Streaming videos from PC to XBOX 360 S

[AndreyT]

I'm trying to use my file server as a streaming source for video files played on XBOX 360 S. The file server is running WinXP Pro 32. I have Windows Media Player installed on that machine and I use its built-in media sharing capabilities for that purpose. The XBOX and everything else in the network is connected by wired Ethernet to a gigabit router. All NICs in the network work in full gigabit mode (except, of course, XBOX itself, which AFAIK uses a 10/100 NIC).

The sharing works fine. XBOX can see and play all videos from the file server. However, I observe the following problems with the playback

1. The original video files are Multipart OpenDML AVIs encoded with DX50/AC3. The bitrates are around 2000 and the frame size is around 640-700 x 400-500. I.e. it is simple DVD-quality content, not anything hi-def. The XBOX plays them fine aside from the following quirk. About every 5 minutes the playback stutters (both video and audio). The period is pretty constant - it happens every 5 minutes with little or no variation. (Later I noticed that video files with lower bitrate have longer periods between stutters.)

I ran a simple disk, CPU and network activity monitor utility on the file server and found the following: during each 5 minute period there's no network or disc activity on the file server. At the end of each 5 minute period the media sharing service reads a chunk of data from the disc and sens it over the network to the XBOX. This is exactly when XBOX playback stutters. I.e. the XBOX receives 5 minutes worth of data, plays it smoothly, then stutters when it is time to ask for and receive the next chunk.

To me this behavior leads to an "obvious" theory of what happens: this appears to be some sort of stupid mus-judgement in XBOX video player implementation. XBOX requests data from the server in chunks that are too large for it to swallow. Each request is so taxing on XBOX I/O and/or processing capabilities that the playback stutters. I would assume that if XBOX requested the same data twice as often in chunks twice as small, there would be no stutter.

Again, the capabilities of the network connection and the file server hard drive are vastly exceeding anything that is needed for smooth playback. I have Samsung BD CC-5500 player connected to the same network. It can play the very same video files from the very same file server visible through the same Windows Media Player sharing interface, as well as through Samsung PC Share interface. Regardless of which interface I use, on the Samsung everything plays perfectly with no stutter whatsoever. (I haven't analyzed the disk/network activity during that playback yet.)

So, is there any suggestions that could improve the XBOX playback? Just to experiment I moved a video file to a SSD drive on a much more powerful PC in the same network and shared it from there. It produced no detectable improvement for the stutter, suggesting that this is some processing bottleneck inside the XBOX itself.

I read about similar experiences posted by people on the Net. There seems to be an (anecdotal?) theory that this is somehow caused by AC3 audio codec. Could it be?

2. Trying to make it play better I converted some of the videos to WMV format using Windows Media Encoder 9, hoping that WMV is better suited for streaming. This immediately led to another problem. All resultant videos, when played by the XBOX demonstrate obvious and continuous "jerkiness", which is especially obvious in continuous panning shots. On closer inspection I saw what was really happening: XBOX was playing some video frames out of order (!). This was very noticeable during cuts, when one scene was replaced with a completely different one. For example: consider the sequence of frames "on the sunny beach" BBBBBBB, followed by the sequence of frames "in the dark office" DDDDDDD. The normal playback would look as BBBBBBBDDDDDDD, while XBOX plays it as BBBBBBDBDDDDDD. I.e. after switching to the dark "office" sequence, it suddenly decides to flash one frame (or, maybe, more) from the previous bright "beach" sequence. Basically, the neighboring frames seem to be randomly swapped from time to time. During continuous panning shots this turns smooth motion into a jerky one. This effect is immediately noticeable during about 75% of playback, i.e. it "happens all the time" with rare short periods of normal playback.

This effect is not reproducible when playing the same WMV file on a PC or on the aforementioned Samsung player. Everything works fine on both, suggesting that the WMV file itself is OK. Only XBOX player exhibits this strange frame-swapping behavior. So, apparently there's an XBOX-specific incompatibility at play here or an XBOX-specific bug.

I haven't tried other converters to WMV format, so all my experiments were made on WMV files created by Windows Media Encoder 9.

What could be causing this? Any ideas?

P.S. BTW, while this forum is about "streaming" it appears that it is about different kind of streaming. If this is not the place for questions like this, the would someone please suggest the proper forum.

[mh2360]

I have noticed the same negative performance when streaming certain file formats to the Xbox 360.

Have you tried streaming AVC/AAC MP4 files? the 360 seems to handle these much better. The only down side to this is that the 360 can only handle 2 channel AAC audio, so you will have to down mix to Dolby Surround (Pro-Logic) if surround sound is important to you.

