I see some of you are looking for a way to convert 720p MKV files to WMV-HD. So here's a little tutorial that should help you out. You need to download the attached file and have the tools below.

You can download a sample video here. Just stick it in your shared video folder and play it over network on your console.

Tools needed

- My custom TMPGEnc Xpress profile (available here)
- TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0 (available here)
- MKVtoolnix (available here)
- MKVExtractGUI (available here )
- Avisynth (available here)


Once you have all of that software installed and functioning, here's what you need to do.

1. Extract the contents of the attached file. This tutorial assumes you have extracted the file to the root of your E: drive, so you'll be working from e:\wmv_working\ If this is not the case, you'll need to open the movie.avs file in Notepad and change the directory. Copy your source MKV file to your \wmv_working\ directory and rename it to movie.mkv

2. Run MKVExtractGUI and open your movie.mkv file. Check the box for the AC3 audio stream and click the 'Extract' button. Once complete, exit MKVExtractGUI.



3. Run TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0 and start a new project.

4a. Load your AVS script (movie.avs) into the source file.
4b. Load your AC3 audio file into the 'Audio' section. (click browse, locate file)
4c. Change the 'Clip Name' to the title of your movie. This is what shows in the Xbox 360 browser.



5. Look at the clip details before proceeding to Format. Remember your source file's resolution.



6. Proceed to 'Format' and click 'Browse' to load the attached template Xbox 360 720 VBR.txp4e



7. Correct the resolution to what was displayed on the source file information. If you are using a 1080p source, you should be able to convert to 1080p WMV-HD without any other changes. For 720p sources, you should only need to correct the vertical resolution. Failing to do so will result in a clipped frame or black bars at the top & bottom to keep the aspect ratio. Setting the same resolution will have your Xbox 360 scale the file correctly.



8. Push the 'Calculator' button. Set your output size to 100% of media and push OK.



9. Save your project in case adjustments are necessary.

Optional Step: Create test sample (see below for steps)

10. Everything else is set for you. Encode!


Optional Step: Create a test sample

Note: this assumes you are between steps 8 and 10.

1. Select the bitrate from the box and copy it into your clipboard. (In this example, it's 5053)
2. Click 'Source' to go back a step in the wizard.
3. Click 'Cut-edit' on the right.
4. Select a new start frame and end frame and click OK. Since this is VBR, I usually make a 5 minute clip of both low and high motion scenes to give an accurate output quality sample.



5. Click Encode and start it.
6. Put the output file into your shared videos and play it over network in your Xbox 360. If the video looks good, then re-open your saved project file and encode it. If you didn't save it, you will need to repeat these steps to set your original start/end frames to the movie's start/end, then encode.

Hopefully this helps you some.

Cheers,
impimpin

THANKS!!!

Cheers bud....
this question gets asked hell of a lot.

You got it all wrong man, all you need is VLC and a tad bit of command line knowledge

... and a helluva lot of a patience

lol....wait, why?

My experience in converting to WMV with VLC was tedious, and ultimately doesn't even compare to TMPGEnc as an encoder. I let VLC do what it was designed to do... play.

True, but once figured out its quite handy

Oh and VLC does only play, ffmpeg is the one that converts

if you *think* you know a better/faster/easier method to do the same conversion then why not stick it in a tut for all the share ? instead of just trying to piss on this mans work.


Shame on you...
Shame indeed.

Oh you mean using VLC to serve the stream. I thought you meant using the 'file output' feature and thought you were nuts. I've converted files to WMV that way before, but nothing HD. Man I thought you were nuts.

Anyway, this method should be easy to follow for users who prefer an easy GUI to work with. And this is the way that I know works.

