xbox 360 supports AAC LC (low complexity), 2 channel audio only. Select "ND AAC" for "Codec", "NDAAC-LC-96Kbps" as the "Audio profile". Just like the video profiles, you can click on "Config" to edit the profile or create your own - as long as you ensure the "AAC-Profile" is set to "AAC-LC", and "Output Channels" is set to stereo, it should all work with the Xbox 360. The only setting you might want to change is the bitrate (96 Kbps should be enough for most encodings, 128 Kbps gives you near CD quality audio, and anything else above that, like 192 Kbps, is a bit of an overkill).

Step 6: MeGUI: Cutting, Bitrate Calculator and AutoEncode

If you wish to cut your input so that you don't encode the entire video, it is possible to do this using MeGUI's AVS Cutter tool. To launch it, go to the "Tools" drop down menu and select "AVS Cutter". You will be asked to load in your AVS file (the one generated in Step 3) - do it.

What's going to happen here is that a list of "zones" need to be added. Each zone has a start frame and an end frame, and all frames in between will be kept (and all frames outside of the zones will be cut). You can either manually enter the desired frame number into the "Start Frame" and "End Frame" input box of the AVS Cutter tool and then press "Add" to add the zone, or use the video preview to skip to the appropriate sections and press the "Zone Start" and "Zone End" buttons to set a start/end frame, and then the "Set" button to add the zone to the list. If you specified multiple zones, you can also specify a transition between the zones (fade is the default setting). Once you are all done, press the "Add cuts to script" button and the cuts will be added to your AVS script. Press "Close" to close the "AVS Cutter" tool.

Press the "AutoEncode" button or from the "Tools" drop down menu, select "AutoEncode" to launch the Automatic Encoder setup windows.

This is pretty straight forward - just specify the output size of your video file either as a file size, or as an average bitrate and make sure the Container is set correctly, to "MP4" for the purpose of this guide. For AVI/DivX/XviD conversion, you can get the same quality video at roughly 80% of the original AVI/DivX/XviD file's filesize. For 720p/1080p QuickTime HD (MOV) files, these are already using H.264 so you should try and match the file size whenever possible (again, make sure the "Average Bitrate" is under control). For maximum compatibility with the Xbox 360, the bitrate peaks should not exceed 15 Mbps (15,000 kbit/s, although I've observed brief peaks of more than 25 Mbps that seems to not cause problems, and that the Xbox 360 handled peaks better than the PS3), otherwise you could see skipped playback. There is currently no way to control the bitrate peaks for the encoded file, and so as a general rule, try to keep the average bitrate of the video under 9000 kbit/s. The output location can be changed as well - this file will be the final output file that you want, so make sure you remember where you put it and don't accidentally delete it when cleaning up (I like to put this file in a different folder to all the other files, just in case).

When you're ready, press the "Queue" button and all the necessary jobs will be added to the encoding queue.

Click on the "Queue" tab and all the jobs should be listed there. Below is an example job queue where I have two video clips "tdk" and "seu" to be encoded, an explanation of the queued jobs shown in the screenshot below:

• job1: Encoding audio track for clip "tdk"
• job2: Encoding video, 1st pass for clip "tdk"
• job3: Encoding video, 2nd pass for clip "tdk"
• job4: Muxing audio and video to MP4 for clip "tdk"
• job5: Encoding audio track for clip "seu"
• job6: Encoding video, 1st pass for clip "seu"
• job7: Encoding video, 2nd pass for clip "seu"
• job8: Muxing audio and video to MP4 for clip "seu"
  
  
  
  

  New in MeGUI 0.2.6 or above is the idea of "workers". This has been introduced to take advantage of multi-core processors, allowing parallel job execution (processing more than one job at a time). Of course, certain jobs are dependent on another previous job being completed before it can begin (for example, job2-4 above requires job2-3 to be finished, and job2-5 requires all previous jobs to be finished), and so parallel execution is not always possible. But if you are encoding multiple video clips at the same time, then parallel execution allows each core of your CPU to be fully utilized at all times, allowing up to 4 video encodings at the same time on a quad core processor, for example. In essense, each "worker" represents a CPU thread that can be run on an individual core - so if you have a dual core processor, then you might want to create two workers, quad-core => 4 workers, etc. Even if you have only a single core CPU, you will still need to create at least one worker before MeGUI can start encoding video. To create a worker, from the "Worker" menu, select the "Create New Worker" option and then enter a name for this new worker.

