First off, I would like to thank impimpin206. He authored a great tutorial on how to use TMPGEnc to re-encode HD-DVD/Bluray ripped MKV sources to WVC1 (WMV) in order to stream to the Xbox 360. I have since come up with an updated process on how to accomplish the same thing. I have also provided some additional information in the tutorial that some may view as unnecessary. However, based on the rudimentary questions posed in his thread, I have included some basic information.

Please note that this tutorial is a work in progress, and will be updated. I will *not* post the tutorial here, but rather a link to the Microsoft Office Word 2007 document. As we all know, XS does not allow updating your posts. I feel this is counter intuitive to forums, and this is a workaround I have come up with.

So, grab the latest version of the tutorial here.

NOTE: If you are not using Microsoft Office 2007, and an older version you will need the Microsoft Office Converter Pack prior to opening my tutorial.

I will also post a tutorial in the upcoming weeks on how to rip your existing DVD's to WMV or Xvid. I'm tossing around upscaling during the encode, but I have yet to find a process that I like and that produces a good quality encode.

Please, comment on my work here. I will provide support as best as I can. The search feature of this board is the first step all should take before asking questions.

Enjoy!

Excellent tutorial, this is the new MKV bible! I'm glad there are people like you out there, thank you Chris!

This one should be pinned.

v1.0.20080130.2 has been posted. Same link as I have in the first post of this thread.

[EDIT]

DAMN IT!!

Of course, I go to upload the new version to Orbitfiles, and it generates a new URL. Bastards. I will email the admins of this forum to see if they can allow edit rights.

Here's the updated URL.
[/EDIT]

Great tutorial-actually one of the best I've seen on this site or any other site for that matter. Should definitely be pinned.

will2learn

awesome tutorial i finally got it working. Thanks again for all you help i will let you know how it turns out in about 17 hours

Should be pinned!

Chris - Check your email!

Thanks alot, very appreciated!

My only problem thus far is that I haven't been able to get a working mirror to download your format profiles. Any other mirrors besides those in the tutorial?

Thanks again

Yep. Here you go. I just uploaded the profiles last night. I didn't update the document yet, which reflects the Orbitfiles.com URL.

This tutorial looks excelent.
Ill give it a shot with windows xp pro.

thanks!

Nice work chrislynch!

Thank you to all who have downloaded the document thus far. I am curious on feedback you all have so far.

Just as a note, I am going on vacation here, and I will not have access to email, nor Internet, for over a week. I will update my document while on vacation, and upload a new version when I get back.

For some reason Im getting some jumpy video every 30 to 40 seconds. Im sure Im dropping some frames. Any help?

Thanks!

Are you streaming the video to your 360? If so, how? Is your 360 wired or wireless? Are you playing the final version on your PC, or on the 360? Is it 720p, or 1080p content?

Please, if anyone runs into problems, the more information you can provide, the easier it will be for all of us to help you. If you simply just post what robert74 did, that doesn't help me or anyone else, as there are multiple different things that can cause the above issue.

Also, please know that this is my last post of the day. I am now on vacation.

I had the same issue and what I found was that anything that was encoded over 3000Kbps caused the stream to stutter every so often. Lately I've been encoding 1280 x 720 @ 3000Kbps and AC3 @ 384 and getting pretty good results. There were some video artifacts at first but then I started to do 2 pass encoding and they cleaned up right nice.

I am having a different issue. I have a .mkv file that is h264 video and 6 channel AAC audio but I cannot get the sound right. I've tried a number of ways Tmpeg being the latest but none working. When I use avidemux the audio channels switch the fl with c. When I use this method it only decodes 2 channel. I've tried to decode the AAC files in to 6 mono waves and re-encode to AC3 but my timing is always off and it never matches up with the source video. Has anybody run into issues like that? If so what worked for you? Thanks in advance.

I noticed the exact same thing on all of my encodes. Between 30-40 second intervals and it stutters (video only) very briefly. It's actually hard to notice, but once you know it's there it drives you crazy. BTW, AWESOME guide Chris, thanks for the help. In response to your request for more info, I've seen this issue on the PC and on the xbox, my xbox is wired, and I've also had the same issue when I actually connect the harddrive it's on (HFS+) directly to the xbox. It still stutters. I've had it do that on every video I've encoded (720p and 1080p). I'm going to give imdickie's suggestion a try and I'll report back with the results tomorrow

Ok, so I reencoded a 720p source overnight with a bitrate of 3000kB/s and that didn't seem to fix anything. I still got the picture stuttering between every 30-40 seconds... any other ideas?

