Installation
A lot of energy has been poured into making this latest build even easier to install than ever. During installation you will be prompted for an installation directory, a port setting (as of release Beta 2, Transcode 360 only requires the use of one port), and a permission setting.
Tips:
- Choose the default directory for installation, otherwise you will most likely need to edit the sample configuration file to ensure the directory paths referenced in the file tally up with the new location.
- Choose the automatic mode if you think you’ll need to access network resources e.g. shared drives, mapped drives, NAS drives, etc.
When installation is complete the Transcode 360 service will start, you can jump to the Quick Start Guide to learn how to start using Transcode 360.
Tweaking
It is recommended that you use Transcode 360 with ‘out-of-the-box’ settings before attempting to change or optimise your Transcode 360 configuration.
As of Beta 2, the Transcode 360 service will detect and reload the configuration file after you finish modifying it.
The following notes are for advanced users who which enjoy tweaking their setup for optimum performance. Please note that none of these customisations are required in order use Transcode 360, for many users the default settings will offer a good comprimise between compatibility, performance and quality.
How it works
Transcode 360 is a solution that is split into two components.
The first component is a Media Center 2005 Add-in, this provides the user interface integration allowing you to start transcoding a video.
The second component is the Transcoding and Broadcast service which listens for requests from the Add-in and farms off the jobs to the transcoder.
Buffer Management
As of Beta 2, Transcode 360 uses Buffers to provide tightly integrated features such Resume, Restart, Pause, Skip Forward and Backward. The ‘BufferOutputPath’ refers to a directory into which temporary files are created by Transcode 360 as and when they’re required.
Please note these files can exceed 1-2GB depending on the length of the video you’re watching. There are two rammifications: you must have ample room on your Media Centre PC to accomodate these files, you are also advised that the filing system on your hard-drive is NTFS (as opposed to FAT32).
You can control the usage of the Buffers by editing the ‘BufferMediaLimit’; this allows you to specify how many transcoded files you are happy to have on standby should you wish to return to a video you watched recently. Buffers are purged on an ‘oldest first’ basis.
‘BufferDelay’ is a setting that you shouldn’t need to modify, it refers to the period of time you have to sit and watch the ’spinning circle’ before playback commences. During this time the transcoder is allowed a head start to buffer a reasonable amount of footage so that it is always one step ahead. Faster than real-time encoding means the transcoder can finish its job way ahead of schedule.
Transcoding Profile Customization
Transcode 360 refers to the configuration file stored in the installation directory (transcode360.config) to determine the settings used by the transcoding process. These settings are visible as ‘EncoderArgs’ and contain the arguments that are passed to FFMPEG. Details of the exact nature of these arguments can be found online.
There are two main sets of arguments, Widescreen (16:9) and Standard (4:3). These are chosen automatically by Transcode 360 unless EncoderAlwayseUseStdArgs is set to ‘yes’.
The arguments ending in ‘Low’ refer to the arguments that will be auto-selected should the footage prove too taxing to transcode. This is controlled by ‘HighResThreshold’ which is calculated as the maximum number of pixels (widthxheight) after which the ‘Low’er quality settings are used.
‘EncoderXbox360Hack’ is a trade secret so I’m not going to tell you what it does; well just kidding - I’ll update this section when I can provide you with more details than I currently know ! Note it is not necessary for this to be enabled, but having it enabled appears to allow more interesting image resolutions to be handled by the Xbox 360.
Distributed Transcoding
Its not uncommon to find (particularly with users who encode their own content) a number of computers in a home network. It is possible with a small registry tweak on your Media Center PC to get Transcode 360 to offload the task of transcoding to another more powerful computer in the home network.
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Transcode360]
Value Name: ServerAddress
Data Type: REG_SZ (String Value)
Value Data: localhost (default)
Naturally, you will need to install .NET Framework 1.1 SP1 and Transcode 360 on the PC you are delegating the transcoding to and ensure no firewall blocks communications on the associated ports.
Further to this you will need to edit the configuration file on the PC such that ‘BufferLanShare’ setting refers to a network share over which your Media Center PC can access the Buffer directory.