  
  
  
  

  Create as many workers as you need (again, 2 for dual-core, 4 for quad-core ...). You can right click on each job to specify which worker it will use, or you can leave it unset and MeGUI will automatically assign workers (recommended). You only need to do this the first time you use MeGUI, as worker settings are remembered.

  
  
  
  

  When you are ready to start encoding, press the "Start" to start the encoding. For the above job queue example where I had two video clips "tdk" and "seu", when I press the "Start" button, both encodings will start with different workers, thus allowing me to encode two video clips at the same time (which would only be of benefit if you have multi-core or multi-CPU setups, of course). You can view the status of your workers by selecting the "Workers Summary" option from the "Workers" menu.

  
  
  
  

  When it's all finished, your MP4 file should be ready. You can delete all the other files, unless you plan on making more encodings from them.

  
  
  

  Step 7A: TVersity: Playing the MP4 file on your Xbox 360

  There are two main methods to getting the MP4 to play on your Xbox 360. The first is to use a USB drive/CD/DVD and play it from these media on your Xbox 360 - this is the easiest way to set up, since you all need to do is to copy the MP4 file to the USB/CD/DVD, and then insert it into your Xbox 360.

  The other way is a bit harder to set up initially, but it will make it easier in the future to play your MP4 files, since you can play them directly from your computer. Basically it involves setting up a UPnP server on your computer and then telling the Xbox 360 to connect to it - the Xbox 360 will then be able to read all the media files on your computer and play them back.

  There are a further two ways to set up a UPnP server on your system that this guide will cover - one is to use the free TVersity software, and the other is to use the Microsoft Zune software. The pros and cons of using either software is listed below:
  
  TVersity:

  • Pro:
    • Supports all kinds of H.264 files
  • Con:
    • Installation may require knowledge of port forwarding, firewall configuration (open port)
  Zune:
  • Pro:
    • Installation is easier
  • Con:
    • Installation, while easy, takes a long time
    • Only supports Baseline and Main Profile H.264 files

  If you have decided to use TVersity, continue on reading this page. If not, skip straight to Step 7B on the next page.

  ---

  So you have decided to use TVersity. Excellent. First, download and install TVersity. When you get to the last step of the installation, there is an option to "Install Codecs", which will install some video and audio codecs that are needed by TVersity. However, if you already have a codec pack like K-Lite Codec Pack (highly recommended) installed, then you probably don't need to enable this option at all (and enabling it might cause further problems - installing codecs over your existing setup might cause everything to fail). If you do run into codec related problems, then you can re-install with the "Install Codecs" option enabled, or install the K-Lite Codec Pack which is my preferred method. No codecs are needed for H.264 playback on the Xbox 360 though, since we are not using transcoding and only transcoding requires the installation of codecs.

  
  
  
  Otherwise, installation is pretty straight forward, but if at the end you get an error message about TVersity not being able to start, ignore it. Reboot your system when the installation is completed. Also be sure to check the TVersity system requirements page to ensure you have met all the requirements (Windows Media Player 9 or above and Flash 7 especially).

  Make sure the TVersity server is now running (look for the TVersity tray icon, right click on it and choose "Start Sharing" and wait until the icon turns green - if the TVersity tray icon is not shown, go to your Start Menu and start TVersity from there).