Hey

Your link to the tutorial seems to be down

Orbitfiles appears to be down at the moment due to "the server being busy". My suggestion would be to try back in a day or so. If it doesn't come back up, I can try to mirror it somewhere else if Chris is still on vacation.

There is a PDF version of this guide mirrored on my blog.

http://www.ryanwalsh.ca/blog/?p=8

Orbitfiles came back for me this AM. I was able to download the tutorial doc and profiles.

Yesterday I discovered the previous tutorial by impimpin206, read through that thread (very long) then followed the links here to Chris Lynch's tutorial. Very nicely done, Chris!

I'm running some test encodes now and will report back on my findings soon. And, yes, I just now joined this board to participate in the discussion, but I'm not a n00b when it comes to video conversions.

dakidark

Are you using the chrislynch's idea of using 24 frames/sec as the source (even though it may come up as 23.976)? Also what framerate are you encoding as? I've had the same problem of stuttering every minute or so in the movie (no issues with quality). I was talking to a friend who has been in the encoding scene for a bit and he said this issue doesnt sound like a bitrate problem, but perhaps a framerate problem. I played around with an MKV that was encoded at 25 fps. I re-encoded a sample to 25 fps WMV and it came out fine. No beginning stuttering issues (like the ones first reported) and no stutters like what you and I (and probably others) have been having. I'm going to play around with the framerates of some of the movies that I have that were encoded at 23.976 and see what happens. I'm sure it's fixable. Just have to trial and error it.

The source mkvs I have are encoded at 23.976 fps, but I've tried using 24 as well as 23.976 and both methods seem to be having the same issue. I'll set a few movies to reincode using other bitrates today while I'm at work and see what happens! Thanks for the insight though!

Did you have any codec packages installed previous to following this guide? A different version of ffdshow may be the culprit. The reason I suggest it, is that the latest build of ffdshow is often bundled in multiple codec packages (CCCP, k-lite, etc). However, most of the latest builds are beta and not "stable". The latest stable build was almost a year ago.

Do you have to use ffdshow? I use CoreAVC as suggested by chrislynch. I have the most up-to-date software.

I'm with your friend -- it feels like a framerate problem to me. Let's review.

The original video stuttering problem was seen when directly importing the mkv file into TMPGenc Xpress and not changing the input framerate. I have seen this myself and it's very ugly. The motion becomes jerky and it is constant and unbearable.

Chris discovered the magic technique of changing the input framerate to 24 fps when it is detected as 23.976. This makes the constant jerking go away, but seems to add the "hiccup" every 41 seconds. In every test render that I've done so far, I get the hiccup. It's much better, even watchable, but no good for archiving.

BTW, the playback testing I've been doing is in WMP11 since the output is a wmv. The hiccup is the same in WMPC -- 41 secs -- so this has nothing to do with the Xbox 360.

Finally, a quick rundown of my setup: Vista Home Premium, TMPGenc Xpress 4.4.2.238 (full retail), Haali Media Splitter, ffdshow-tryout 4a. I do not have CoreAVC installed (yet), nor AC3Filter.

See Appendix B. ffdshow rev. 610 (20061201)-stable Installation and Config on page 16 of the guide. This will show you how install ffdshow to decode MPEG-2.

The reason I asked originally, is that if a user has ffdshow previously installed, it may be conflicting with CoreAVC (a few of the beta builds of ffdshow cause the stuttery playback).

The very first step in Chris's guide should be to Uninstall all existing codecs and codec packages that are not part of the XP / Vista default installation. Then follow Chris's installation instructions for the codecs listed in the document. This will ensure that an old version of any conflicting codecs are not installed.

I did have a codec package installed, but removed it completely and installed coreAVC instead. Evidently today while I was at work something strange happened and my encoding didn't work, so I'm trying again now. Here's a brief snapshot of my setup:

Vista Ultimate x64, TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress v4.4.1.237, Haali Media Splitter and CoreAVC Professional 1.6.0.0, 4GB dual channel DDR2, Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66GHz running @ 3.25GHz).

