[Rabomil]

rabomil- those were some nice posts on usenet- please post more if you've got more-

i certainly have more. is there something in particular you're looking for? right now, i'm encoding 'lemony snicket's: a series of unfortunate events.' (1480mb, 640x360, avg of 1.46 mbit video, lc-aac 448 kbit).


i'm using the following 'rules' for my encodes, to keep xbox compatible, without dropping frames:

- i encode movies with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio to the full dvd width of 720 pixels.

- i encode movies with a 16:9 aspect ratio to a width of 640 pixels (this is actually the maximum width of regular tv's). i do not use anamorphic resolutions, because that really hurts the performance of the xbox. besides that, there's no significant visual gain, compared to square pixel.  

- i use six file sizes: 740 mb (1/6 part of a dvdr), 1480 mb (2/6 part of a dvdr), 2048 mb (maximum iso file size), 2960 mb (4/6 part of a dvdr), 3700 mb (5/6 part of a dvdr) and 4440 mb (6/6 part of a dvdr). most movies i encode have a size of 1480 mb or 2048 mb.

- the average video bitrate stays between 1.3mbit and 2 mbit. the video bitrate appears not to be too important when it comes to compatibility with the xbox.

- the average audio bitrate is either 448 kbit lc-aac or 256 kbit he-aac. it depends on the videobitrate and the total file size whether i use lc- or he-aac.

- i use the standard avc profile, with the default settings, except for the encoding options. there i only use bidirectional prediction (b-frames, 3 b-frames in a row max). it is possible to use macroblock partitions and weighted prediction, but i prefer not to use them. cabac and deblocking are hardly usable, because this will almost certainly cause frame drops. other avc profiles gave some artifacts on my xbox (not on my pc) and do not offer options that prove to be really useful for the resolutions i use, quality wise.


compared to divx/xvid, h264/avc is a huge step forward.  :thumbsup:

[Murmur2k]

yeah rabini - excellent posts on usenet please keep uploading

black hawk down was cool.

[Caldor]

i can confirm on x264 encodes that with cabac and deblocking im dropping frames. i will doing another quick transcode without those to look. build is feb 8 06.

[ronster]

caldor,

how did the transcode look?

[Diggedy]

i did a small clip to push it a bit further and see how it went:

pal 720x434 (2.35:1 encoded anamorphically in nero recode then flagged 16:9 with mkvmerge) at 2mbps
dts 5.1 (added with mkvmerge)

the resulting file played perfectly!

[kaisersose]

can anyone post what settings/program atm with good results that is working fine with recent builds of xbmc.

also how long does it take to convert for examle a 90 minute film to avc with a good pc?

[Gamester17]

can anyone post what settings/program atm with good results that is working fine with recent builds of xbmc.

megui with sharktooth's custom x264/avc video profiles (using the profiles for xbox/xbmc obviously)

[fillou]

hi to all,
i've encoded a movie with nero rencode2. the result (an .mp4 movie) was played fine with nero showtime (incl. subtitles) in my pc. i've tried then to launch the movie with the latest xbmc player. the result was fine (smooth and quite good picture), but there was no subtitles at all. is there a way to display the subtitles?
i think that the same problem occurs to windows media player also. the movie palys well but there are no subtitles.
thanks in advance.
nikolas

[Gamester17]

nero rencode uses embedded vobsubs (a.k.a. directvobsub), right? mplayer doesn't support directvobsub (embedded vobsub in avi/mp4), (so neither does xbmc as it uses a mplayer based core to play these files), mplayer/xbmc currently only support external vobsubs. if you like this in xbmc then you should submit it as a feature-request to mplayer, read this post (link) on how to do that. as a workaround you could demux the vobsub and try to use it externaly (ex. movie_name.mp4, movie_name.sub, movie_name.idx)

[Caldor]

@kaisersose my process is to use dgmpegdec to frameserve my source dvd media into avisynth. i apply yv12 filters during the frameserve, such as tdeint for deinterlacing pal dvd material. i will preview in virtualdub in full video mode with the null transform filter to decide on what cropping settings i should be using. after cropping and resize for square pixels is setup in my avisynth script, i then use virtualdub on fast recompress to transcode using x264. after thats done i mux the audio back in with virtualdubmod or avimuxgui and i'll use belight if i need to fiddle with the audio a bit.

i dont like the automatic things like gordian knot or using profiles cos i find them too constricting (as well some tools change versions alot) but thats my opinion only.

be warned, i have a pretty dam quick desktop machine and h.264 is pretty slow - especially when using alot of references and exhaustive search.

i havent bothered with the cli based x264 commands.

