Tutorial: How to Convert MKV (x264) to 360 Ready WMV-HD Options

[Majestic06]

If I have a 1080p Movie and wanna have it in 720p What do I have to do?

Is the 720p version then smaller in filesize? I only have an hd-ready TV, not a full hd. And probably the 360 will handle 720p files better than 1080p?

This post has been edited by Majestic06: Aug 18 2007, 08:01 AM

[jacanuck]

any word on the stuttering/jitter issues? I have the same probs. First 5 mins are stuttered as hell then it smoothes out. Has to be a TMPEG issue...

So far they have all been related to decoder settings. (ffdshow decoder options). I couldn't tell you which specific settings though, but impimpin206 might be able to.

[arthurbear]

Hi I have got a dvd rip of a film and want to make it into a wmv hd file.I have a program called river past and i am planning on converting my avi to mkv then use this guide to make a wmv hd.

Is this the way to do this from an avi file?I was guessing i use my converter program to up the res of the dvd rip to 1280 x 720 then run it through this process to make a wmv hd file.is this right or am i:-

A:Wasting my time,theres a quicker way/that wont work

or

B:Sounds like a plan give it a go.

Cheers peeps

[jacanuck]

Hi I have got a dvd rip of a film and want to make it into a wmv hd file.I have a program called river past and i am planning on converting my avi to mkv then use this guide to make a wmv hd.

Is this the way to do this from an avi file?I was guessing i use my converter program to up the res of the dvd rip to 1280 x 720 then run it through this process to make a wmv hd file.is this right or am i:-

A:Wasting my time,theres a quicker way/that wont work

or

B:Sounds like a plan give it a go.

Cheers peeps

I don't see why you have to convert your file from .avi to .mkv prior to converting it to .wmv

You can use the method in this tutorial with any video source file. Your avi most likely has 2 channel audio, so skip the whole part about mkvtoolextractGUI. Just load the avi into tmpg express, go to format, chose the template from the tutorial, enter your desired resolutions and convert.

[impimpin206]

I don't see why you have to convert your file from .avi to .mkv prior to converting it to .wmv

You can use the method in this tutorial with any video source file. Your avi most likely has 2 channel audio, so skip the whole part about mkvtoolextractGUI. Just load the avi into tmpg express, go to format, chose the template from the tutorial, enter your desired resolutions and convert.

Lots of AVI's have AC3 dolby audio tracks. If it shows up as 2 channel audio in your encoder, but you know its 5.1 audio, you'll want to extract the audio with Virtualdub.

[tomrip]

im converting disturbia mkv, and when i got up, it looked like my computer had restarted. the source file is 4.5 gigs, when i used the calculator i chose 4.5 gigs for the out put, trying to do a 1:1 copy. weh n i went to dir i saved in file was only 2/5 gigs, and could not fast forward rewind or anything on the pc or xbox. i figure this means it rebooted in the midle of the encode. i am doing it again, and i am at 56% but the output file size is only 600 meg. i set everything up exactly as tutorial said, so is there any reason it would make output file smaller?

[Z3rO`]

So far they have all been related to decoder settings. (ffdshow decoder options). I couldn't tell you which specific settings though, but impimpin206 might be able to.

That would be great. I'm having stuttering issues too, when loading the mkv directly. When using the avs script I can only do cbr, since tmpgenc crashes at 50% when doing vbr.

This post has been edited by Z3rO`: Aug 19 2007, 01:48 PM

[jacanuck]

That would be great. I'm having stuttering issues too, when loading the mkv directly. When using the avs script I can only do cbr, since tmpgenc crashes at 50% when doing vbr.

That problem has been rectified (the 50% thing) in this thread already by specifying the framecount in the avs script (that way TMPG knows it is at the end of the movie and starts the 2nd pass (the 50% barrier)

DirectShowSource ("E:\path_to\movie.mkv", fps=23.976, framecount=155342)
LanczosResize(1280, 528)

Use that as your avs script and retry. (only change the path, moviename, fps, framecount, and resolution to match your file).

On a side note, Immpimpin showed me that fix. He may be interested in knowing that I encoded a 720p file last night only specifying the path and movie name as the directshowsoure, and erasing the rest (as originaly suggested in the tutorial). Those ffdshow decoder settings seem to make a difference with the 50% bug too. We still don't have a list of specific setting changes for ffdshow, soon to come.

[TralerPrkTrash]

Tried a bunch of ways to get the wmv to not stutter yesterday but was not successful. In the end I had to mux to mpeg and then use TMPEG to encode to the WMV container. No more stuttering. There has to be a better way to load the mkv and not have it stutter.