Did you install the Haali Media Splitter that is bundled with CoreAVC? If so, uninstall CoreAVC and reinstall without Haali Media Splitter. The version of Haali Media Splitter linked separately in the guide on page 5 is newer, and seems to work better.

Unfortunately no joy. I followed Chris's guide to the letter and only installed the standalone and unchecked the option to install the one bundled. My re-encode just finished, so let me fool around with that for a few minutes and I'll report on what I did and whether it worked in a few. Thanks for the tips though!

Ok, so using placebo3681's suggestion of encoding with a framerate of 25 and having no issues if the source is 25, I decided to see what would happen if I encoded at 25 fps with a source of 23.976. The results were pretty good. I did still notice one glitch with my movie, but it may have been the source or network. As far as I can tell there is no reoccuring glitch every 41 seconds. I'm going to try with another source and see what happens again, but if you all get some time and want to try this out, I'd be much appreciative to hear of your thoughts.

First, thanks to impimpin and to chrislynch. These tutorials have been great, and I've read every page in both tutorials.

On the skipping issue, I changed the 23.976 to 24 on my input clip (even though it was auto-found to be 23.976), and on the format tab I set my output to 23.976. I'm noticing the skipping every 41-42 seconds as well.

I'll toss this out there to see if anyone can find a way to use it...
Notice that 24 - 23.976 = 0.024 seconds.
Now, notice that 0.024 * 41.667 = 1 second.

So, it would seem that every 41.667 seconds the frames are 1 second off where they should be, and either the key frames or some other mechanism is causing the video to skip back to where they should be.

Alright, so at least for me, if my source is 23.976, then I get no skipping if I leave my input and output as both 23.976, not changing anything to 24. So until I run into some other problem, that's what I'm doing.

I tried this with a video encoded at 23.976 fps. When I set the input fps to 25 in TMPGEnc Xpress, it does indeed make the 42 second glitch go away. However, the motion is still not perfectly smooth for me. It's different with this setting and hard to describe. I would say it's smooth for a couple seconds, then there is a mild stutter, then it is smooth again. Smooth, smooth, stutter, smooth, smooth, stutter. I saw this in WMP11 on the PC and playing from a DVD-R on the Xbox 360.

This new stutter is less disruptive than the 42 second glitch when the input is set to 24 fps, but it happens more often. It's watchable, but no good for archiving. There is a problem here and changing the input fps fixes one thing but breaks something else, for me. As mentioned before I'm not using CoreAVC, but I will be giving it a try soon.

Also, I've started calling that glitch a 42 second glitch, because it seems to be closer to 42 than 41.

I too noticed the glitch that is really hard to explain. It seems like it definitely is better, but still not where it should be. There should be some sort of fix for this.

Good catch! I made the same calculation before and drew the same conclusion. Just one thing that I have to point out: your math is correct, but your units are not. I'm an engineer, so this was drilled into me in college. Not to dis you, but if I didn't correct this, I would bring shame on my teachers and my father (also an engineer).

In the first equation, the units are fps - fps so the resulting units are still fps (or f/s) => 0.024 f/s
In the second equation the units are f/s * s so the resulting units are frames => 1 frame

So, every 41.667 seconds, the video is off by exactly 1 frame. Like you, I believe that something is trying to correct this error and that correction results in what we have called the 41 or 42 second glitch. I would like to know what is making the correction: TMPGEnc Xpress? the DirectShow filter? Knowing that might help resolve this issue.

Alright, I've done 2 encodes and watched them fairly carefully. You guys are absolutely correct, approx every 40-42 seconds, it looks as though the frame rate is corrected.

I've just done a sample encode using the detected input frame rate (23.976) as the output frame rate, and so far, I don't see any corrections.

Why again did we chose "24" fps as the output method for this tutorial? It doesn't make sense to adjust the frame rate from the source.

No offense taken. I was once an engineer, so I should have gotten that right myself, but it was late last night when I calculated it and I was more focused on the numbers than the units. That makes more sense though, being off by one frame than one second. Getting off by a second would make a much bigger skip in the playback. The actual skip is a much quicker event.

To follow up on my last post, I tried encoding at 23.976 input and 23.976 output, to match my source, but now I have the constant stuttering issue for the first five minutes. It seems to be almost exactly five minutes. The rest of the video, including the 42 second skip, is fixed.

