Playing media from external drive on 360

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Hi guys. Ive just had my external drive delivered so I can watch films through my xbox from the drive. Ive plugged it into the xbox and installed the drivers from the console and shifted a movie over onto the drive. Now when I plug it into the console I can't seem to find how to access the drive to play the file. Is it still possible to do this?

Many thanks.

Edit* Ive now found the system video player. However the file can't be supported. Do I have to change the video to a different format before my xbox can read it?
 
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Soldato
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The compatibility of videos via usb is rather fickle.

It's not a fan of 5.1 sound with some audio codecs for instance(AAC)

Best program I've found for automatically recoding videos is Xmedia recode. It has the ability to copy video rather than reencode it, and reencode the audio to stereo.

Best all round format I've found is mp4, h264 video and aac stereo within the container. Then renaming the mp4 to an Avi so its picked up by the xbox 360.

Stupid as it may sound, the 360 cant play avi video with h264, but it can play an mp4 with h264 renamed to an avi.

Fickle. Like I say.

Just get Xmedia recode, select the xbox 360 profile at the beginning and you cant go wrong.
 
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Awesome thanks. Ive had a bit play round and found, like you say, it will play some files and not others. I'll download that programme now and get to work changing all the unplayable files. Cheers mate,
 
Soldato
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5.1 is usually the issue with stuff. I recently got rid of my ps3 cause i never played on it and as i now have to play my Ripped dvd/blurays on the xbox im spending a fair amount of time remuxing and re-encoding.

I'll have to try Xmedia, the little remuxing tool i found works really well for some stuff but the more serious DTS/5.1 files are no-go.

Shame cause spent ages testing to get the best rips for the PS3 but now its off to be a xmas present as my wife says its just gathering dust.
 
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Converted a file and its worked fine but its not the same quality as the original file, and thats visible whilst watching it through the xbox. Maybe I need to play with the settings on xmedia.
 
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Another heads up is that Xbox 360 doesnt like soft coded subtitles either. So either they have to be hardcoded(which I'm yet to find a decent way of doing this) or not there atall.

Pain in the butt

Just spotted the above, Under the video tab, if you scroll to the very bottom there should be a copy video check box, this will stop the program altering the video atall, so the quality should be the same as the original source.
 
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Another heads up is that Xbox 360 doesnt like soft coded subtitles either. So either they have to be hardcoded(which I'm yet to find a decent way of doing this) or not there atall.

Pain in the butt

Just spotted the above, Under the video tab, if you scroll to the very bottom there should be a copy video check box, this will stop the program altering the video atall, so the quality should be the same as the original source.

Ok, subtitles generally speaking arn't a problem, as they are mostly films for the kids.
Ive just had quick look under the video tab and can't spot the check box for copy video. Under the video tab there are the following... General, