Convert mkv files to xvid for Xbox 360

Ushare is an excellent media server that allows you to watch videos, listen to music and view pictures on your Xbox 360 that are stored on another computer. Unfortunately, the Xbox can be somewhat finicky about which formats it supports – and it doesn’t support mkv files. To convert it to a file that the Xbox does support, you can use mencoder as follows:

mencoder inputFile.mkv -ffourcc XVID -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:threads=8:vbitrate=1000:cmp=2:subcmp=2:trell=yes:v4mv=yes:mbd=2 -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=ac3:abitrate=128 -channels 2 -o outputFile.avi

If the original file is high quality, you’ll probably want to increase the vbitrate parameter to prevent the quality from degrading. If you have surround sound, you should set the number of channels to 6 and set the audio bitrate higher (384 is probably a good choice) as well.