There’s been a fairly lively discussion ongoing in the GOTsent tutorial post, describing how to convert high-definition MKV files to properly play on the Xbox 360. The general consensus is that GOTsent is throwing errors for no discernable reason, and failing to produce files containing both audio and video on a regular basis.
Having experienced this issue myself, I’ve decided to look up the actual video demuxing, encoding and remuxing process and implement a tool to take over the GOTsent functions. I usually have better results when I write utilities myself, and I have several gigabytes of MKV files that I’d like to have functional on the 360.
Here’s a teaser screenshot at present to actually demonstrate that I’m working on it. 🙂 No expected release date, but I don’t expect the technical implementation to take much longer.
Technical details: This frontend is presently written in Visual Basic 2005, because I’m most comfortable with it for simple utilities, and it compiles out to an .exe file without too much nuisance. Hate on VB all you want, but it’s serving the purpose. I plan to add single file and batch file support, as well as a command line interface later on. The application will need the .NET Framework 2.0, and likely CCCP and AC3Filter.
I’m using the MKVtoolnix suite at present, and will be implementing Nero AAC encoder and MP4Box support shortly to finish off the process. I don’t plan to open source this utility unless one of the original authors of the included utilities indicates that I’m violating a license – and it’ll have to be an actual developer, not a Digg fanboy claiming I’m worse than pond scum by ignoring the GPL or whatever.
Any better suggestions for the name, other than “MKVOfDeath”? I thought it was going to be witty but it’s hard to come up with any more “red ring of death” jokes when all the popular Xbox 360 blogs have essentially clubbed that poor horse beyond recognition.