  TVersity Setup

  TVersity by default uses the port 41952 (this can be changed later on), and you will need to open up your personal firewall to allow this port to be used by TVersity. The exact procedure on how to do this depends on the brand of firewall you use, but if you use Windows Firewall, here are the instructions:

  1. Click on the "Start" button -> Control Panel -> Windows Firewall
  2. Go to the "Exceptions" section of the Windows Firewall configuration tool to see the exception list
  3. Click on "Add Program" and use the "Browse" button to locate the TVersity executable file (default location is: C:\Program Files\TVersity\Media Server\TVersity.exe) - you can also use the "Change Scope" button to limit the scope of the exception (eg. to block out access from outside your own network). Click OK until you're back to the exception list.
  4. Click on "Add Port" and add 41952 (TCP) to be opened, again you can use the "Change Scope" function to limit access. Press "OK" to save the exception and close Windows Firewall.

  Right click on the TVersity tray icon and select "Launch" or go to your Start Menu and start TVersity from there. In Tversity, go to the "Settings" section and ignore any warnings you might get about TVersity not being started.

  In the "General" settings section, you can set the following options:
  
  

  
  
  
  
  • Media Playback Device: Set this to "Xbox 360".
    
    
  • Media Sharing Service: This is where you start, stop or restart the sharing service - if it is not started yet, you can click on the "Start Sharing" button to start it. The "Automatically start sharing ..." option when checked will automatically start the service whenever you start the computer.
    
    
  • Temporary Media Files: This specify the amount of disk space to use for caching/buffering purposes - the default 8192 MB (8 GB) setting should be more than enough.
    
    
  • Home Network: You can specify the port that TVersity will use (if you change the port settings, don't forget to change your firewall settings to match it), and also specify the IP address you wish to share content with (or leave it blank to allow sharing from all devices on the network).
    
    
  • HTTP Proxy and Maximum Timeshift are not important, so leave the default settings there.

  Press the "Save" button to save the settings.

  Go to the "Transcoder" settings section, you can set the following option:
  
  

  
  
  
  
  • When to transcode? Set this to "Only when needed" (technically, H.264 playback won't need transcoding in any case, but transcoding allows for unsupported file formats to be played back too - previously, this included DivX and XviD, but it is now natively supported by the Xbox 360 with the 2007 Fall Update). ). You don't need to enable the "Decrease the bitrate ..." option unless your network connection from the computer to your Xbox 360 is limited (eg. wireless) - enabling this option has the effect of causing even WMV/H.264 files to be transcoded when their bitrate is higher than the network limit, which will decrease quality, so don't select this option unless you have a slow network (a wired connection should be fast enough for most video, even HD video).
    
    
  • Maximum Video and Image Resolution: These settings allow you to specify the maximum resolution video that TVersity will transcode to (if your video has a higher resolution, it will be converted to this maximum resolution - if your video has a lower resolution, the lower resolution will be used). Setting these settings to the resolution of your TV/display panel is recommended, unless you run into performance problems, in which case you can use half the resolution of your TV/panel (eg. 640x480) for lower quality video. Note that this only affects transcoded video - natively supported video (eg. WMV by the Xbox 360) won't be affected.
    
    
  • Windows Media Encoder: Check the box to use DirectShow for encoding to WMV (which is the format that is accepted by the Xbox 360), and probably leave the default selection of WMV 8 as the version of WMV to use. Again, technically, this option is not needed at all when dealing with H.264 files, since the Xbox 360 supports these natively and you do not need transcoding (which is what this option is about).
  
  
  
  
  • Optimization: Set this to "Quality", unless you have a slow computer.
    
    
  • Connection Speed and Quality: Change this to match the speed of your network. Increasing this above the speed of your actual network won't help, and will only make playback buffer all the time.
    
    
  • Compression: Set this to "Minimum" for maximum quality and better performance (but might overwhelm your network connection if it is not fast enough - a wired connection should be fast enough for most video, even HD video).
    
    
  • Decoding Speed: Leave this option checked.

  Press the "Save" button to save the settings.

