GOTSent Xbox360/PS3 h264 mkv->mp4 /m2ts video conversion

[sentry23]

Given the amount of questions in the mail, and the many repeats of answers, it's time to put up a thread for GOTSent as well here.

The official webpage is:http://sentry23.googlepages.com/

The current version is 0.23Beta11 (beta 12 is imminent, but on hold for some more test results)

This thread will be the official English support forum, for questions, feature requests, and more.

First some very basic answers: everything should work on vista 64/windows 2008 now.
Do run the app as admin on Vista.
VC1 MKV support is currently limited to mpeg2 conversion.

[ajamils]

After having no luck with with other softwares I tried GOTSent today and so far so good.

I have few questions though. When converting mkv files to play on Ps3 should I select "Mux to VOB" or "MPEG 2 Recode" ? Which option will keep the surround sound intact ?

[sentry23]

Should you not get the message that mpeg2 conversion is needed,the best option for conversion on PS3 with full surround is Mux to Vob.
Mpeg2 conversion is there for files that are not playable on PS3/360 (or need to be hard-subtitled), but it will keep full surround sound as well, but the video quality will go down, and it takes a lot longer.

[ajamils]

thanks for the answer. Recently, I had couple of problems with some downloaded mkv files. I get an error saying "tsmuxer.exe has generated an error" and the program crashes. Any idea why this might be happening ?

[andyd2k]

I tried this out today - the resulting files do not show up on my 360 at all (not even after manually scanning for new media).

I'm not sure if this has something to do with WMP not picking up the files correctly. I tried changing codecs etc but no matter what I do the files dont play back properly (and show up as 0 secs) if I browse for the files through WMP library. But if I double click on the video file in windows explorer, the file plays back.

[sentry23]

thanks for the answer. Recently, I had couple of problems with some downloaded mkv files. I get an error saying "tsmuxer.exe has generated an error" and the program crashes. Any idea why this might be happening ?

I'm going to use a new version of tsmuxer soon, but you can try to download a new version and replace the older tsmuxer.exe yourself in the mean time, to see if this fixes the issue.
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR

[sentry23]

I tried this out today - the resulting files do not show up on my 360 at all (not even after manually scanning for new media).

I'm not sure if this has something to do with WMP not picking up the files correctly. I tried changing codecs etc but no matter what I do the files dont play back properly (and show up as 0 secs) if I browse for the files through WMP library. But if I double click on the video file in windows explorer, the file plays back.

With WMP, you might need to change the filename of the mp4 file to AVI to see if that works as a quick fix (it works sometimes), but otherwise, here is a post how to make WMP pick up MP4 files as well (MS decided not to include MP4 files as shareable media in WMP11):
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=630391

[andyd2k]

Are the instructions applicable to Vista 64 bit as well? Neither options seem to fix the problem for me unfortunately. That regedit works for you?

[andyd2k]

I've also tried muxing to vob but I get stuck at the smartlabs tsMuxeR part

[andyd2k]

Not to hijack this thread but I just wanted to follow up on the issue I was having. The issue I was having seems more to do with Gotsent creating some sort of incompatible file. It had nothing to do with WMP's library support. I managed to create a mp4 which I switched to avi with the steps below...


mkvextract and mkvtoolnix to extract the video and audio
converted the audio using besweet/belight + nero aac codec
changed the h264 level to 4.1 using h264info
then used Yamb to convert the video and audio to a mp4 set 25 for framerate since the source file had that for framerate

The file still shows up in the library as 0 secs but I can stream it without any issues.

Obviously the steps above are not ideal so I hope one day I'll be able to use Gotsent instead :)

[ajamils]

I'm going to use a new version of tsmuxer soon, but you can try to download a new version and replace the older tsmuxer.exe yourself in the mean time, to see if this fixes the issue.
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR

Tried the new version of tsmuxer but still have the same problem.

[sentry23]

Okay.. (i've been busy last days, sorry for the late reply).
Andy: it seems there is something odd with your file-header, causing it not to be corrected as it should. I'll create something to read your header and include it in the log.
Ajamils: Could you still give it a try with standard mp4 creation, just to check if that at least creates a working file ?

[ajamils]

Okay.. (i've been busy last days, sorry for the late reply).
Andy: it seems there is something odd with your file-header, causing it not to be corrected as it should. I'll create something to read your header and include it in the log.
Ajamils: Could you still give it a try with standard mp4 creation, just to check if that at least creates a working file ?

mp4 with GotSent or some other program ?

