Hey folks, I've not been posting on here in ages, so excuse my ignorance.

first thing first, I have a 720p x264 file in an mkv container that I want to watch on my 360 at the highest resolution possible. Until now I've been reencoding as h264 in an mp4 container and transferring to a portable hard drive. This works great but involves about 3 hours of encoding (minimum).

I recently learned of the process of simply performing a passthrough, and repackaging the file into an mp4 container using Videora's default passthrough settings. This results in a 720p mp4 file that plays great on VLC on my desktop.

After transfer to the portable HD, playback on the 360 is possible, but the picture is very strange. Color blocks appear and vanish all over the image, there is strange blocking, and some parts of the image are just plain garbled. You can easily see the image, that it is HD and working, but it is unwatchable.

I really don't understand what's going on here. Does the XBox 360 have a somewhat "accidental" support for x264 files through it's h264 support, and simply fails to support it fully?

Is my only option a full reencode?

Am I doing somethign wrong at the passthrough stage?

Please help,

Jaidee.

The Xbox 360 does support h264 (within limits.... check the Xbox website for the specs). I think you're just a little confused on what x264 and h264 are. h264 is the type of video stream (ie. if it was music we were talking about h.264 would me an mp3 or a wav etc.) whereas x264 is the encoder to create an h264 video stream.

As far as blocky pixilated video goes, maybe the bitrate is too high (once again check the Xbox website for the specs). If you don;t know what the specs of the file you have are download MediaInfo and that will tell all!

Hope this helps!

Here is the (edited) output from MediaInfo:



Going off the video bitrate and codec, I can't see why this isn't playing correctly.

Thanks for the advice so far, glad you could help me understand the x264 is just free libraries, not a codec.

Any ideas?

Everything in the output from MediaInfo seems normal. Does the origonal file play fine on the pc?

Plays fine on the PC yeah. It is something of a mystery.

Is it bychance a Dimension release?
Because everyone else have been having problem with these, on 360 and PS3 with using MKV Passthrough method. It must the way the group release their files, CTU ones are fine.

Just convert the fucker

I'm biased to WMV-HD... 5.1 audio love you long time.

I would just reencode, but it's a pretty lossy workaround. To be honest, I think it's a trade off - 5.1 surround sound vs. only encoding once. Bring on the day when we can play 5.1 mpeg-4 mkv files, that's what I say. Until then, reencoding I think.

Hi Jaidee,

Got exactly the same problem as you (and the file concerned is a Dimension release, I am obtaining a non Dimension one to see if there is any difference):-

720p MKV, reworked into an MP4 using GotSent. PC plays it fine. Xbox 360 plays it, lots of blockyness & areas of pixelated blocks appearing in various random places in the picture.

I'm going to try to check to see if it's a network speed issue by putting the file on a DVD & playing it direct from the Xbox 360 (I assume this is possible). If it still does the same it does sound like something is not quite right with the file.

Did you get any answers?

Offtopic: It's really disappointing not to be able to see HD content. Though the recent support for Divx/XVid is a big plus - although the picture from the 360 seems sightly more blurry than from my Ethernet enabled DVD player that I was previously using for Divx/XVid playback.

Hey jaroldzero,

Thanks for the reply, let me try to give you an update. Repacking the mkv file into and mp4 file wasn't the issue, it was in fact release dependent. Goodness knows why, and yes, it sucks.

Things have, of course, changed after the fall update. I have yet to see how this affects anything at all, but we still can't play the .mkv files natively, although there may bet greater support for the passed-through mp4 files.

Only one way to find out!

Hey Jaidee,

Yeah, I got pretty much the same result!

Got an NBS release & it played fine & the next Heroes S02E07 from Dimension was fine too, so yes it seems like it is not necessarily group related but can be individual encodes.

At least it's progress & it's nice to have HD with the option to switch back to the Xvid/Divx version as a backup if the demuxed/remuxed MKV to MP4 doesn't play ball! - Tho of course it'd be nice to have MKV container support & be able to avoid the passthru stuff (tho Gotsent does make it relatively painless)

Here's hoping we get that rumoured Media Centre/Extender update come the new year & h.264/Divx/XVid & MPEG-2 can all be played in both the dash & Media Centre - it's just too confusing at the moment

So some 720p movies will work but some wont ?

do u have any group names of those which will work like septic,definite,sinners etc?

OK, I have a small update in this regard.

It would seem that jaroldzero is correct, this isn't release dependent (as in group), it seems to be episode dependent. Perhaps some encoding methods are better than others when it comes to XBox 360 compatibility. All we need now is for a release to get wise and start releasign with us in mind, but hey, wishful thinking!

that's because the video was encoded with a h.264 profile that the xbox doesnt support. it simply cant work...
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?sho...d=4173231&#

Is there a way to see which profile was used and which profile it needs to be for the 360?