Let's try to keep the rest of this thread clean for users who may have questions or need assistance.

cheers

Chill the fuck out dude, I was just trying to say that there is other, easier ways to convert it not piss all over this dudes work (which I should've given props to in the first place). I am actually working on a set of .bat files currently, one for converting to HD WMV for the 360 so STFU





I'll make a new thread when I get everything worked out and will try to not jack this thread up anymore than it already is

Trying to keep it as clean as I can bro (kind of )

thanks for the how two i have one on how to get past the 4gb file limit on fat32 if you want to check it out to save money on discs and use an External hard drive on the xbox 360
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=610799

Hello,

I’ve been using your guide to great effect, everything is almost perfect... but I’ve found the frame rate on the encoded video is very jittery. Its has the same frame rate as the original file (23. 976).

Any help?

Can you post a screen shot of 2 things:

Clip details
Encode settings

Or if you want to send me a sample clip I will play with it.

Is your source file progressive? If you're not using a progressive source, encoding to progressive could be the problem. If I get both screenshots, or a clip sample, I'm sure we can figure it out

I will upload the sample I am working with and PM you a link, give me an hour. If that is ok with you?

I am using your settings, and cant think of anything else to change. I read that the jitter is due to the way the FPS is re-encoded.

WME assistant will encode MKV to WMV-HD If your MKV files can be played by windows media player.

Yeah I'm at my office PC, so I'll be able to work with it tonight. You are correct on the jitter.

Do you have a good control over the output file size? I have a good few 9GB, 90min films that really could look just as nice at 4.5GB.

Great! Thanks, this is exactly the thing I was looking for. But one problem: your link to the MKVtoolnix doesn't work...

Try to use CBR1pass 6000kbps for video, CBR1pass 768kbps for 5.1

Sorry, the filename got messed up when I put it on my server. The original download link is to an .exe so the X-S forum filtered it, which is why I RAR'd and uploaded it in the first place. Anyway, its working now.



First of all, CBR sucks. You can use this tutorial with CBR and get decent encodes for most movies... but the upside of using VBR cannot be disputed.

Secondly, go take your instructions for your methods to another thread. This thread is for me to answer questions about my method. I can't even stand how cluttered many threads get; you doing it to my thread really chaps my ass.

excellent guide m8 , im doing this now , any chance of maybe a .pdf version or word document or something , just so people dont need to keep the page open when going through the steps?

Well, Every coin has tow sides, CBR is the best way to control your output file size.

Sorry, this is my last post in your brilliant thread.

I have a question: What if I want to play the video from my Windows Media Center, and not to burn it on a disc? Can I do that? And why do I need to control the output file size, if I don't care about? I prefer not to reduce the quality, and to handle wirh a couple more GB.

These files should play fine with Windows Media Center. If you want to play them on your 360, you can just use the Media -> Videos -> Computer option... but they should play/stream with Media Center just fine as they are Windows Media files.

Cheers

THANK YOU!!!!

I have been using so many programs trying to convert mkv to WMV and finally a great guide comes along. I never knew TMPGEng had grone so much since it's old command line days.

2 questions:
1)About how long does it take other people to encode a ~90 movie? I have a 2.0ghz Dual Core and it looks likes its going to take about 8 hours, but it did just start.
2)Why do you suggest demuxing the audio into its ac3 stream and then tell TMPGEnc to use the seperate file?

Thanks again

1. You should see the time dwindle down pretty fast, then level off. Hopefully others will input some encode times.

2. If you just load the MKV or AVS file directly for audio, it will read the source audio as 2 channel. You can see this on the clip details when importing the default audio. By demuxing it to an AC3 stream and loading it separately, the original 5.1 audio track gets encoded as 5.1 still.

The original source file is pretty jittery. I'll continue to play with it, but it seems this wasn't a very good original encode. Even the way my method depicts isn't optimal- we're re-encoding something that's already compressed. The ideal situation is to encode from HD-DVD / Blu-Ray source files directly... which is another tutorial I'm working on Anyway I'll play with it some more like I said... but when I watch your sample I see a bit of jerkiness when Christian Bail is moving

Huuuuuuuuge thanks mate. Have converted about 5 of my hd movies so far without a hitch

Well, thank you for trying. I have some other videos that need a re-encode due to small things that really bother me. So I’ll try some other clips, but they’re always 23.976.

