Was wondering what the best app out there is, or if there's no one sure fire app that'll do the job, the best method/process to convert HD H.264 MKVs to WMVs with the least loss in quality? I watch these HD movies on my TV streamed through my Xbox 360 from my PC using TVersity and the HD movies I get are usually in HD H.264 MKVs. So, I like converting to them to WMVs. I know that TVersity will transcode, but I find that converting the MKVs to WMVs is always better for my viewing. I'm currently using WinAVI Video Converter and while it does the job decently, I find there's too much loss. For eg., with a 5GB HD H.264 MKV file, once it's finished converting, I end up with a WMV file that's just a little over 3GB in size. And I can tell there is some loss in video quality as well when viewing the two side by side. Another question I have is, what's the best setting I can have in FFDShow's decoding configuration when converting HD H.264 MKVs to WMVs? Can someone recommend a good setting configuration for that so I end up with a nice 16:9 AR movie without too much loss in quality? TIA!
Thought that the XBox360 supported H.264 now? Probably not in an mkv container, but you could easily remux to mp4 (just need to re-encode the audio probably). That said, then only WMV9/VC-1 encoder available comes from MS. So the quality will basically be the same no matter what. If you are getting only a 3GB file though, then it sounds like you have the output bitrate set too low. As for ffdshow, with AVC you generally want to leave it with just the in loop filtering and no other post processing. However you may like to add some noise, sharpen or whatever (just no deblocking, deringing, etc.). Really though if you are converting via dshow, then coreavc will still be faster.
celtic_d, thanks for your timely reply. Just one more question, please. When you say that I may have the output bitrate set too low, that has nothing to do with how FFDShow decodes the input file, correct? It's more to do with the app that's converting, such as WinAVI Video Converter in this case? Thanks.