[arthurbear]

I have just tried the program to try and make a dvd rip avi into wmv hd.The file was a dvd rip of a music video.
The conversion seemed to go fine and after 1 hour of converting i ended up with wmv hd file of the video

I burnt this to a data disc and played it back on my xbox,The thing was that the quality was no better than when i make a dvdrip intovobs and burn them to a normal dvd and play them back on my xbox,plus when playing back via the data disc the sound was cutting out then starting again.maybe because i used acdr at 24 speed.

But the long and all of it.Should i notice an improvement in quality if working from a normal dvd rip ( avi )
or should i expect no change in quality unless the original source is of a hd dvd or blu ray.

Thanks people

[impimpin206]

Tried a bunch of ways to get the wmv to not stutter yesterday but was not successful. In the end I had to mux to mpeg and then use TMPEG to encode to the WMV container. No more stuttering. There has to be a better way to load the mkv and not have it stutter.

Have you un-installed all codec packs? I just did a clean installation of Windows Vista and installed the following (with success)

- ffdshow-tryouts @ http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net

- AC3Filter (optional, if you use this do NOT install AC3 support from ffdshow-tryouts)

- Avisynth 2.5

- TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0 ver 4.2.3.193 (probably isn't latest, but it's what I had backed up.)

If you're still getting choppiness after installing the above, I suggest a clean Windows install. If that's not feasible for you, sorry. If the above doesn't work on a clean Windows install, I'd look at your hard drive performance.

Cheers

I have just tried the program to try and make a dvd rip avi into wmv hd.The file was a dvd rip of a music video.
The conversion seemed to go fine and after 1 hour of converting i ended up with wmv hd file of the video

I burnt this to a data disc and played it back on my xbox,The thing was that the quality was no better than when i make a dvdrip intovobs and burn them to a normal dvd and play them back on my xbox,plus when playing back via the data disc the sound was cutting out then starting again.maybe because i used acdr at 24 speed.

But the long and all of it.Should i notice an improvement in quality if working from a normal dvd rip ( avi )
or should i expect no change in quality unless the original source is of a hd dvd or blu ray.

Thanks people

The quality is only going to be as good as your original source. With that said, loss is minimal. And if you were to encode from a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD source directly, skipping the x264 conversion, there would be even less loss. For regular DVD, or other standard definition sources, I don't think you need the wmv-hd advanced profile. I haven't tried the other profiles myself, but I will do a music video DVD backup tonight and find out the optimal settings for that. It'll definitely be included in the forthcoming tutorial.

Cheers.

This post has been edited by impimpin206: Aug 19 2007, 06:26 PM

[Z3rO`]

That problem has been rectified (the 50% thing) in this thread already by specifying the framecount in the avs script (that way TMPG knows it is at the end of the movie and starts the 2nd pass (the 50% barrier)

DirectShowSource ("E:\path_to\movie.mkv", fps=23.976, framecount=155342)
LanczosResize(1280, 528)

Use that as your avs script and retry. (only change the path, moviename, fps, framecount, and resolution to match your file).

On a side note, Immpimpin showed me that fix. He may be interested in knowing that I encoded a 720p file last night only specifying the path and movie name as the directshowsoure, and erasing the rest (as originaly suggested in the tutorial). Those ffdshow decoder settings seem to make a difference with the 50% bug too. We still don't have a list of specific setting changes for ffdshow, soon to come.

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately it didn't help. Tmpgenc just stopped at 50% throwing out an error. The silly thing is, that tmpgenc always adds one extra frame. E.g. if I enter framecount=167652 in my AVS script then tmpgenc says "encoding 1/167653". It displays the correct frames in the source windows though.

[edit] I'm trying to cut some of the last frames. Perhaps this might help. I'll report back when I'm finished with the encoding (ETA 10 Hours) [/edit]

This post has been edited by Z3rO`: Aug 19 2007, 09:59 PM

[impimpin206]

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately it didn't help. Tmpgenc just stopped at 50% throwing out an error. The silly thing is, that tmpgenc always adds one extra frame. E.g. if I enter framecount=167652 in my AVS script then tmpgenc says "encoding 1/167653". It displays the correct frames in the source windows though.

[edit] I'm trying to cut some of the last frames. Perhaps this might help. I'll report back when I'm finished with the encoding (ETA 10 Hours) [/edit]

Read my post above regarding codecs. This is the more likely culprit. If this doesn't resolve it, I have a .reg configuration file for ffdshow that could solve it (it did for others)

[jacanuck]

Aye - whichever settings were in that ffdshow reg file - solved the 50% hang for me. It's tough to tell which exact setting is the culprit though.

[Z3rO`]

Guess what. I'm at 72% now. I think Tmpgenc calculates a wrong frame count, adding a few extra frames which aren't there originally. This causes the second pass to fail. I cutted those "phantom frames", resulting in Tmpgenc going past the 50% mark.

Thanks for your efforts. Great Tutorial.