[andyd2k]

Okay.. (i've been busy last days, sorry for the late reply).
Andy: it seems there is something odd with your file-header, causing it not to be corrected as it should. I'll create something to read your header and include it in the log.
Ajamils: Could you still give it a try with standard mp4 creation, just to check if that at least creates a working file ?


Ok, I'll wait for the next release then

[sentry23]

mp4 with GotSent or some other program ?

With GOTSent. It uses a different method to make the file, and should not crash at the last step. You will however have 'virtual' dolby surround (if you set ac3filter correctly) and not 5.1 audio.

[ajamils]

With GOTSent. It uses a different method to make the file, and should not crash at the last step. You will however have 'virtual' dolby surround (if you set ac3filter correctly) and not 5.1 audio.

I converted the same files to mp4 using RipBot and they all worked like a charm with 5.1 surround sound.

[sentry23]

I converted the same files to mp4 using RipBot and they all worked like a charm with 5.1 surround sound.

You converted to mp4 with 5.1 audio ?
mp4 only supports AAC (still 5.1 AAC works, but is useless for most people), so are you sure about that ?

[ajamils]

You converted to mp4 with 5.1 audio ?
mp4 only supports AAC (still 5.1 AAC works, but is useless for most people), so are you sure about that ?

Yes I converted them to mp4 with 5.1 AAC audio. They work great on Ps3 and I get 5.1 surround sound too. The only problem is that converting 3 files took almost 14 hours even with my high end computer (Athlon 62 x2, 4GB RAM, Vista Ultimate 64 bit)

[Atak_Snajpera]

The only problem is that converting 3 files took almost 14 hours even with my high end computer (Athlon 62 x2, 4GB RAM, Vista Ultimate 64 bit)

Your computer would be high end if you had quadcore@3Ghz+ Dual Core is standard in these days.

[ajamils]

Your computer would be high end if you had quadcore@3Ghz+ Dual Core is standard in these days.

:rolleyes:........for everyday purpose...its still high end cuz I do not do any gaming.

[sentry23]

Yes I converted them to mp4 with 5.1 AAC audio. They work great on Ps3 and I get 5.1 surround sound too. The only problem is that converting 3 files took almost 14 hours even with my high end computer (Athlon 62 x2, 4GB RAM, Vista Ultimate 64 bit)
Okay, that makes sense :)
The problem fir me with vista64 is that my directshow audio extraction crashes, so in the backup extraction it sets the audio always to 2 channel AAC. (I am working on a new audio extraction chain (and wmv creation for VC1 files) to get it to work on vista 64 as well)
The thing is for me, to keep it all compatible, I need to keep AAC 2 channel for 360 compatibility as well. (in the backup extraction at least)
Otherwise you could have used MP4 creation, and set ac3filter to 5.1 output and it would have created a mp4 with 5.1 audio in about half an hour for a full length file.

Pretty nice audio setup you have there by the way..

[ajamils]

Okay, that makes sense :)
The problem fir me with vista64 is that my directshow audio extraction crashes, so in the backup extraction it sets the audio always to 2 channel AAC. (I am working on a new audio extraction chain (and wmv creation for VC1 files) to get it to work on vista 64 as well)
The thing is for me, to keep it all compatible, I need to keep AAC 2 channel for 360 compatibility as well. (in the backup extraction at least)
Otherwise you could have used MP4 creation, and set ac3filter to 5.1 output and it would have created a mp4 with 5.1 audio in about half an hour for a full length file.

Pretty nice audio setup you have there by the way..

Is there a way that you can have two separate profiles for Xbox360 and Ps3 conversion that way you won't have to worry about Xbox360 compatibility, when the user selects ps3 profile and vise versa.

[Atak_Snajpera]

........for everyday purpose...its still high end cuz I do not do any gaming.
Games do not require many cores. Two will be enough for long time. If you want computer for encoding you need as much cores as possible. x264 codec scales very well with them.

[sentry23]

Is there a way that you can have two separate profiles for Xbox360 and Ps3 conversion that way you won't have to worry about Xbox360 compatibility, when the user selects ps3 profile and vise versa.

Yes, it's coming in a newer version, but there are more pressing matters at the moment.
But esp. with WMV conversion there are also things where PS3 doesn't do WMA pro, while with mp4 the 360 doesn't do 5.1 AAC, but yes, multiple profiles will come. (I want to keep it all in 1 version, since I am the only coder, and maintaining 2 executables is a lot of extra work)

[ajamils]

Yes, it's coming in a newer version, but there are more pressing matters at the moment.
But esp. with WMV conversion there are also things where PS3 doesn't do WMA pro, while with mp4 the 360 doesn't do 5.1 AAC, but yes, multiple profiles will come. (I want to keep it all in 1 version, since I am the only coder, and maintaining 2 executables is a lot of extra work)

Thanks for all the hard work. We all appreciate your efforts. :)

[ajamils]

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but the conversion rate with GOTSent is still not as good as I would like. Yesterday I converted four movies and out of them only one played on PS3. All others show up as "Corrupt data".

