MCEBuddy

Derek,

Not to add any more to your workload but I (and im sure other) owners would like to see additional options to xbox 360 (h.264) codec profiles.  I cannot get the Apple Compatable (no resize) files to play on my xbox and REALLY do not want to use WMV as I care about qual/size. 

As always,  Thanks!

Joe

I'd also be very keen to know how to amend the existing mencoder.conf profiles to create an H.264 High Quality output that is compatible with the XBOX 360.

The H.264 video and audio limitations according the the Microsoft developers are posted here.

I also found a tutorial for another conversion application with a webpage titled "Xbox 360 H.264 Conversion Guide".   This appears to give some helpful tips on what knobs you need to turn.

My existing H.264 recordings (encoded by MCEbuddy) appear as follows according to MediaInfo.

I'd be forever grateful if someone could show me how to create a profile that allows me to continue to archive high quality, H.264 video, but also retain XBOX 360 playback.

Sadly, I just don't know enough to crack the code on this one.

I'd love to find a guide for all the switches available to mencoder.   

 Seems like I'm just missing propoer syntax to get this over the line.    I've had some succesful experiements with 2-pass encodings by adapting the "Apple" profile that comes with MCEbuddy.    I find it bizzarre that the .MP4 files that MCEbuddy creates won't display in the XBOX 360 video browser until they have been renamed to .AVI.

Anyway, I'm attaching a spreadsheet which compares some of the detailed video and audio characteristics of the files that come from another conversion tool (MeGUI), with the ones that come out of MCEbuddy.    The only profile that I could get to work in the 360 with MCEbuddy was the Apple profile.   (After the file renaming of course.)

I'm also attaching the profile which comes with MEGUI.    Does anyone know how to trasnlate this into a profile for Mencoder?

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<GenericProfileOfVideoCodecSettings xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Name>PD-PS3-Xbox360</Name>
  <Settings xsi:type="x264Settings">
    <EncodingMode>4</EncodingMode>
    <BitrateQuantizer>1000</BitrateQuantizer>
    <KeyframeInterval>250</KeyframeInterval>
    <NbBframes>3</NbBframes>
    <MinQuantizer>10</MinQuantizer>
    <MaxQuantizer>51</MaxQuantizer>
    <Turbo>true</Turbo>
    <V4MV>false</V4MV>
    <QPel>false</QPel>
    <Trellis>false</Trellis>
    <CreditsQuantizer>40</CreditsQuantizer>
    <Logfile>.stats</Logfile>
    <CustomEncoderOptions />
    <FourCC>1</FourCC>
    <Zones />
    <MaxNumberOfPasses>3</MaxNumberOfPasses>
    <NbThreads>0</NbThreads>
    <QuantizerCRF>1000</QuantizerCRF>
    <EncodeInterlaced>false</EncodeInterlaced>
    <NoDCTDecimate>false</NoDCTDecimate>
    <PSNRCalculation>false</PSNRCalculation>
    <noFastPSkip>false</noFastPSkip>
    <NoiseReduction>0</NoiseReduction>
    <MixedRefs>true</MixedRefs>
    <X264Trellis>1</X264Trellis>
    <NbRefFrames>3</NbRefFrames>
    <AlphaDeblock>0</AlphaDeblock>
    <BetaDeblock>0</BetaDeblock>
    <SubPelRefinement>5</SubPelRefinement>
    <MaxQuantDelta>4</MaxQuantDelta>
    <TempQuantBlur>0</TempQuantBlur>
    <BframePredictionMode>3</BframePredictionMode>
    <VBVBufferSize>9000</VBVBufferSize>
    <VBVMaxBitrate>25000</VBVMaxBitrate>
    <METype>2</METype>
    <MERange>12</MERange>
    <MinGOPSize>25</MinGOPSize>
    <Profile>2</Profile>
    <Level>11</Level>
    <IPFactor>1.4</IPFactor>
    <PBFactor>1.3</PBFactor>
    <ChromaQPOffset>0</ChromaQPOffset>
    <VBVInitialBuffer>0.9</VBVInitialBuffer>
    <BitrateVariance>1.0</BitrateVariance>
    <QuantCompression>0.6</QuantCompression>
    <TempComplexityBlur>20</TempComplexityBlur>
    <TempQuanBlurCC>0.5</TempQuanBlurCC>
    <SCDSensitivity>40</SCDSensitivity>
    <BframeBias>0</BframeBias>
    <Deblock>true</Deblock>
    <Cabac>true</Cabac>
    <WeightedBPrediction>true</WeightedBPrediction>
    <AdaptiveBFrames>true</AdaptiveBFrames>
    <BFramePyramid>false</BFramePyramid>
    <BRDO>true</BRDO>
    <biME>true</biME>
    <ChromaME>true</ChromaME>
    <P8x8mv>true</P8x8mv>
    <B8x8mv>true</B8x8mv>
    <I4x4mv>true</I4x4mv>
    <I8x8mv>true</I8x8mv>
    <P4x4mv>false</P4x4mv>
    <AdaptiveDCT>true</AdaptiveDCT>
    <SSIMCalculation>false</SSIMCalculation>
    <Lossless>false</Lossless>
    <QuantizerMatrix>Flat (none)</QuantizerMatrix>
    <QuantizerMatrixType>0</QuantizerMatrixType>
    <DeadZoneInter>21</DeadZoneInter>
    <DeadZoneIntra>11</DeadZoneIntra>
  </Settings>
</GenericProfileOfVideoCodecSettings>

All of the "bad" encodes come from MCEbuddy with the exception of the one in bold above.    Good and Bad are relative things of course, and in this case they refer to whether they played in the XBOX 360 without transcoding.   I've also noted that the complexity setting (and use of high end features) can be increased on the Apple profile..... and still work correctly.   I'm not sure which features those are exactly, but the MEgui profile above probably tells the story.

For reference, here is the Apple profile that Mencoder 1.08 comes with:

MCEBuddy 2.0 will be moving to MP4 for H.264 only (the AVI container will be ditched for H.264).  The Apple compatible profile in 2.0 *should* work on the XBox 360 withhigher quality than that in 1.0.8, though the one in 1.0.8 should still work.

Derek