I've been working hard to find a program that would convert my video library into a codec that offers great quality and future support for hand held devices, game consoles and computers alike. The requirements are simple:
- Ease of use
- Free
- Great quality
- Batching (to do multiple videos at one time)
Hmm, sounds like you would have to pay for that but luckily there are some options out there. I’ve played with a few but decided on handbrake in the end. Handbrake started as, and continues to be a Mac program. I played around with the first Windows version which was command line only, that didn't last very long before I put it down. I live and die by the GUI my friends. But now it is a full featured program that meets all my requirements listed above. It even has some presets; one of them is for the Xbox 360, using an MP4 container with H.264 video codec. I’ve played with and have done video in Divx and Xvid, both are good but I couldn’t get the same quality out of them at the same bitrates and file size as I can with H.264.
I ran into a problem that I did not anticipate, I store all my videos on my WHS (Windows Home Server) and Windows currently does not stream MP4 video to the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 literally does not see the MP4 video on my WHS shared video folder. The key here is the MP4 container that holds the H.264 encoded video. In order to get it to work I had to change the container (file type) to AVI. So if your video is called “Aliens.mp4” you change it to read “Aliens.avi” only changing the file extension and not the file name. This works without any problems at all. I’m still a little confused why Microsoft won’t allow MP4 video to stream over a LAN but there you go.
Now this is only a problem if you are streaming the video to your Xbox 360. You can attach a flash drive or an external USB hard drive to the Xbox 360 and the video will play as is.
Currently I’m still playing around with my setup and trying
to get the best possible entertainment experience, with the least amount of hassle.
The Xbox 360 offers a lot in that department but needs to open the doors a
little wider to include MP4 streaming. The new Xbox 360 interface is gorgeous and
I can navigate it using my Logitech Harmony Xbox 360 remote, which also runs my
entire entertainment system.
Update: Here is a great step by step guide I found on converting DVDs to H.264 video files, even tells you how to stream them to your Xbox 360 and/or PS3: Click Here

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