runtime360.com

If you were a little concerned over the future of Transcode 360; allow me to allay those fears. Its been only a fortnight since I shared a limited release of the source code with James Botham, and to be perfectly honest I’m really impressed with how quickly he has gotten to grips with it.

James has completed porting the project to .NET 2.0, delt with the changes introduced by Vista Media Center, deciphered my arcane installer script and written some Windows Firewall helper apps to simplify installation. His enthusiasm has even rubbed off on me, such that I’m keen to dabble with MCML and perhaps work on a newer, flashier, user interface for the Vista crowd.

If you’re running Vista RTM you may be interested to know that James has released an early beta build, be sure to check out the release notes and forum posts as there are a couple of known issues that can easily be worked around.

Download Transcode 360 Vista RTM Beta over here (or here) and feel free to leave feedback in the forums.

Just weeks after the Fall Update introduced UPNP video client functionality to the Xbox 360, the clever chaps at TVersity are the first to offer a UPNP server featuring a realtime transcoding solution targeting the Xbox 360 in early beta form.

In short this means that users of Windows XP (and other Windows platforms) can now automatically stream their video library to the Xbox 360, to some extent irrespective of the file format and encoding used. E.g. DivX, XViD, etc.

There is a limitation with regards to seeking while transcoding and the transcoding thread priority is a bit too high, but beyond that I found TVersity very easy to get up and running. I haven’t yet had the chance to see how it handles AC3. In any case, no doubt the solution will improve over time, but at this early stage its looking very promising indeed!

I thoroughly recommend you check out TVersity as it is in my opinion a much better solution than Transcode 360 for several reasons. For starters T360 requires a Media Center PC, but perhaps more importantly, from an implementation perspective T360 has a lot of dependencies that make installation more complex than I’d like.

The beauty of TVersity as a solution is that its (a) UPNP standards based (b) supports both Windows XP and Windows 2000 (c) designed to work with many more devices than just the Xbox 360.

More information after the jump.

TVersity Official Website

You’ll probably want to edit the Settings to increase the resolution of the transcoded video to compensate for the poor quality scaling algorithm the Xbox 360’s UPNP client applies. I find that 640×480 works pretty well but if you have the horsepower its almost certainly better if you can match the 360’s native resolution. The 360’s client currently only supports WMV video, so inherently more CPU resources are needed.

Update: Having played around with TVersity some more I have to qualify my recommendation since theres an additional issue worth considering. Previously I mentioned how poorly the Xbox 360 UPNP video client is at upscaling, a bigger issue is the client’s terrible user-interface. All video files and folders are flattened out into a single list, which can be very inconvenient when you have to scroll through 100’s of files to find the one you want; both issues are outside of TVersity’s control, so let’s hope Microsoft gets on the case and addresses them in their next update.

And Microsoft while you’re at it, how about some MPEG 2 love? Forcing UPNP servers to transcode to WMV just isn’t right!

Folks looking to integrate T360 with their own apps will be pleased to know that I finally got off my managed to find the time to knock up a quick primer and some sample code demonstrating how to query and control Transcode 360. For more information follow the link.

In related news, I’ve had word from Brian of My Movies confirming that the integration work is still going ahead and is now in its final stages so stay tuned…

I also found some time to squash a few long-standing bugs and am currently testing a new version of T360 on my new dual core Media Center setup. I’m not sure whether it might make sense to time its release with My Movies. I should be receiving a release candidate any day now so I’ll defer the decision until then.

I realise its been a while since my last post, what with E3 and a couple of personal matters that took priority, everything else took a backseat. Despite that, I’ve made a start on My Movies integration and things are looking very promising with the author of My Movies being equally enthusiastic about what will result from this collaboration.

You’ve probably noticed that I’m no longer posting in the forums as frequently as I have in the past (with the exception of the Priority Support forum which I do my best to attend). The reality is that its not possible for me to spend hours answering posts, many raised by new users, so I’m counting on help from the community to generally point people in the right direction.

That said, I’m pretty satisfied that many of the issues raised have been addressed in some form, so if you’re new to the forums – keep digging and I’m sure you’ll find answers.

This new release of Transcode 360 features a user interface for managing your settings as well as a number of substantial improvements:

There is a new ‘Automatic’ installation option that will run T360 in the task notification area (system tray); this makes configuration super-easy and mitigates the network permissions issues some users encountered.

Both 2 and 6 channel (5.1) AC3 is supported and the AV sync issue affecting NTSC content has been fixed. Note that due to reliability issues Forward/Backward Skip are disabled while streaming AC3 soundtracks.

In addition to regular playback of XviD and DivX, Transcode 360 supports DVD ISO and VIDEO_TS folder streaming with subtitles; determining the best combination of soundtrack/subtitles appropriate to you based on your locale.

