Which format should I convert to, and by which method?

[Rikachu]

Hey everyone,

This is my first time posting here so please mind if this ended up in the wrong section of the forum :-).

I have alot of (HD) video files that are in a mkv container, with .h264 video and .ac3 sound. The problem is that I would like to stream this material on my D-link DSM-520 (a mediacenter). Although it only supports the following video formats:

MPEG-1 (up to 8Mbps, Resolution up to 480p)
MPEG-2 (up to 8Mbps, Resolution up to 1080i)
MPEG-4 (ASP- Advanced Simple Profile)
AVI (MPEG4 layer only, does not support uncompressed AVI, Resolution up to 1080i)
XVID (with MP3 and PCM)
WMV9 (Resolution up to 720p)

For maximum quality, which of these formats do you think is the preferable? And by what method do you think is recommendable to convert them to that?

Thanks for your time :-),

/ Rikachu

[[P]ako]

How did you encode them in the first place? Maybe the tool you used can do the conversion. If so, try every other codec to see what you like.

[setarip_old]

@Rikachu

Hi!I have alot of (HD) video files that are in a mkv container, with .h264 video and .ac3 sound. The problem is that I would like to stream this material on my D-link DSM-520 (a mediacenter). Although it only supports the following video formats:...Forgive me for asking but, if you know that your media center doesn't support .MKV, why did you convert your original source material (Presumably DVD, HD-DVD, or BluRay) to .MKV format? It would seem to defy logic...

[Rikachu]

To be exact it's videorecordings from one of my band's live performances that I've recieved from a friend in this format, and it seems I wont be able to get it in another format.

Would this conversion/demux be possible or is it a bit tricky? :-)

thx for the replies!

[[P]ako]

It depends. Get the latest matroska splitter, install it, go to its directory (C:\Program Files\Haali\MatroskaSplitter), place the mkv there and open a CMD window and go to C:\Program Files\Haali\MatroskaSplitter, run the following command:

mkv2vfr _name_.mkv _name_.avi _name_.txt

Replace _name_ for the mkv's filename. And finally, post here the content of the resulting *.txt.

[foxyshadis]

@Rikachu

Hi!Forgive me for asking but, if you know that your media center doesn't support .MKV, why did you convert your original source material (Presumably DVD, HD-DVD, or BluRay) to .MKV format? It would seem to defy logic...

Sadly, one of the problems with the proliferation of different mobile and set-top media players is that it's quite easy to buy one and suddenly find your library obselete, or worse, not have a single compatible format between two players (ipod vs wmv anyone?) - not to mention that some want to archive to the best quality instead of catering to a player's restrictions. In that case you just have to convert (keeping or dumping originals) unless you're willing to remake it all from scratch.

Rikachu, for format, definitely either xvid or wmv9. Do you intend to encode on the fly, via something like tversity, or will you be batching it all up? On the fly you'll have to live with degraded quality, but xvid is the faster of the two. Batching, it won't really matter, and you can get the same quality you can get out of your originals, as long as you have enough bitrate. Just beware of that VFR desync issue [P]ako is talking about.

[benwaggoner]

As a matter of course, I'd say WMV :).

Do you have multichannel audio? If so, it sounds like WMA Pro may be the only supported multichannel audio codec other than AC-3 in MPEG-2.

You'll definitely want to make a bunch of test files to see what does and doesn't work, though. Just saying "MPEG-4" or "WMV" could mean a lot of different things about codecs, profiles, and levels supported.