Req universal format to play natively on W7MCE+Extenders/IPad

[john blox]

I'm trying to discover if there is a single format ie a container type + a video type + an audio type(inc 5.1 DD) that will play natively (ie NO transcoding) on 3 specific devices namely:-

Windows Media Centre in Windows 7
Windows Media Centre on extenders xbox + LinkSys
IPad

Now in the days of video we had VHS vs Betamax now we have a zillion alternatives some of which play on some devices, some which can be coaxed to play using certain codecs. I can get my PC to play any format, however the extnders+ipad are restricted in what they will play I am not bothered about quality or file size, purely uniformity.

I am investigating this right now, but any pointers would be welcome (no why's or alternatives though), Thanks

[Ghitulescu]

The iPad is the most restrictive of all three, use what it understands.

[john blox]

Yes I am currently converting a snippet of an avi file with mpeg4/ac3 to mp4 with mpeg4(xvid)+MPEG2/4 audio 5.1 using avs converter v8 demo.

The ideal would be if the a/v could be migrated to a different supported container without transcoding so no quality loss but I know that is optimistic so

[Asmodian]

You do not need to use Xvid. MPEG4 AVC (using x264) would be better.

Have you looked at Handbrake?

If both the video and audio are supported than you can just use mp4box to mux an AVI to mp4.

[john blox]

Conclusion so far (note transcoding to mce extenders is disabled on pc to ensure plays native):-
1)Handbrake encoded mpeg4-aac 5.1 mp4s play but do not show video on an xbox360 running as an mce extender (but do on linksys extender)
2)AVS encoded mpeg4-aac 5.1 mp4s play with DD5.1 on PC/XBox but play on ipad with no audio
3)avc video will give error on both xbox360 and linksys extenders.

The best option seems to be an mpeg4-aac video with 2 audio tracks the first a stereo aac, the second the original ac3 (must be in that order). I now need to work out why the xbox extender shows no video with handbrake encodings done to that setting, then work out how to force the PC MCE to always select the ac3 5.1 track in pref to an aac stereo track. By default MCE seems to just use the 1st track it finds. Also I could see no way to set the language of the audio tracks on handbrake produced mp4's either which could offer a way to make mce use a diff track by using a diff prefered language for the ac3?

[john blox]

After many days experimenting I've concluded that AVS is the best program for the job (handbrake mp4's are unplayable on xbox MCE dunno why? + mp4box crashes, other progs tried have various issues). Yamb is a good program for muxing diff streams, setting mp4 languages etc. I decided in the end to just create an sd file with single stereo track and to additionally keep the original HD version of some movies I really like.

So for tracks with a width > 900px (usually1280) I re-encoded using avs to mp4 container using
video=640px wide; bitrate=920k;profile = advanced simple L4 (mpeg4-l2) single pass
audio=48k; bitrate=160k; stereo aac

For tracks with a width <900 I set dimensions to be unchanged from the source and used an audio bitrate of 128k with the rest the same

These files play back without transcoding on:-
MCE W7 (Windows Media Center)
XBOX360 via MCE
Linksys MCE Extender
IPAD via Air Video (directly, not using live conversion)
IPAD Natively (copied to device via itunes)

I couldn't get any avc-video mp4's to play on xbox-mce though a video only one did! Some avc+aac.mp4's would play from xbox dashboard but I was only interested in them via XBOX-MCE. I abandoned the idea of stereo+5.1 dual audio files due to the filesize increase/navigation issues. I know that MPEG4-L2 is considered old now, but my quest was for convenience primarily with file-size/quality as secondary concerns. on IPhone/IPad higher res makes little difference really as screen is so small and 5.1 would be wasted.

AVS lets you queue up loads of files and leave it to work away, though it does crash so you need to keep an eye on it and restart it sometimes. Ideally I might prefer to use yamb on the lower res files to avoid re-encoding the video but xbox doesn't like the video.