  Adding media to the Library

  We will now add our media files (images, audio, video files) to the TVersity library, so that these can be accessed from your Xbox 360. Click on the "Sharing" tab to go to the sharing section.

  Click on the green "+" button and select one of the options to load in your media. My preference is to store all the media that I want to share in the same folder, as opposed to having them spread out across the hard-disk. This way, you won't unnecessarily load in a bunch of media files that you don't plan on sharing.

  
  
  
  

  Once you have added in all your media, the sharing section should list them. The "grey" refresh icon as opposed to the "black" one simply means that TVersity is still sorting through the media files.

  
  
  
  

  Connecting to TVersity from the Xbox 360

  We finally move to the Xbox 360. This tutorial assumes you've already setup the Xbox 360 for network and Internet connections.

  Go to the "Media" blade and select "Video". Press the blue "X" button to go to the select source screen. Here, the name of your computer/Windows User Account should be listed. Select the computer that you wish to connect to and after a while, the shared folders on the computer will show up. Now all you have to do is to browse through the folders/files to select a video, and then play it. Couldn't be any simpler.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  TVersity also shared pictures and audio files, and you can browse for those as well if you added them into the TVersity sharing section. Audio and image playback should be much more compatible than video playback, so you shouldn't run into any problems there.

  There's no need to read the next page as it deals with the alternate method of using Zune instead of TVersity. So we're done

  Got more questions? Post them in our H.264 Conversion/Encoding Forum and get them answered by other expert users.

  If things didn't go well, then try these troubleshooting tips:

  • If you are unable to connect to the computer running TVersity, double check your firewall settings again. Also make sure the TVersity media sharing is actually enabled on the computer.
    
    
  • Make sure that the Xbox 360 is not already connected to another media server or media center. Disconnect from any connected devices.
    
    
  • If all else fails, then you might want to post your problem in the official TVersity support forum - remember that TVersity is still in beta, so problems are bound to be present (it's also free).
  
  
  

  Step 7B: Zune: Playing the MP4 file on your Xbox 360

  So you have decided to use Zune. Cool. Currently, MP4 files will not play through the Media Center Extender interface, only through the Xbox 360 Dashboard player. This guide assumes you have already connected your Xbox 360 to your home network, and that there are no issues related to firewalls and other software which prevents you from connecting your Xbox 360 to your PC. More information on this can be found on the Microsoft Xbox 360 website (here).

  At the time of writing, Windows Media Player 11 does not seem to allow MP4 files to be added to your media sharing library, and even if you manage to somehow add them in, they will not show up when you share media with your Xbox 360. The solution is to use Microsoft's Zune software, which supports MP4 files.

  Turn on your Xbox 360. Download and install Zune (this can take a while). During the installation, you will be presented with the option of streaming to the Xbox 360 - check all 3 options and continue.

  
  
  
  

  Once installation has finished and you're in the main Zune interface, from the "Options" button, select "Library" and then "More Options".

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Click on the "Configure Sharing" button and enable sharing, and allow sharing to your Xbox 360. Press "OK" to close this window.

  
  
  
  

  Back to the Library options tab, click on the "Monitor Folders" button and then add in which folders you want to share with your Xbox 360 (just make sure the MP4 file you just encoded is in one of these folders).

  
  
  
  

  Once you add in the folders, Zune will scan through your media and at the end of it, you should be able to access the MP4 file from the Zune interface, and it should play.

  Now to your Xbox 360.

  Go to the "Media" blade and select "Video". Press the blue "X" button to go to the select source screen. Here, the name of your computer/Windows User Account should be listed. Select the computer that you wish to connect to and after a while, the shared folders on the computer will show up. Now all you have to do is to browse through the folders/files to select a video, and then play it. Couldn't be any simpler.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  You can see some photos of an actual H.264 playback on the Xbox 360 in my post here.

  If you run into any problems along the way with Zune, please have a look at this page for further instructions.

  We're done

  Got more questions? Post them in our H.264 Conversion/Encoding Forum and get them answered by other expert users.