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Encoding Videos for XBox 360 and PS3

Submitted by on January 1, 2009 – 4:47 pm5 Comments

Both Xbox 360 and PS3 support a variety of video codecs and are capable of playing high-definition video files. One of the most popular formats for HD video files is Matroska (MKV), which provides excellent video quality, relatively small size, multiple audio tracks and many other cool features. Unfortunately, neither Xbox 360 nor PS3 currently support MKV format.

There are many video re-encoding applications that allow you to convert video files between different formats. I recommend using MEncoder, which offers high quality, advanced features and ease of use. This tool is open-source, free and will run on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac.

MEncoder comes as a stand-alone application or as part of the Mplayer package. There are GUIs available for MEncoder, but I recommend using command-line interface instead. Below is an example of converting a standard MKV hi-def (1080p) video file into AVI format supported by Xbox 360 and PS3:

The two options you need to pay particular attention to are:

fixed_quant=2 – This determines the quality (and file size) of the resulting AVI file. Setting this to “1″ would produce the best-looking result, but the file will be 2-3 times larger than the original MKV. I found that setting this to “2″ produces excellent results without excessively large files.

-alang en – Because MKV files support multilingual audio tracks, it is important to select the “English” track (or whichever language you prefer).

Re-encoding a large hi-def video file may take a few hours, depending on the speed of your CPU. Here is a sample MKV-to-AVI conversion run. The resulting AVI file plays well on Xbox 360 and PS3:

Related posts:

  1. Sharing Videos from Linux to Xbox 360

  • http://www.cold-remedies.net Mackenzie Ward

    I own an Xbox and a Playstation and both are really good game consoles. Let’s see what are Microsoft’s future updgrades on its Xbox game console.-,`

  • Jeremy

    Since you’re using xvid you can have it use multiple CPUs (or CPU cores) by passing in the “threads” option. For instance, if you want to run it using two cores:

    mencoder “original_file.mkv” -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts fixed_quant=2:threads=2 -alang en -o “converted_file.avi”

  • Oilers

    i have How i met your mother season 5 on my pc 16gigs mkv file, i converted them to avi,xvid high quality using aiprosoft but they are still unsupported by both xbox 360 and ps3. I did not lose any quality cause i needed to double the sice and unfortunatly 2 things happened after that.

    1 i deleted the mkv formats
    2 just after i discovered gotsent a special converter for xbox and ps3, but this converter only converts mkv and avi but it crashes when i tried to convert these avi files. So i am guessing i need to re-encode that but how can I don’t know how or what to do that. Can someone help me?

  • happyha31

    My xbox is hooked up with hd cable to a hd tv. Do i need to buy hd dvds to see films in hd?

  • tjpimpin

    Im trying to get my xbox 360 and my HDTV in surround sound with this kind of surround sound system (Philips HTS3151D). I have tried everything and i can’t seem to be able to figure it out!