MCE Video Encoder, Transcode 360 and Microsoft
Published by runtime 360 March 23rd, 2006 in TranscodingA new application has been released in the same vein as Transcode 360. Although it works in a similar manner, what MCE Video Encoder brings to the table is the much requested ability to skip forward/backward/stop and pause - the only catch is you’ll need to flip back to the Info -> More menu; even so, you should definately check it out.
If you’ve been following the posts/comments on this site you may know that theres a different ‘path’ I’m pursuing with Transcode 360 - I’m hoping to achieve a similar level of functionality with much tighter integration and compatibility. But this is easier said than done, so in the meantime MCE Video Encoder is definately worth a shot, particularly if you’ve been unable to install T360 - I’m very interested to hear what you guys think of it.
Longer term, Microsoft have recently made some comments that sound interesting albeit cryptic. Without commiting to anything they say that they’re considering providing a video streaming solution for Windows XP users, however they don’t mention whether this will be limited to WMV and other DNLA-compliant codecs (I think its probably safe to assume so).
This look interesting but I would rather get something based on mpeg2 written to HD and streamed to the 360.
How did you find those guys?
runtime, I think you have a PAL system. Have you noticed the issue with aspect ratio I reported in the other post? If you take one of the video from xboxyde.com and try to convert it with ffmpeg without changing the frame size, does it play as 16:9?
I am starting to think that the 360 player is somewhat buggy when it comes to respecting aspect ratio flags.
Hi again RUNTiME,
If you’re looking for a new transcoder engine for T360 might I suggest you have a look at Dr. DivX (DrDivX and it’s forked version of FFmpeg seems more suited to Win32 than the original FFmpeg). Since it can practicly decode any audio/video format and enocde to just about as many formats (including MPEG-2 of course). It’s open sourced (licensed under the LGPL) and made in C/C++ for Microsoft Visual Studio.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/drdivx/
Hi Albert , congratulations for T360!
I want to speak to you about a French project named VLC 360 is available and is very interest and performant! (more fluid than T360)
VLC360 is ability to skip forward/backward/stop and pause too!
If you want try, you can dowload it here:
http://neor76.free.fr/vlc360/VLC360.msi
Eric78,
Nice finding. I will give this atry tonight.
Gamester17,
I tought dr.divx was geared at producing divx encodes. I might be wrong. Do you have a specific link to the project? Is it the one at http://labs.divx.com/ ?
Nice one Eric, I’ll check it out over the weekend, and send you my feedback. Send me an Xbox Live friends invite if you like and we can chat further.
bmaltais: Great news, I believe I’ve cracked all the problems, I now have a working MPEG2 Source Filter
If you’re available on Xbox Live this weekend I’d like to chat about configuration and the results of some of your tests. It’ll help steer me when it comes to producing a custom version of ffmpeg (see below).
I also checked out the MPEG2 Push Filter you mentioned a couple of days ago - it turns out that filter doesn’t actually do what we want (still its a useful reference for a push filter).
Gamester: I’m going to need to create our own flavour of ffmpeg. One that is less demanding on the CPU, and easier to control. FFMPEG will transcode flat out as fast as it can using as much CPU as it needs, thats not really what we need. What is needed is ‘just-in-time transcoding’ - you heard it here first folks
@bmaltais, yes it’s the one and the same project, shouldn’t be too hard to make it encode to MPEG-2 instead of DivX (famous last words?!), the hard bit would be to make it do “just-in-time transcoding” in real-time just like RUNTiME said.
@RUNTiME, that’s cool, just thought you like to know about that project since I assume you also use MSVS (right?) and the DrDivX team/devlopers has already done a lot of work to make FFmpeg compile nicly with it.
…another project who also forked FFmpeg for Win32 and MSVS is of course FFdshow (that also contain some very nice post-processing filters which would be a very nice optional addition)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow
no point in reinventing the wheel
Indeed - thanks for the tips Gamester
Runtime,
Having the CPU go to 100% during should not be a problem. In fact this would be a good thing since it allows to create a buffer of content that can be fast forwarded to until the whole file is transcoded…
One way of ensuring that other MCE functions are not slowed down during the transcoding would be to set ffmpeg priority to a low one.
Runtime,
I will certainly try to connect with you on Live over the weekend. Looking forward to it!
It would make sense to have a certain amount of buffer, but to let it go flat out… you do have a point about lowering the prioriity; although in practice I don’t think Windows does true pre-emptive multi-tasking, I think theres an element of co-operation such that an app that is a complete resource hog can affect the ’smoothness’ at which some tasks run.
Just got home from work, did some more testing - while the MPEG2 filter works beautifully for graphedit, Windows Media Player, and even Windows Media Center locally, Xbox 360 is being stroppy - not rcognising the file type. I suspect there is either a further reg tweak that I need to do or a little bit of debuging of the filter to see how differently it is being used.
Still quite positive at this stage
Runtime,
Strange… so if you drag the mpeg2 file in the graphedt window it builds the graph fine using your push filter. But MCE does not seem to use it?
Or is it that you manually build the graph in graphedit and it play the file fine? Have you tried to let graphedt build the graph on it’s own?
Graphedit will render it on its own no problems, I can also insert it into a new graph and render the pin, that’ll also work. All the standard players will use it fine, even Windows Media Center - but for some bizarre reason when I’m trying to play the file via the 360 (just read it, its not being written to) it’ll pop up “Cannot Play Video the file type is not recognized and cannot be played. Either the correct codec is not installed or the file is corrupt.” I wonder what I’m missing.
How did you encode the file? It might be the source file that is the problem. From the look of the error message it is able to open it but report that the format of the ouaio or video are not compatible…
Have you been able to play this file on the 360 with the default directshow filters?
Runtime,
I can do a quick test of the filter if you want.
@bmaltais: Woohoo!! The filter is no longer an issue, right now I have ffmpeg streaming nicely to the Xbox 360 - damn I wish I knew then what I know now
Pause, Stop and Play are working fine. Rewind and Fast forward also (well sort of - probably need to do some more testing).
I’ll tell you about my little revelation when I next chat with you over Live, but for now I’m ready to take a break - maybe watch some TV, play some GRAW, or fade into Oblivion
runtime,
Great news! This is getting cool!
I will try to chat with you later… Hopefully the time difference will not be too much of an issue
runtime,
Have you been able to confirm that the filter will keep streaming past the point the transcode was at when the file started playing on the 360? The old mpeg1 filter was terminating abruptly.
One quick way to try is to start the transcode and within 10 second start playing the file on the 360.
If it play past 20 seconds in length you know it does not suffer from the other filter problem.
If this all work fine then the next step will be to start building some logic to optimize the ffmpeg transcode… like selecting the right image size to obtain the right aspect ratio, best image quality, desired CPU impact, etc.
Cheers
My VLC360 review:
Installation: Very easy
Method: Network Stream based using mms//
MCE 2005 Integration: VLC360 nicelly integrate in the MCE interface by adding a new menu item on the start page. This menu item bring you to a list of drives that are available on your system. Simply pick the drive letter that contains the video you want to play. This in turn will bring a list of folders on this drive. Navigate to the desired folder and finally pick the video you want to watch. At this point a new interface shows up which allow you to play, pause, stop, ff and rw. To start playing the file simply select the play button. This will start the VLC conversion and automatically start streaming at full screen. To pause, push the back button and select the pause button in the gui.
Overall impression: I really like the Start menu integration that easilly allow you to pich the file to play. I think this should be the method of choice foll all 360 transcoding. I would rather have a disk base streaming instead of the Network streaming solution since it requires some “non standard” navigation method. Mind you this is better than nothing. The gui is not totally robust and crashed on me at multiple occasion, requiring my to return to the dashboard to kill the hung MCE session. Given the ease of installation and the nice start menu integration of this solution I will rank it as the best offering available so far for streaming unsuported AV to the 360. Good work guys!