As far as conversion is concerned, it went fine without any errors and I played the converted files on my PC and they played fine but when I transfered them to play on my external HDD to play on Ps3, they showed up as "corrupt data".

Two of files that I converedt were 1080p with DTS audio and the other two had AC3.

Any suggestions ?

[sentry23]

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but the conversion rate with GOTSent is still not as good as I would like. Yesterday I converted four movies and out of them only one played on PS3. All others show up as "Corrupt data".

As far as conversion is concerned, it went fine without any errors and I played the converted files on my PC and they played fine but when I transfered them to play on my external HDD to play on Ps3, they showed up as "corrupt data".

Two of files that I converedt were 1080p with DTS audio and the other two had AC3.

Any suggestions ?

I might have an idea..
In beta12 I made a speed boost that bypasses the header adjust if a level 4.1 h264 is found. (saves quite some time).
I have found out that, even when using true 4.1 files (even ones I created myself), the h264 needs to be pulled through h264info for the PS3 to recognize them in a m2ts. When muxing to mp4 these files work just like they should.

Does this sound right ? If so, I can send an updated binary for you to check if it works better.

[ajamils]

I might have an idea..
In beta12 I made a speed boost that bypasses the header adjust if a level 4.1 h264 is found. (saves quite some time).
I have found out that, even when using true 4.1 files (even ones I created myself), the h264 needs to be pulled through h264info for the PS3 to recognize them in a m2ts. When muxing to mp4 these files work just like they should.

Does this sound right ? If so, I can send an updated binary for you to check if it works better.

Since I'm learning this stuff myself, I'm not sure whether it will work or not but if you send me the files, I'll give it a try.

[luthan]

Here is what I found and it has worked for me with several movies now. Seems like my problems with "corrupt data" movies was the audio. I used GotSent beta 10 (it includes the exe that does alerts) to see exactly what steps are being taken and just to slow the process down a bit so I could see what exactly is going on. I noticed that an error would come up while converting the wav file to ac3 even though the conversion would continue past the error and finish the process. Using GotSent beta 10 gave me enough time to take out the wav and h264 files from the working folder so I can try to mess with them manually.
I downloaded the WAV to AC3 Encoder 2.0 which uses the latest aften version and enabled the endoffile part in it (i read that might help) and converted the wav to ac3 manually. Then for muxing the two files into one m2ts file I downloaded the GUI version of tsmuxer. I muxed the files together and that seemed to fix the issue.
I don't remember if GotSent beta 12 used the EOF feature but hopefully this helps.

[ajamils]

Here is what I found and it has worked for me with several movies now. Seems like my problems with "corrupt data" movies was the audio. I used GotSent beta 10 (it includes the exe that does alerts) to see exactly what steps are being taken and just to slow the process down a bit so I could see what exactly is going on. I noticed that an error would come up while converting the wav file to ac3 even though the conversion would continue past the error and finish the process. Using GotSent beta 10 gave me enough time to take out the wav and h264 files from the working folder so I can try to mess with them manually.
I downloaded the WAV to AC3 Encoder 2.0 which uses the latest aften version and enabled the endoffile part in it (i read that might help) and converted the wav to ac3 manually. Then for muxing the two files into one m2ts file I downloaded the GUI version of tsmuxer. I muxed the files together and that seemed to fix the issue.
I don't remember if GotSent beta 12 used the EOF feature but hopefully this helps.

Thanks for the advise. Now where can I get GotSent 10 from ? :)

[~bT~]

^ http://sentry23.googlepages.com/

http://www.mediafire.com/?7elv92nen0j

[luthan]

FOR PS3 ONLY

Here are the steps to do if you want to bypass GotSent all together. I am sure sentry23 will have the beta that fixed all this stuff up soon.:thanks:

I am assuming you have GotSent as it contains the tools for the first 3 steps.

1: MKVToolnix\mkvextract.exe tracks "sourcefile.mkv" 1:"file.h264" 2:"file.dts"

2: Run h264info, make sure you take out the .ini file from its folder if there is already one there (do this every time). Select the source file which is the file.h264 and call the output file file-new.h264 or something just so you can distinguish them.

