I have a bunch of movies in VOB & ISO formats that I want to convert. I want to play these movies off my 360 through a USB, but the files need to be 4GB or lower. Out of these: AVI, WMV (VC-1), H.264, MPEG-4 , which one will give me the best video/audio quality when compressed under 4GB? I'm referring to this site here: http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/gamesandmedia/movies/videofaq/viewvideoplaybackfaq.aspx And also, what would be the best (free or paid) program to do this? Thanks, Mike.
Ok, no-one answered... so I had to do a lot of researching. I'll post my results below, in-case someone has the same question: I decided to go with h.264 in a mp4 (mpeg-4) container. Supposedly this has a better quality to size ratio than divx, and wmv (vc-1). I've tried Avidemux, MediaCoder, Handbrake, RipBot264, meGUI, and AutoGK. I was looking for something that didn't take forever to convert, have dual audio tracks, chapters, and have good quality under 4GB. AviDemux, Ripot246, MeGUI, and AutoGK, didn't have all of what I wanted. Plus some where way too complicated, lacking features, and had too download many codes/encoders, etc. MediaCoder is great, but on Very High Quality settings, it takes FOREVER (about 10-11 hours for a 900MB input file on a Intel Pentium 4 CPU) on my other computer though it took about 4-5 hours. Interface is confusing at first, but once you know what encoders you want (x246 for video, and FAAC for audio (since the Xbox 360 only supports AAC on H.264)), it's really quite simple. I liked that you can see the final size and other specs before converting. But the simplicity and quality of Handbrake is what made me use it instead. Good quality output. Playing around with the settings, especially the constant quality settings was a hassle, but I decided to use between 70.1%-75%. One issue was that if I used chapters, for some odd reason it would always convert to m4v instead of mp4, and unfortunately, the Xbox 360 doesn't support m4v. Disappointed that I can't use chapters, but none of the other programs would let me keep the original chapters or create any for that matter. So if anyone has a way of using the original chapters with Handbrake and have it play off a usb on the 360, please let me know. Also what settings did you use to keep the file under 4GB and not lose any quality or very little from the original file. Thanks.