About the filter, I watched an entire movie with no problems. I’ll look out for you online tomorrow.
Casey (/mceDivx360) and I had discussed using ‘hosted HTML’ (which sounds like what VLC360 is doing). The things I have problems with are:
1. duplication in the main menu
2. hosted HTML is a bit clunky
3. non-standard navigation
Despite that, I really appreciate the author’s efforts and like you say, for the moment its the best offering
As a side note: one of our goals is to integrate with My Movies, in which case theres already a hosted HTML interface to integrate with that the author has spent a considerable amount of time developing so if we can leverage that I’m all for it.
Some more toughts on VLC360:
The video quality produced by the transcode it certainly not equivalent to what is obtained with ffmpeg mpeg2 output.
On my P4 3.0GH HT the resulting video is playing at something that look like half the original frame rate with a somewhat blocky resolution.
This is very disapointing… and interesting since it gives us guys the ability to produce a solution that will not only shine on the transcode quality but as well inovate in the sense that it might allow full control over the video with the remote.
Long live Transcode360!
Runtime,
Hosted HTML certainly feel slughis when compared with native MCE interface. I am not sure which options I prefer yet. Any way, as long as the produced video quality is better (then currently available on VLC360) and direct remote video control is possible I will be happy!
It is interesting to see the different approach everyone are taking. I personally think Transcode360 will be the best option, flat out!
I remember looking at VLC’s WMV quality and it wasn’t quite up to par with the stuff that Windows Media Encoder produces. It was said that VLC can only encode WMV8, this also poses a problem for regular Extender devices which can only play WMV9.
I hope you don’t mind but I’ll be relying on you to steer me as regards to picture quality, codec settings etc.
I’m off to bed as its almost 2am, I’ll be playing GRAW/Oblivion tomorrow for the most part but don’t hesitate to start up a voice chat if you see me.
runtime,
I wish I could go to bed that late every night! I am thinking of buying Oblivion also. Tried to rent it tonight but all copies where out.
No problem with the picture quality, codec settings, etc. I will be pleased to help as much as I can!
VLC can actually encode to WMV9. It is sort of a hiden feature… But the transcoding frame rate is really slow compared to ffmpeg. WMV9 encoding is about 30fps when the wind blows vs ffmpeg doing 80fps with the same material… And I challenge you to produce better result than ffmpeg!
I made some test: Transcode 360 offer best video quality.
VLC and MCE Video Encoder offer the same video quality but T360 is better !
The CPU usage is better with MCE Video Encoder.
The GUI for VLC 360 is more friendly user.
Result: T360 is the Winner for tha quality!
I’m very impatient to see an integration with « My Movies »
Have fun with Oblivion !
Runtime,
Awsome! I got the test files and it work marvel! Pause, ff, rw! All work like any other mpeg video streamed via MCE! No stuttering, no early stop of streaming!
I can even offload the transcoding to another PC and stream the resulting file from a network share! Very cool! This will kick but!
I will start working on the ffmpeg code tonight!
A nice feature is that the total file length keep incrementing while more transcoded content becomes available. Video quality is just clear, crisp, beautyfull!
Excellent work runtime!
Did I say this was cool! Finally a fully working solution for other format that WMV and MPG!
OK, Just did a test on a Surface xvid file and it went from 384mb to 1.3GB transcoded file. Not bad for 42 min movie.
The ff/rw are more like skip fw anf skip bw functions, which is fine with me.
One strange thing I notice is that paused content display a little funny (blocky) but actual playback is smooth as butter.
Total transcode time on my seperate 2Ghz AMD was 15 minute. So even an old processor can transcode at 3 time the speed a 624×362 movie!
