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Thanks to Chris Lynch for helping to refine the MKV to WMV conversion method. His original thread from xbox-scene.com can be found here.

Click here to download the guide by Chris Lynch in PDF format.

This guide demonstrates a very polished method of converting MKV files into WMV-HD video files with 5.1 audio surround sound, using Windows XP or Windows Vista. This guide accomodates multiple types of audio sources (AC3, DTS, etc), where older conversion methods failed in the past.

Background from previous article…

The Xbox 360 was officially released by Microsoft on May 12, 2005, as a 7th generation gaming console, and network ready media center extender. The hardware capabilities of the Xbox 360 make it the best high definition video player on the market for its price. However, the software limitations imposed upon that hardware by Microsoft leave much to be desired by users hoping to to consolidate their living room multimedia equipment into one box. Originally, the biggest fall back of those limitations is by far the lacking support for any digital video file support other than WMV. The majority of internet available digital video content is not in WMV format.

Recent updates via Xbox live have enabled support for .avi and .divx files. However, the current popular format for internet digital high definition video content is Matroska video (MKV). MKV container files include x264 HD video content (720p, 1080i, and 1080p), along with 5.1 AC3 or DTS audio. The Xbox 360’s software limitations prevent it from being able to display MKV HD video files. MKV playback is not natively supported on the Xbox 360.

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**Update Visit http://www.ryanwalsh.ca/blog/?p=8 for a new polished tutorial similar to this one, to convert all of your MKV’s to WMV (DTS support included).

With all of the required software from Part 1, we are now ready to start converting x264 MKV video files to WMV-HD.

Process:

The first step is to separate the audio and video portions of the MKV file. By doing this, we will minimize the reduction in quality associated with converting video files from one type to another. Skipping this step, will negatively impact the frame rate of the outputted WMV-HD files.

1. Open MKVExtractGUI (C:\Program Files\MKVtoolnix\MKVextractGUI.exe by default).
2. Select the MKV file using the input section of MKVExtractGUI.
   1. After a few moments, items will be displayed in the Content box of the MKVExtractGUI.
3. Select the audio track (usually labeled with A_AC3).
4. Click Extract.
   1. This will extract the audio portion of your MKV file to the output directory (which is by default, the same location as the input directory).
   2. Once the extraction is complete, click OK and close MKVExtractGUI.

The second step in the conversion process is to create an AVIsynth script to be used in a TMPG Express project (the software which we will use in the next step).

1. Open up notepad, or any other text editor, and create a script using the following as a guideline. Remember to edit the script so that it matches the path to your file, and the correct filename.
   1. DirectShowSource (”C:\wmv_working\Oceans.Thirteen.2007.720p.HDDVD.x264-SiNNERS.mkv”)
   2. c:\wmv_working in this example, is the directory where the mkv file is being stored, and the full path to the file is C:\wmv_working\Oceans.Thirteen.2007.720p.HDDVD.x264-SiNNERS.mkv
2. Save the file as “movie.avs”.

Our next step is to create a project in TMPG Express, using the AVIsynth script as our video source file, and the extracted AC3 file as the audio source.

1. Launch TMPG Express
2. Start a new project
3. Click “Add File”
4. Select the AVIsynth file created earlier. You may have to change the file type drop down list to “All Files” for the script to appear.
5. Select the AC3 file extracted previously as the source file for the AUDIO.
   
6. Click “Yes” if prompted to reset a key frame list
7. Pay attention to the details listed beside “Source Format” for the video portion of the project. Particularly, note the resolution of the video somewhere before proceeding, as you will need to enter in this information in future steps. The resolution of the video in my example, is 1280*528.
8. Rename the clip name if you’d like, and click OK to proceed.
9. Select “Format” at the top of the TMPG window.
   
10. The “Output Format Selection” window will display. Click “Browse” at the bottom of your screen, and select the custom Xbox 360 720p VBR TMPG profile extracted from the wmv-hd.zip file in Part 1 of this tutorial. The file’s name is Xbox 360 720 VBR.txp4e
11. Once you have selected the TMPG profile in step 7, you will be directed to the TMPG Format window. There are two key things to adjust in this Window.
    
    1. Enter the correct values for the video resolution (as noted earlier).
    2. Click on the “Calculator” button.
       1. From the Calculator, you can adjust the bit rate of your output file, to achieve whatever quality/size limitations needed. For example, I try to make my HD-WMV files fit onto a blank 4.7 GB DVD. To do this, select DVD 4.7 GB (UDF) from the drop down list, enter 100% of the media capacity, and click OK.
       2. Most HD MKV files are released to fit onto a 4.7 GB DVD, or an 8.5 GB DVD already. If your MKV file is set to fit onto an 8.5 GB disc, it may make sense to you for your converted file to fit the same. In this case, select DVD 8.5 GB (UDF) instead.
       3. If you never plan to burn the video files to DVD, file size may not be an important factor for you. In this case, try to match the file size of your MKV file by experimenting with the bit rate values.
12. Click on Encode at the top of the TMPG menu.
    
13. Change the output file name if you choose, and click Start Encode to have TMPG begin the transcoding process.
14. Sit back, and wait. This process can take quite a bit of time, depending on the specs of your system, and the length of the video file. For example: a dual core, 64 bit 4200+ AMD, with 3 GB of RAM, and Windows Vista finishes a 1.5 hour movie in approximately 12.5 hours.

Thanks again to Cody Browning for helping many of us come up with this conversion method. His original thread from xbox-scene.com can be found here.

94 Comments »

**Update Visit http://www.ryanwalsh.ca/blog/?p=8 for a new polished tutorial similar to this one, to convert all of your MKV’s to WMV (DTS support included).

Thanks again to Cody Browning for helping many of us come up with this conversion method. His original thread from xbox-scene.com can be found here.

The Xbox 360 was officially released by Microsoft on May 12, 2005, as a 7th generation gaming console, and network ready media center extender. The hardware capabilities of the Xbox 360 make it the best high definition video player on the market for its price. However, the software limitations imposed upon that hardware by Microsoft leave much to be desired by users hoping to to consolidate their living room multimedia equipment into one box. The biggest fall back of those limitations is by far the lacking support for any digital video file support other than WMV. The majority of internet available digital video content is not in WMV format.

The current popular format for internet digital high definition video content is Matroska video (MKV). MKV container files include x264 HD video content (720p, 1080i, and 1080p), along with 5.1 AC3 or DTS audio. The Xbox 360’s software limitations prevent it from being able to display MKV HD video files. This tutorial will demonstrate one method of converting MKV files into WMV-HD video files with 5.1 audio surround sound, using Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Required:

• TMPG 4.0 Express
• AviSynth, MKVtoolnix, MKVExtractGUI, Custom Xbox 360 TMPG Express Profile (Download ZIP archive)
• ffdshow tryouts
• Xvid
• Haali Media Splitter

Background:

There are lots of different video codec combinations that can be used to decode MKV files, however, many of these packaged tend to have conflicting versions of video codecs (namely ffdshow) which cause unsatisfactory encodes to WMV-HD (choppiness, image quality, etc). It is my recommendation to uninstall all existing video codecs on the machine which will be used to encode the WMV-HD video, and install only the codecs listed above. Install any other future necessary codecs one at a time, and test encodes to verify that the new codecs have not introduced any problems.

Unfortunately TMPG 4.0 Express is not a free or open source product. I’ve chosen it in my demonstration because of its ease of use, flexibility of encode times/quality settings, and price.

Preparation:

1. Uninstall all existing video codecs and reboot.
2. Install TMPG 4.0 Express.
3. Install Xvid
4. Install ffdshow tryouts
5. Install Haali Media Splitter
6. Extract wmv-hd.zip into a temporary directory.
   1. 
      (contents of wmv-hd.zip)
   2. Install Avisynth.
   3. Install MKVtoolnix.
   4. Copy all of the files from the MKVextractGUI folder to the folder where MKVtoolnix was installed (c:\program files\MKVtoolnix by default).
7. Create a temporary directory which will be used to store MKV files to be converted. For the remainder of this tutorial, I will refer to this directory as c:\wmv_convert\ .
   1. Copy “Xbox 360 720 VBR.txp4e” to c:\wmv_convert .

After completing the above steps, you are now ready to convert MKV (x264) to WMV-HD for the Xbox 360.

Continued on Page 2…

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