Help encoding 5.1 AVI's for Xbox on Mac

[randyharris]

I don't have an Xbox myself, I use my AppleTV to stream movies to my AV system but two of my friends are about to pull their hair out trying to encode files for playback on their Xbox's.

MSFT shows that the update to Xbox supports AVI files with 5.1, does anybody have guides, presets or other usefull information on how to successfully convert files for playback on an Xbox in say 720P or 1080P with AC3 audio?

Thanks much

[Adub]

What kind of codec are you using? XVID/DIVX or x264?

If it is x264, then I highly recommend using MP4 instead of AVI, as AVI doesn't support all of x264's options, plus MP4 is much more often used on Xbox 360's. There are a variety of guides around for the encoding of video files for Xbox compatibility, just use search or visit Videohelp.

[microchip8]

I don't have an Xbox myself, I use my AppleTV to stream movies to my AV system but two of my friends are about to pull their hair out trying to encode files for playback on their Xbox's.

MSFT shows that the update to Xbox supports AVI files with 5.1, does anybody have guides, presets or other usefull information on how to successfully convert files for playback on an Xbox in say 720P or 1080P with AC3 audio?

Thanks much

if you're using MEncoder on Mac then these are the settings for XBOX 360 from my h264enc script

-channels 2 -oac faac -faacopts mpeg=4:br=128:object=2 -ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=1000:me=umh:me_range=24:nodct_decimate:nointerlaced:8x8dct:threads=auto:nofast_pskip:trellis=1:partitions=p8x8,b8x8,i8x8,i4x4:mixed_refs:keyint=250:keyint_min=25:frameref=3:bframes=6:bime:b_adapt:b_pyramid:weight_b:direct_pred=auto:subq=6:brdo:chroma_me:cabac:deblock:nossim:nopsnr:level_idc=41

change bitrate to your liking or do a CRF encode or 2-pass one