Check your mail
I was able to mod ffmpeg to produce a more suitable output for the 360. Work like a champ on me NTSC system. May have to fddle to make it work for PAL…
Check your mail I sent you some more info.
So how long do you reckon it wil be until the rest of us get to benefit from this breakthrough?
Keep up the good work, it all sounds very promising.
Soon
If it goes according to plan we should have something resembling a release by the end of the week, whether or not it is releasable will depend on further testing (which shouldn’t take much more than a couple of days).
Runtime has a lot of coding/integration to do. I am not really a good at coding. I had not touched a c source code in years and it took me quite a while to do a basic mod to ffmpeg
I can tell you that if Runtime can pull it off this weekend it will be a very exiting moment for all XBOX 360/MCE owner!
This will finally provide what most have been wanting, good quality picture, fast transcode, ability of doing pause, play, resume, skip forward and skip backward via the remote while the transcode take place.
As I stated the 360 has some weird behavior with most resolution of public divx/xvid content out there… Almost as if it was done on purpose ;0 by you know who.
Luckilly the fix is rather easy and should provide proper aspect ration of transcoded video.
Keep looking around and posting what you would like to see in the next release. This gives us idea as to how to integrate features and general usability of the solution.
Hi,
I’ve tested all of them. The best quality seems to be Transcode 360.
You were right; VLC 360 does not run on my Linksys Extender.
Btw, would it be possible to add divx subtitle support to Transcode 360 ?
As you know divx subtitles are in common text files. They can be played by most of the divx players (for example BS Player)
And I think they are also possible on Windows Media Player with a Vobsub plugin.
I just wonder if it would be possible to add this feature to Transcode 360.
Thanks…
Have you seen this:
http://www.jakeludington.com/xbox/20060321_easy_divx_to_xbox_360_streaming.html
I have not tried it yet but this look like direct competition…
OK, it look like they still use the “good old fashion” just in time streaming a la current T360/VLC360.
Nothing that will, hopefully, compare to the Next Gen solution that should emerge from this project
Guys, i tested the T360 (beta 1) and it worked fine with most formats except with avi.
i have the xvid videos…when i transcode it, it starts it and the middle circle moves, but i dont know if its doing that or not..im transcoding a 45 min video that is about 360MB….how long does it take? couple of times before, i had to shutdown the xbox 360 in order to stop it, cuz i cant stop it with the remote control.
anything im doing wrong?
@bmaltais: check your e-mail, I got the most of the work done, enough for you to do some testing
Here is a quick update in case you guys are wondering what that e-mail was about!
Well, if you have not guessed it… it was the first release candidate for the next beta release of T360! An quite a nice RC at that. Pretty much fully functional. There is just some more logic that need to be added to make it smarter in how it does things.
But it DOES provide full MCE integration of transcoded content with full remote control of pause, resume, skip forward and skip backward. No more clumsy gui to pause, forward, rewing… a la VL360. It feels just like watching a Live TV show being recorded.
If I find the time I will try to make a video that show it all in action… if Runtime allows for it. Runtime???
This is going to be BIG!
Runtime,
Would it be possible to add divx subtitles support to Transcode 360 ?
if it’s not very hard work for you I’d be very glad to see divx subtitle support on the next release.
any possibility ?
Thanks
Can’t wait. Nice work runtime (and also bmaltais for all the info!!!).i’m a programmer too (Network stuff, routers, snmp etc.), and let me tell you runtime, that your stuff is far more complicated than i am use to do… And for that, “chapeau”!
@bmaltais: RC2 now available, please check your mail for notes. the video is an interesting idea but i’d like to take a look at it before its made public, also have you any thoughts on hosting?
@ilkeraktuna: Not in this build (as its been a lot of work so far), but in future I will take a look at it. I hope to have a list of features on my ‘TODO’ list up on the website after this release.
Can somebody help me with the problem i am having with this. when i click info and try to play the video it gives me an error message that says.