I may go back and get impimpin's method running again, since his avs script seemed to correct both the 42 second skip, and the 5-minute stutter. (I was having audio problems with his method before, but I think I have that corrected now.)

The other options I'm tempted to try: (1) playing with the prefetch video cache settings in TMPGEnc, under Options, CPU, multithread settings (right now both prefetch caches are unchecked; and (2) add 5 minutes of video to the front of my encode which I can trim back off after it's complete, to get rid of the stuttering in the beginning.

Anyone else have any experience with either of those?

I think xobx360 summed it up in the last post about the video having that constant stutter for the first 5 minutes. It's not the normal 42 second stutter, but more along the lines of the one I get if I set all the framerates to be 25 , ie much smaller but constant.

In response to xobx360's post, I haven't fooled with the pretetch video settings, but my gut tells me that just prefetching the video and audio won't do it because I believe the issue falls under TMPGEnc trying to correct that framerate hole. I believe it is a TMPGEnc issue because the issue appears to be present for both those using coreAVC as well as ffdshow.

I know having the skip is good in the long run because it prevents the video from getting out of sync with the audio, but I think the overall issue at this point is what is causing the issue when encoding a 23.976 source to a 23.976 video. If the 5 minute stuttering issue can be fixed, the whole issue goes away and we don't have to deal with the 42 second stutter.

My thought with the prefetch goes back to someone's comment in the middle somewhere of impimpin's thread. Someone mentioned it and then no one followed up on it.

It seems that encoding at 23.976 for a 23.976 is the way to go to fix the 42-second skip, but that causes the 5-minute stutter in the beginning. It seems TMPGEnc might have a cache which takes about 5 minutes to get up and running, I'm wondering if using a video/audio prefetch might build up that cache from the very beginning and fix the early stutter. Of course if that were the case, then the 5-minute stutter should happen all the time, which it doesn't for me - only when using 23.976fps, not when using 24fps.

I agree, I'm increasingly convinced that this is a TPMGEnc issue, so I'll check with their support as well.

Anyway, that's my next trial-and-error test for tonight, I just haven't had time yet to check it out.

Well, I am back from vacation, and I'm glad to see people posting.

I firmly believe this to be an issue with TMPGEnc, and not any other source. If you use WMP11 or MPC (with the internal filters disabled), you are in affect using DirectShow, which is what TMPGEnc will use. I believe that their internal video render is trying to compensate NTSC and PAL video with time shifting.

I wonder if anyone can please chime in with how they are viewing the final product. Are you viewing it on your local PC? Streaming it from your PC to your 360?

24FPS always works for me, and I stream my video across an 802.11n wireless network without issues. I do make sure that Diskeeper is not set to auto-defrag my 1TB drive (where my video content is stored.)

I will be posting an update to the tutorial later this week. I had some time to put some new things together. I'm also thinking about adding other apps like Microsoft Web Impressions (the replacement to Windows Media Encoder), and quite possibly WME itself. Let me know if that would help anyone.

Welcome back, Chris. I'm viewing my finished product locally an my PC using WMP11, locally with VLC, and streaming to my xbox over a wired connection, and I get the same 42-second skip and 5-minute stutter using all three playback methods.

I get the quick skip every 42-seconds throughout the entire video when I choose 24fps as my input while using a source with 23.976fps. Easy to notice if I encode a quick sample of a movie's scrolling credits, because it's easy to see the skip as the text scrolls by.

If I encode using 23.976fps to match my source, then I don't get the skip every 42-seconds, but the first few minutes of my video stutter. It's almost constant, just a very un-smooth playback for the first five minutes, as if it's playing every other frame (though VLC says I'm not dropping any frames). Then after that first few minutes everything is smooth for the rest of the video.

Neither of these issues creates any problem with audio-video synch. My audio remains synched and smooth throughout.

Finally, the 5-minute stutter seems harder to troubleshoot - if I do a short sample clip from the middle of my source, I get no stutter in the sample. It needs to be a full encode (or maybe a clip from the beginning of my source?) to see the stutter. Happens with all of my sources, though.

I saw above that you were using ffdshow to decode x264 video. I do not support, nor work with ffdshow to decode x264 video. Please use CoreAVC if at all possible. The 5-minute stutter has been linked to ffdshow in the other post with impimpin's tutorial. If you cannot, jacanuck has a reg file posted on his site that should fix the stuttering issue. Again, I do not help you further with ffdshow.