[Caldor]

[quote=johnh123,aug. 14 2005,03:13]
i'm using the following 'rules' for my encodes, to keep xbox compatible, without dropping frames:

- i encode movies with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio to the full dvd width of 720 pixels.

- i encode movies with a 16:9 aspect ratio to a width of 640 pixels (this is actually the maximum width of regular tv's). i do not use anamorphic resolutions, because that really hurts the performance of the xbox. besides that, there's no significant visual gain, compared to square pixel.  

- i use six file sizes: 740 mb (1/6 part of a dvdr), 1480 mb (2/6 part of a dvdr), 2048 mb (maximum iso file size), 2960 mb (4/6 part of a dvdr), 3700 mb (5/6 part of a dvdr) and 4440 mb (6/6 part of a dvdr). most movies i encode have a size of 1480 mb or 2048 mb.

- the average video bitrate stays between 1.3mbit and 2 mbit. the video bitrate appears not to be too important when it comes to compatibility with the xbox.

- the average audio bitrate is either 448 kbit lc-aac or 256 kbit he-aac. it depends on the videobitrate and the total file size whether i use lc- or he-aac.

- i use the standard avc profile, with the default settings, except for the encoding options. there i only use bidirectional prediction (b-frames, 3 b-frames in a row max). it is possible to use macroblock partitions and weighted prediction, but i prefer not to use them. cabac and deblocking are hardly usable, because this will almost certainly cause frame drops. other avc profiles gave some artifacts on my xbox (not on my pc) and do not offer options that prove to be really useful for the resolutions i use, quality wise.


compared to divx/xvid, h264/avc is a huge step forward.  :thumbsup:

ok ive been fiddling around with this. these rules dont work.

i have a correctly profiled (pd-xbox_hires) sharktooth profile transcode in an mp4 container using 640x272 resolution, correct for 2.35:1 dar. i set an average bitrate of 1706, well within the max on those rules specified.

streaming this over smb the movie plays for a bit in hardware overlays, but on a significant scene change it will then messup. i suspect this is occuing when it gets hit with a big keyframe on the 6279 kbps maximum bitrate.

some info on the audio track:

track # 1 info - trackid 1 - timescale 25 - duration 02:22:10.000
media info: language "und" - type "vide" - sub type "avc1" - 213250 samples
handler name: gpac iso video handler
mpeg-4 config
visual stream - objecttypeindication 0x21
avc/h264 video - visual size 640 x 272 - profile main @ level 5.1
decoding buffer size 75413 - average bitrate 1706 kbps - max bitrate 6279 kbps
no stream dependencies for decoding
streampriority 0

the only other stream is a vbr aac audo stream.

im just not sure the xbox has within itself to do this, but i'd be very happy if it could be worked around somehow.

[Caldor]

bug #1454450 is up on the sourceforge tracker.

[Caldor]

the synposis is this:

full anamorphic resolution dvd pal material wont playback with megui profiles and xbmc. the author of the profiles is unwilling to bring down the profile further for reasons of loosing too much in the codec.

there is a threshold around 704x400 that requires the user specifies hardware overlays from the default of high quality render methods to stop dropped frames with media that also has an aac audio stream.

[Zaliek]

After finding this thread and doing lots of digging I've ran across this solution for playing H.264 on my xbox.

Go follow this link:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=120167&postcount=1
Download the latest, then

As deblocking is very hard to handle and in most cases the reason for not having smooth playback, wouldn't it be a good idea to disable it by default, by adding "lavdopts=skiploopfilter=all" to mplayer.conf?

Doing this will disable deblocking, providing almost completely smooth playback (except in those instances where the bitrate goes through the roof)

Hope this helps someone else who's looking for a solution.