TRANSCODE 360: EXCEPTION
no connection could be made because the target machine activley refused it
i turned off my computers firewall but really dont know what else to do.
OK folks, I am done testing RC2 for tonight. What I saw was really great! Some minor polishing and things should get quite interesting.
Keep up the good work Albert!
@dustindame: that error occurs when MCE cannot reach the service.
If there are no firewalls preventing inbound/outbound connections between MCE and the service, its possible that the port settings need to be changed as they may be conflicting with an existing service/software using those port(s). The best way to do this is to uninstall and reinstall using new port settings.
Have a look at the xbox-scene forums as I’m pretty sure this has been discussed at length.
Also of course, make sure the Transcoding and Broadcasting service is running. If its not, then run the service in console diags mode: Start up a DOS command prompt, navigate to the installation directory and run ‘Transcode360.exe -console’
@bmaltais: try not hype it up - at least not too much
Thanks for all the testing you’re doing - it’s v. much appreciated!
Well if you manage to get a stable complete version out (atm I am annoyed that it works only 1 out of 10 times for some reason) then as far as im concerned you may set up a paypal donation page cause I wouldnt mind donation some bucks to the one that makes me watch my xvid movies and tv shows on my tv through the xbox
Runtime,
I’m very glad that you look positive to subtitle issue. That would do a great favour for me and other non-native english speakers.
Also, I’d be very happy to help you with tests of subtitle support. I have a lot of divx films with subtitles in English and Turkish.
another question:
is there any possibility of transcoding a live feed from internet ?
I mean for example an mms:// url ?
I tried to create a mms shortcut named x.mpg in my “my videos” folder. But that shortcut didn’t appear on the MCE “my videos” screen.
any way ?
Hi there runtime - great work on T360!
The Xbox360 has was just released in Australia last week and our community (13,000+ members) is particularly interested in it as an MCE extender.
I just opened up a few new forums to support the 360 extender and your script was mentioned straight away as a cool option for streaming vids.
If there’s anything we can do to assist your project, just let me know.
Many thanks - Mike
@Mike: Thanks and welcome to the Xbox 360; things are looking good for a beta 2 release this weekend which will be fully featured, *very* tightly integrated with MCE, lower CPU usage and even higher PQ
Oh and fewer pre-requisites + easier to install 
@Martin_G_3D: I think you’ll find this version is much more stable, and very different from anything else out there in terms of a solution. A donation page sounds like a good idea as between GRAW and Oblivion my fianaces are in dire straits; would certainly be a good incentive to keep doing this
@ilkeraktuna: I haven’t tested (not really had the time to) but theres a good chance that mms:// will work although it’ll probably need some code tweaking to interpret the ASX and pass it to the transcoder. Keep it in mind, we can add it to the todo list once I’ve had a breather from the upcoming release.
Good night all!
I am getting ready to test what is hopefully the last release candidate before the official release of T360Beta2.
I am quite anxious of giving it a torough runthrough. As runtime said expect something very tightly integrated!
Cheers!
Quick update for you guys that anxiously await the next release:
Working again on the documentation aspect to TC360. Runtime is finalizing the packaging and all of what will go around it.
I know you want to get your hands on it but give Runtime some more time to polish the final product
Cheers!
Can you hear the clock ticking?
That better not have been an April Fools joke…
Will beta 2, have support for dvd playback through Xbox 360?
It won’t be possible with beta 2. How exactly do you see this feature working?
A nice feature would be to actually stream the dvd menu throug Runtime 360. So you could use your MCE as storage and the access the iso files.
Since the My dvd menu isn’t available through the extender, I was kind of hoping that runtime360 could be a work around for playing dvds stored on the MCE.
hi i have loads of dvds backed in iso and would like to play them through my xbox 360
could someone help me to install vlc360 - i went to install , reebooted pc + 360
there is no menu for vlc360 in media centre could you please tell me how to install it properly as its help files are in french lol