Encode 360 seems to do a decent job, easy to use and configure. Ive converted a few samples without a hitch :-) .. and itsfree to a good home!

That's the kind of feedback I enjoy reading

Cheers!

First, you're posting in the wrong thread. Second, new beta seems equally problematic to me. I encoded a tiny clip and that went okay, but trying to encode various MKV movies crashed the encoder under Vista. Never had such crashes with the professionally developed software that I use. If you have questions / comments / anything to say about Encode360, do it somewhere other than this thread.

Can anyone else post your encode times? I'm looking at 24 hours left on mine...

Windows XP sp2
AMD X2 3800+
2 gb ram

Seems a lil long. I'm doing my first encode right now but with my AMD 64 X2 3600 and 2gb of ram it said 7hrs when i first started it. Though its analyzing now so im not sure it that means 7hrs to analyze and 7+ to encode.

Did a sample to test it but i was in the other room while it was encoding so i missed the whole analyze bit.

on a side note. Is there any way to actually store these onto the 360s HD??

The time listed is the start-to-finish total. To my knowledge, there is not a way to put them on the xbox HDD yet... maybe with one of the PC HD browsers, but I haven't bothered hooking my drive up to the PC to explore it at all. This may be possible? At work right now, but will look into this tonight/tomorrow.

Noooo.

Followed everything to the word. Install it all. Bang, go to add the movie.avs and it just hangs and TMPGEnc fails to respond ever again..

Happy to say a reboot got it working. Danged if I can see a edit button.

A HUGE THANKS to impimpin!!!!. you can't believe how many other apps i tried that did not work. This works flawlessly and the programs in your tutorial take advantage of my quad core cpu.


One quick question: When i run TMPEG Xpress and load in the .txp4e file i am not given the option to choose the WMV 9 advanced profile, it just says Windows Media Video 9 (under video). Does this even matter? Is it the same thing?


Thanks Again for this awesome write up.[color=#3333FF]

wow that sux i wasn't watching the preview and i didn't realize till it finished that i forgot to crop the black bars....looks like i'll be encoding this again.

The video could need cropping with the cut-edit under clip details. However if you didn't change the resolution to match your source file, that would create black bars too. If you did correct the resolution to match your source, then you would need to crop edit them out



Yeah, this encodes an advanced profile. Under the step 7 screenshot, look at the blue edit box labeled 'video' and it displays it there. Glad to hear its working well and taking advantage of Quad.

Cheers

ya my source was a 1080i cap from the dvr and though i had the output settings correct i just forgot about cropping the black bars. oh well.

Using the exact methods in this guide, converting a 98 min 720p source file with 5.1 audio took 12 hours with a E6300 1.86Ghz Core2Duo and 2GB RAM.

I have converted 6 files and the average time seems to be about 11 hours.

You can overclock that to 2.4 ghz with the stock Intel fan easy

Right im doing my first 3 hour long convert, 8 hours on the time scale, i couldnt get encode 360 working either so this seems the better option! also a quick query while converting (doing it now as i type) 8 little haali media splitter icons have come up where my msn logo it and network connection are! u know? anyway will this cause any probs? all i have is kazaa media codecs installed! thanks for the guide, thanks for pics and taking the time!

All is normal

Is there anyway to fix stutering problems?

Yeah it really depends on your source file. Send me an original source sample, and I can do some test encoding and report back.

Cheers.

Great Tutorial......I am using it to convert some files that I have.

Have you made any progress on the HD DVD front. I would really love to convert the 10 or so HD DVD's that I have hear chewing up my hard drive space so that I can view them on the 360.

Ok......Encoding my first movie via this method. I did run into a problem though. When trying to load the movie.avs file into TMPG, the program crashed everytime. Tried everything and still a no go.

Since I have to go to bed I just loaded the original MKV file as the video source and the audio file that had been remove from it. What is the impact of doing this? It does seem to be working but I will not know how the results were for another 12 hours