3: ac3filter\valdec.exe file.dts -wav file-new.wav -spk:0 -fmt:0

4: run WAV to AC3 Encoder 2.0. Open the file-new.wav. Enable Advanced Settings under View. Look for "Read input WAVE audio data until the end-of-file and set it to read until end-of-file by right clicking. Leave everything as default and select the output path.

5: Run TsMuxer. Open the file-new.ac3 and file-new.h264 files. Select M2TS muxing and set your output file and click 'start muxing'. After its done rename the .m2ts file to .mpg.

Test the video out.

Even though these steps are all manual it was all worth it when the movies work.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR - txmuxer
http://www.thefrontend.net/EncWAVtoAC3/ - wavtoac3 encoder

[ajamils]

where do I enter these commands ? On command prompt ?

[luthan]

yes

if you exported GotSent to your c:\gotsent you would do something like this

cd c:\gotsent\ac3filter

valdec.exe file.dts -wav file-new.wav -spk:0 -fmt:0

just make sure you specify the file paths correctly

[andyd2k]

Doing it manually isn't a problem. I definitely don't like going through all that work though.

[sentry23]

Just to let you all know I am working on it, but the last week has been very busy with other things, but with a bit of luck I'm gonna get some fixes out by the end of the weekend.

[ajamils]

tried to convert two 1080p movies (both with DTS) and even though the process completed successfully, the files did not play on Ps3. They show up as "Corrupt data". I'm not sure what's wrong but I think that it has something to do with the audio conversion.

[luthan]

I might be wrong but i believe most 1080p movies need to be transcoded and scaled down to 720p. Again, I might be wrong.
I don't even bother with 1080p movies anymore since I have had no luck with most of them. Only 2 or so worked so far without trancoding.

[ajamils]

I might be wrong but i believe most 1080p movies need to be transcoded and scaled down to 720p. Again, I might be wrong.
I don't even bother with 1080p movies anymore since I have had no luck with most of them. Only 2 or so worked so far without trancoding.

Thats not the case. You do not have to transcode 1080p movies to 720p. I converted the same movies, that I was having problems with, with the latest version of mkv2vob and they work like a charm.

[da oracle]

Ok i've tried using gotsent beta 12 and all the audio options are greyed, what gives??!

[sentry23]

Ok i've tried using gotsent beta 12 and all the audio options are greyed, what gives??!

Which options exactly ?

(been very busy with work the last week, but I'm getting back to support now, finally)

[da oracle]

Which options exactly ?

(been very busy with work the last week, but I'm getting back to support now, finally)


all the audio options. I want to convert audio to aac but all possible options are greyed.

[sentry23]

all the audio options. I want to convert audio to aac but all possible options are greyed.

I think you mean the source audio indicator, which shows the audio format contained in the mkv. There is no need to select an output format.

Audio Output for mp4 will always be AAC, and AC3 for m2ts and mpeg2.

[arapkadri]

GOTSent 1920x800 Sent Resolution is not 1920x1080, İssues might occur when playing

[sentry23]

GOTSent 1920x800 Sent Resolution is not 1920x1080, İssues might occur when playing

Sounds like the error you get when you try to mux a non 720p/1080p to AVCHD.

Is this what you are trying to do ?
The error is just informative, and should not prevent the mux to avchd.

[kevinsert]

i need quick and HQ convert program for x264 to WMV...please help..and i want to add subtitle for Xbox360

[sentry23]

i need quick and HQ convert program for x264 to WMV...please help..and i want to add subtitle for Xbox360

There won't be a 'quick' way, since you'll need to convert h264 video to vc1.
It would be easy to embed the subtitles during that video conversion.
GOTsent however does not do this (yet).

[Glorioso]

Is it possible to put subtotles in the final file?

[sidneysides]

Was using Gotsent successfully but after formatting PC I'm having trouble. I end up with an MP4 file about 160mb in size which just contains the audio. When Gotsent is running, it extracts video fine, I get a temp h.264 file about 5gb etc, but its when it muxes the mp4 that I just end up with the audio. My codecs seem to be OK as MP4s and MKVs etc all play fine in MPC and WMP11. Any ideas?

[jp110099]

Was using Gotsent successfully but after formatting PC I'm having trouble. I end up with an MP4 file about 160mb in size which just contains the audio. When Gotsent is running, it extracts video fine, I get a temp h.264 file about 5gb etc, but its when it muxes the mp4 that I just end up with the audio. My codecs seem to be OK as MP4s and MKVs etc all play fine in MPC and WMP11. Any ideas?

I might be having the same problem. MP4box always crashes in the end leaving me with just audio. Does it say "mp4box is not responding" for you?