I have some mkv hd movies on USB hard drive. I want to be able to play this on xbox 360 via USB Hard Drive. Does anyone know how to convert .mkv to a format that xbox 360 will accept and what format would be good for HD movies?

Thank you

If you Google mkv convert you find all kinds of stuff.

If you Google mkv convert you find all kinds of stuff.

Thanks but what format would be good for HD on 360. Also I need to find software for Mac

AVI, WMV or VC-1

Try a program called Encode360 which will change it to WMV.

http://dcunningham.net/encode360/

AVI, WMV or VC-1

Which is better avi or wmv when convert from HD mkv files. I want to preserve the best quality

Try both with a small file and let us know!

KernalROM, thanks for the link to Encode360. Once I manually set it to VC-1 with 5000K CBR 1-pass, I was able to get it to keep 5.1 tracks at 640k. Worked great with some 720p .mkv files I had, the file sizes come out nearly the same as the original .mkv, and the visual differences between the .mkv and .wmv files aren't noticeable.

Glad I could help ya out.. Encode360 is a great program as long as you have the proper codec's installed!

Bryan

I wish I could get my stupid media server to transcode MKV's on the fly. They're standard def and everything.

Well this sucks, the download keeps timing out, I can't get it. Are there any other sources?

I recently started using a program called Gotsent. It was made for the pS3 but works for xbox as well. It takes mkv files and converts them into mp4 files (since that is what they are really anyway) It only takes about 5-10 min for an hour show and there is no video quality loss. Just make sure to check the safesync option. The only drawbacks is it is fairly new so it still has some bugs and not all mkv's convert properly (but so far 90 percent of them have for me) and the other drawback is it outputs in stereo only right now so it downmixes 5.1 but supposedly the programmer is working on that.

OK, I got Encode360 running. It took all day to process a 6.55 GB file, and the output looks similar on my XGA monitor, but the output file is only 3.1GB. Now I'm glad it's smaller, but I wonder what's missing? I used the settings suggested in the previous post less the audio. Should I have upped the audio bitrate? I want to make sure I'm getting the best quality.

Any why do people use mkv in the first place!!!!!! ARGH!!

avi works fine and plays on lots of equipment!!!!

Thanks but what format would be good for HD on 360. Also I need to find software for Mac

Visual Hub (http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/) works for me. WMV supports HD resolutions.

OK, this takes too damn long. I'd be willing to pay for an avi solution. All the ones I see require all kinds of complicated steps. I'm not making all kinds of changes to my PC. I just want software that does it.

Again, I want to kick these mkv bastards! Everything is in mkv if it's HD content. Why?

Everything is in mkv if it's HD content. Why?

What are you talking about?

Are any of these MKV transoding programs automated? Ideally I would set it up once, have it monitor a folder, and convert any MKVs that show up in said folder dumping the conversion to a different folder. All with no interaction of my own.

Anyone know if Apple Quicktime HD trailers work on an Xbox 360? Seems like a silly question and the answer is "no" but I want to know. Its the easiest way to download HD trailers that I know of. I wanna get a 4-8GB USB stick and have HD trailers on it.

Anyone know how I can do that? :o

Encode 360 is automated and easy to use, although now I see some slight audio sync issues. Crap! It's just slow as molasses. get it running and go to bed/work.

Anyone know if Apple Quicktime HD trailers work on an Xbox 360? Seems like a silly question and the answer is "no" but I want to know. Its the easiest way to download HD trailers that I know of. I wanna get a 4-8GB USB stick and have HD trailers on it.

Anyone know how I can do that? :o


Pretty sure those are quicktime videos and won't play on the 360. It's a shame that the 360 marketplace does not have more previews. I always enjoy them and they are great quality. I'm sure they have to pay to be on marketplace. Looks like they need to lower the cost!

If you have Quicktime Pro you can convert the downloaded trailers to .mp4 files or whatever you wish (aside from WMV). The settings are very easy to remember once you've done it a few times. Everything is automated as well, so you don't have to install additional codecs.

-Brad

Pretty sure those are quicktime videos and won't play on the 360. It's a shame that the 360 marketplace does not have more previews. I always enjoy them and they are great quality. I'm sure they have to pay to be on marketplace. Looks like they need to lower the cost!

Quicktime trailers work on the X360. You'll be asked to download a media update, do so and you're set. Last trailer I tried was The Dark Knight (Joker) trailer, 1080p version.

Quicktime trailers work on the X360. You'll be asked to download a media update, do so and you're set. Last trailer I tried was The Dark Knight (Joker) trailer, 1080p version.

I stand corrected. This is great news as the quality of those are great. Can you please elaborate on the process? Or do they just play natively (with the XBL update you mentioned that should be automatic).

How do you save the trailers? I'm not paying for Quicktime pro to watch ads that should be free.

What plays and what does not is here (http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/2007/11/30/december-2007-video-playback-faq.aspx).

OK I found a good site for automatically d/l the trailers

hd-trailers.net

But they don't show up on the 360. They work on my pc and have the .mov extension, but they don't show up on the 360 dashboard at all.

I see that they are supposed to play, so I don't know what the problem is.

Read the FAQ

I love it when someone rudely tells the poster to read the FAQ, in bold face letters no less. When it is apparent to any non black and white thinker that there is something that the asker of the questions does not understand fully. The faq mentions something about a 3rd party decoder, which I thought I had because the files play on my computer, and also mentions that I can rename the file to avi, which I'll try but I don't think that's the issue.

I don't know what a non black and white thinker is but if you read the FAQ you noticed that just because a format is supported does not mean it will play. It has to have a video codec that is supported. It has to have an audio codec that is supported. It even told you how to find out what you have got -

6. How can I determine if a video file that I am trying to play conforms to the specifications as laid out in questions 1 through 4?

You can use a 3rd party tool to analyze your video files to determine what audio and video codec is used. A popular 3rd party tool to analyze video files can be found at http://www.headbands.com/gspot/.

Videora Xbox360 Converter. Convert to High Def H264 videos at 720p or 1080i depending.
Pretty much just point and click.