Older versions of .avi on the Xbox 360

October 24, 2008 2:06 PM

How do I play old .avi files on my Xbox 360?

I know that the 360 does not support older versions of the .avi format so I'd like to know the best way to "up-convert" my videos to one of the newest versions. Any suggestions, preferably free?

posted by GaGaLoc to technology (4 comments total)

Use TVersity to stream the files from your computer?
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:11 PM on October 24, 2008

Is the AVI container the choke point? If so, just remux to a newer "OpenDML" AVI with any one of a hundred free applications.
I take it, though, that you mean the MPEG-4 codec used to compress the video stream is outdated. Use MediaInfo to get information about older files and consider re-encoding them with XviD with the quantizer set fairly low to avoid losing quality. The Xbox 360 doesn't support DivX 3 and some other old, broken codecs but will work with DivX 5 and up and XviD provided that certain parameters with regard to the number of B-frames in a group of pictures and other settings are obeyed.
BTW, "upconvert" doesn't mean what you've taken it to mean.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 2:44 PM on October 24, 2008

OK, Inspector Gadget knows a heckuva lot more about video than me. But you could try using Videora Xbox 360 Converter, which should work just fine.
posted by mattholomew at 3:12 PM on October 24, 2008

Transcode 360 kicks major ass
posted by cyanide at 9:47 PM on October 24, 2008