Download the latest version of Transcode 360 here

Little did I know that in developing DVD ISO and VIDEO_TS streaming I’d end up with a practical solution for handling 5.1 audio. So along with a number of other goodies, I’m pleased to report that the next build will once again feature AC3 support

Just as (if not more) important is a new ‘Easy’ installation option that no longer mandates that you install an NT service, this completely avoids all the nasty permissions issues that are typically involved with services and networking.

Finally after a little perseverance I managed to find and fix a nasty AV sync bug primarily affecting US-orginating content encoded at 23.97 fps.

All in all the next build is shaping up very nicely indeed!

Now onto some admin: I’m seriously considering reorganising the testers group and opening up internal builds to project sponsors who’re interested in gaining access to early builds, testing and generally living life on the bleeding edge!

I still need to work out whether or not it would be feasible to coordinate – anyway is this something that would interest you?

As discussed in my previous post, you can now download the interim Beta 3.1 release.

It contains quite a few fixes and to sweeten the update I’ve thrown in DVD ISO streaming (experimental). Your ISO images should ideally be DeCSS’d, and contain just the main title with the appropriate audio track.

Tip: If you really want to maximise your performance, you can get a pre-compiled build of mencoder optimised for your processor over here. The one we redistribute with T360 is generic for logistical reasons. However, if you do raise a support issue please make sure that you let us know that you’re using a non-standard build.

Right, I’m off to play some Oblivion…

I wanted to say a word of thanks for the feedback you’ve given us to date and give you the heads up on an interim release thats coming your way very soon.

A number of bugs were reported that although easily fixable, were causing quite a lot of problems and general distress, so I wanted to let you know that we’re currently testing an interim Beta 3.1 build which we hope will address the following issues:

1. WmeBroadcastTranscoder disabled by default (no need for Windows Media Encoder)
2. Region neutral framerate parsing (smoother playback in non-US/UK territories).
3. The latest mencoder (available from the main website)
4. The ability to disable CleanProcessesOnStart (improve service startup time)
5. W1LL3M’s subtitle patch

I’ll update the download link on the left sidebar as soon as the new build is available.

Thanks for your support!

I’m happy to announce the release of Transcode 360 Beta 3, the newest version of the XviD / DivX playback solution for Xbox 360 and Media Center Extender devices on Windows Media Center 2005. Once more this beta release is provided in advance of the final release to encourage community feedback and to help us better understand the areas we need to focus on.

New in this release:

After a lot of painstaking testing we believe we’ve addressed the aspect ratio issues that affected Beta 2, and for the most part AV sync, playback choppiness and a couple of issues that should make for easier installation (notably MPEG2 codec co-existance). Additionally, Beta 3 also features support for subtitles.

To enable the optimum transcoding solution T360 now supports multiple transcoding engines: ffmpeg, mencoder and Windows Media Encoder plug-ins are provided. As I mentioned in my previous post, mencoder has been selected as the best candidate for our solution as it offers us lots of flexibility supporting a staggering 299 codecs. It is this then that we will be primarily focused on supporting.

If you have a little programming experience you’re welcome to create your own custom plug-in wrappers, or contribute to the project by improving on what we have. Full C# source code for the majority of the plug-ins is included as part of the distribution.

I’ll be taking it a bit easy now at least for the rest of the holiday. That said, I’ll pop into the forums over the next couple of days to provide answers to some of the frequently asked questions. The plan over the short term is to update the online documentation as its beginning to look a bit dated.

Finally I would like to thank my team of testers who’ve been working with me to iron out the bugs, as well as you the community for your support and generous donations. Many thanks! Happy downloading!

“Just in case you guys and gals are wondering what is happening, we are actively working on the next Beta release of Transcode360. We’re actively coding/testing/banging our heads against the TV set to a produce quality product.”

Here’s a heads up on what to expect in our next release:

The aspect ratio issues have been resolved, we’ve greatly improved (if not resolved) AV sync and playback choppiness, and implemented subtitles. Further to this we’ve also taken steps to improve compatibility that will make for friendlier co-existance with other codecs.

We’ve added the ability for those with a little programming experience to create their own custom plugins to transcode content. We’ll be including C# samples utilising FFMPEG, MEncoder, VLC and Windows Media Encoder.

After a great deal of testing its looking like MEncoder is the best suited for our solution, but if you prefer one transcoder over the other you can always specify which by editing the Transcode 360 configuration file.

I realise that there are plenty of features up on ‘The Todo List‘ that haven’t been included and we will get round to them once we’re comfortable that we have a stable foundation on which to build these very-nice-to-have features; in the meantime you could always show your support for the project by donating a couple of dollars. The total project donations recieved to date are just shy of $100 versus 18,000+ downloads. As a thank you I’m adding contributors to the Sponsors group on our forums; currently this entitles you to priority support but in future this may extend to early access to builds.

Time permitting expect a new beta to follow very shortly!