As for the intermittent stutter every 42 seconds, I have not experienced that at all, except where I have Diskeeper 2007 (and upgraded to 2008) where if I left Autodefag enabled, I would get lousy playback. If you do have any sort of automatic defrag tool, or real-time virus scanning tool, I highly suggest you disable or exclude the directory where you host your video.

I previously used ffdshow under impimpin's method, but I have since uninstalled everything and only installed the items in your tutorial. ffdshow is no longer installed, nor has it been since I began posting in your thread. So this shouldn't have anything to do with ffdshow.


I don't have autodefrag, and my virus scan doesn't seem to be the issue. The 42-second stutter isn't intermittent. It's every 42 seconds; I can sit with a stop watch and hit it every time. I'm positive this is an issue with 24fps vs 23.976fps, and only happens when I choose 24fps as my input even though my source is 23.976.

I'm going to do some more troubleshooting on my end, though, and will post back if I ever track anything down.

Thanks again

I've been having the exact same issues with the same setup. The issue appears in local playback on the PC, wired network streaming, and with USB playback (HFS+) on the xbox. I too am using coreAVC along with only the items mentioned in the tutorial. I currently have no program setup to defrag (it's two 10000 RPM HDDs in RAID 0, so speed shouldn't be a factor) and no antivirus installed. To simplify, the issues are listed below:

23.976 Source (treated as 23.976), outputted to 23.976-> Stuttering for first 5 minutes, perfect afterwards
23.976 source (treated as 24), outputted to 24 -> A skip every 42 seconds in the playback. Very subtle, but definitely there

I have been following this tutorial from the start. I have done about 10 encodes and get skiping in all of them aswell. 23.976fps, first 5 min. 24fps, every 42 seconds. 25fps constant glitching. I dont know what it could be but, I have been watching the board and waiting till i do my next encode to see if someone can come up with a solution.

Can you all verify that both Video and Audio cache is enabled in TMPGEnc's Preferences, and set to their max values: 1024MB and 32MB (assuming you have at least 2GB of RAM.)

That was me. I'm the motherless son-of-a-gun who was using ffdshow for a while there. And, not just the accursed ffdshow, but the ffdshow-tryouts beta. Dang my ornery hide!

But I now have CoreAVC Pro 1.6.5.0, I have turned off H.264 decode in ffdshow (which is still installed), and I set CoreAVC to "preferred decoder". I think that should give CoreAVC the highest merit and the DirectShow graphs that I have checked show that it is indeed being used to decode these MKV files. I wanted to make it very clear in my previous posts that I was not using CoreAVC, as prescribed in the tutorial. However, I find it interesting that ffdshow-tryouts gave me the same results as others on the same settings.

All of this leads me to agree with the current consensus that TMPGEnc Xpress is the most likely culprit. We have practically ruled out CoreAVC and ffdshow-tryouts 4a as the root of the problem. Both of them give me smooth-as-glass playback from MKV files in WMP11 and MPC.

Welcome back, Chris. Hope you enjoyed your vacation.

Thanks. I did enjoy my vacation. Had a great cruise down Mexico.

I do firmly believe the issue is with TMPGEnc. If all of that have actually paid for TMPGEnc, we should open a support case with Pegasys to hopefully find a root cause.

For the time being, I would strongly suggest anyone who has had a codec pack installed on their machine, do the following:

1. Remove all codecs. Yes. All of them.
2. Reboot.
3. Download and acquire CCleaner and K-Lite Codec Tweak Tool. Install both.
4. Run CCleaner, and have it do a registry check. Select YES when prompted to backup the registry before it "cleans it."
5. Run K-Lite Codec Tweak Tool, and have it detect for broken codecs.

If all comes back clean, then go back to the tutorial and install the components I outlined. Also, the version that is up there does not state to enable Video and Audio Cache. If you have disabled these, I would suggest re-enabling them before you encode. Also, try changing the Encode Type from 2-pass VBR Peak/Avg, to 2-Pass VBR Avg. I will update the TMPGEnc templates to reflect this change tomorrow.

Ok I didnt see how to check the audio and video in prefrences. But i did have ffdshow installed so i uninstalled it then gonna try again