[newnews]

sorry I could not help you. I am here to ask how to setup xbox 360 to play files on server. I have Windows 8 PC setup as media server. However I do not know how to configure XBOX360.

[yoda313]

360 can only handle 2 channel AAC audio, so you will have to down mix to Dolby Surround (Pro-Logic) if surround sound is important to you.

I don't have any handy to test at the moment but there is no reason the xbox can't handle ac3 5.1 You should be able to do 5.1 ac3 in mp4 just fine nowadays. That was a restriction at the beginning of the mp4 specs but not now. I can try testing on my xbox 360 and confirm over the weekend (mine has all the dashboard updates and such). (edit by the way you can actually play dts dvds through the xbox 360 provided your amp has dts - it will pass it through, I don't think it will actually play a video file with a dts track on it though, not sure as I've never tested that ability)

As for media sharing to the original poster go into windows media player and setup media sharing. There are plenty of docs out there to help with this.

If you have at least a dual core computer of any type you should consider using streaming software that TRANSCODES the video file. It does it so that it matches the receiving devices needs for playing. I don't think any single core pc is strong enough to transcode - maybe sd video perhaps.

Just go to xbox.com or microsoft.com and search for media streaming and you'll get step by step instructions. I don't have a link handy sorry. These however won't be transcoded as windows media player doesn't transcode.

Although it will handle mp4/h264 video files there are limits. I don't have the upper limits of the xbox 360 handy but you can't just throw any old mp4 file at it and expect it to play it. Though it should play EVERY wmv file you give so long as it is actually wmv video inside and not some other codec wrapped in a wmv extension.

Though in all honesty most users here at this forum will recommend that you invest in a dedicated media player designed to play media files. Something by wd like the wdtv media player series is a good place to start (the live models have ethernet ports for connecting to a network - some have wifi buitin I believe but you can get something like netgears universal wifi adapter to convert any lan only unit into a wifi capable unit - only 50.00 usd and I have one and it works like a charm ).

SO there are some suggestions for you.

Also software choices for transcoding software include ps3mediaserver (yes works with the xbox 360) and tversity. Also I don't remember if playon does any actual transcoding but it has a free file serving software that works quite well.

Good luck.

Edit - also check to make sure the ac3 files aren't true hd - I don't think the xbox can play those - so long as they are 640kpbs or less it should work a-ok but not the true hd stuff. ALso try remuxing your video with the ac3 into an mp4 file and see if it works better.

[mh2360]

360 can only handle 2 channel AAC audio, so you will have to down mix to Dolby Surround (Pro-Logic) if surround sound is important to you.

I don't have any handy to test at the moment but there is no reason the xbox can't handle ac3 5.1 You should be able to do 5.1 ac3 in mp4 just fine nowadays. That was a restriction at the beginning of the mp4 specs but not now. I can try testing on my xbox 360 and confirm over the weekend (mine has all the dashboard updates and such). (edit by the way you can actually play dts dvds through the xbox 360 provided your amp has dts - it will pass it through, I don't think it will actually play a video file with a dts track on it though, not sure as I've never tested that ability)

I know the last time I checked (which was quite some time ago) the Xbox 360 wouldn't play MP4 files with AC3 audio or files encoded at levels over 4.1, so I fired up FFMPEG and ran off a few sample files.

I created some MP4 samples with 5.1 AC3 audio, some encoded at level 5.1 with 9 reference frames, and one with DTS audio and burned them to a DVD-R data disc.

They all played flawlessly except the one with DTS audio (unsupported media error) so it seems that Microsoft have indeed finally updated the video codecs. (Though Divx playback over the network is still bad).

[yoda313]

I created some MP4 samples with 5.1 AC3 audio, some encoded at level 5.1 with 9 reference frames, and one with DTS audio and burned them to a DVD-R data disc.

They all played flawlessly except the one with DTS audio (unsupported media error) so it seems that Microsoft have indeed finally updated the video codecs. (Though Divx playback over the network is still bad).

Thanks for testing I completely forgot about this.

Is it high def divx with problems? That isn't too surpising, but I would imagine "old school" divx in standard definition shouldn't be a problem at all.

level 5.1 with 9 reference frames, and one with DTS audio and burned them to a DVD-R data disc.

You mean h264 level 5.1? Wow that is impressive it can go that high on a xbox 360. And 9 reference frames as well. That is more versatile than I thought. Is cabac enabled? I don't know what level 5.1 has for its defaults.

I'm not too surprised the dts didn't work. Was it standard dts? How high was the bitrate? You might try 768kpbs dts and see if that works.

Thanks again for the update.