MKV Movie lags and unwatchable on XBOX 360

Hi,

Yesterday, I could successfully connect my xbox to my PC through Windows Media Center on my brand new XBOX 360. It sees the MKVs and recognition is not a problem.

However when I start a movie, it starts playing normally for about 20 seconds and then it stops, jumps in the movie about a few minutes then starts to play from there for 10 seconds, and freezes again. This was with Avatar for example, and with some of the newer movies that were released.

However there are plenty of MKVs that I can play without a problem, for example DIE HARD 4 etc..

Any ideas why these lags come? There is no network overflow, I have a Linksys WRT320 N that has gigabit switch ports. Also, I own a Quad core 6600, so decompression should not be a problem, also I can play avatar on my PC wthout any problems.

I have already tried to enable flow control and set my NIC card to 100mbps as suggested by a microsoft KB article, but the symptoms just did not disappear.

If anyone had this problem, or knows the cure for this isse, I would appreaciate if he could share it with me.

Regards,
Breaker

sometimes certain movies are encoded with more than 5 Ref frames making it a struggle for mc extender to xbox to play smoothly.
anything below 5 ref frames at 720p plays gold on me old 1.6ghz Win 7 pc to xbox 360, even mkvs :P

Hello,

Many thanks to both for your prompt reply, I will try the codec pack when I get home. I'm sure it is something with the decoding, because I have also an Asus O! Play near the xbox, and that can play the movie smoothly without any problems. XBOX 360 has a 3 core Xeon CPU, so from hardware side there should be no issue.

Regards,
Breaker

Hello

Unfortunately, installing the latest codecs did not help the problem. I am still getting unwatchable performance at some mkvs. I measuerd the CPU & network load when the lag occured - cpu load was at 20% while network was at 90% approximately. I have Gigabit NIC, gigabit switch port. Only xbox is 100mbit.

I keep digging for solutions anyway thank you for your help so far.

Kind regards
Breaker

Hi,

Still no luck, have tried to install Shark007 codeck pack, but still lags on XBOX 360.

The test MKV is Avatar.

Download MediaInfo:

MediaInfo

Use it to determine tag and codec specs on virtually any kind of media.
It will display ALL specs of both the audio stream, and the video stream, as well as chapters info, subtitle info.

More than likely it has something to do with an exotic video profile (IE. above 4.1) and or has too high a ref frame rate for that profile, to enable playback on console. Generally in this situation, either a re-encode, using a seperate program is required, or on the fly transcoding is required, plain and simple.

There is another option, completely out of the realm of Windows Media Center, that requires no codec packs, but I'll ask you to PM me and I will send it to you if you want, for respect of the forum we are chatting in.

devildog93 said:

Download MediaInfo:

MediaInfo

Use it to determine tag and codec specs on virtually any kind of media.
It will display ALL specs of both the audio stream, and the video stream, as well as chapters info, subtitle info.

More than likely it has something to do with an exotic video profile (IE. above 4.1) and or has too high a ref frame rate for that profile, to enable playback on console. Generally in this situation, either a re-encode, using a seperate program is required, or on the fly transcoding is required, plain and simple.

There is another option, completely out of the realm of Windows Media Center, that requires no codec packs, but I'll ask you to PM me and I will send it to you if you want, for respect of the forum we are chatting in.

Hello DevilDog,

I have gathered some information about the VIDEO part of two MKVs.

The first MKV is "I am a legend", which is played without any problems:
Video
ID/String : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format_Profile : High@L4.1
Format_Settings_CABAC/String : Yes
Format_Settings_RefFrames/String : 3 frame2
MuxingMode : Container profile=Unknown@4.1
CodecID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration/String : 1h 40mn
BitRate/String : 9331 Kbps
Width/String : 1920 pixel3
Height/String : 800 pixel3
DisplayAspectRatio/String : 2.40:1
FrameRate/String : 23.976 fps2
ColorSpace : YUV
ChromaSubsampling : 4:2:0
BitDepth/String : 8 bit3
ScanType/String : Progressive
Bits-(Pixel*Frame) : 0.253
StreamSize/String : 6.40 GiB (81%)
Title : I.Am.Legend.2007.BluRay.1080p.x264.DTS.HuN-BoNo
Encoded_Library/String : x264 core 58 svn-736M
Encoded_Library_Settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:-1:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=5 / me-prepass=0 / brdo=0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=2 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=3 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=2 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=150 / keyint_min=1 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=9331 / ratetol=1.5 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=5 / qpmax=35 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=49400 / vbv_bufsize=9781 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:0.4:10.0
Language/String : en


This is "Avatar" which has the problem:
Video
ID/String : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format_Profile : High@L4.1
Format_Settings_CABAC/String : Yes
Format_Settings_RefFrames/String : 4 frame2
MuxingMode : Container profile=Unknown@4.1
CodecID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration/String : 2h 41mn
BitRate/String : 8171 Kbps
Width/String : 1920 pixel3
Height/String : 1080 pixel3
DisplayAspectRatio/String : 16:9
FrameRate/String : 23.976 fps2
ColorSpace : YUV
ChromaSubsampling : 4:2:0
BitDepth/String : 8 bit3
ScanType/String : Progressive
Bits-(Pixel*Frame) : 0.164
StreamSize/String : 9.00 GiB (79%)
Title : Avatar.2009.1080p.BluRay.HUN.ENG.x264-aNyaM
Encoded_Library/String : x264 core 93 r1542 5b86182
Encoded_Library_Settings : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / wpredp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=30 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=8171 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language/String : en

Not sure if you can spot out anything that can be the problem or big difference.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

kind regards
Breaker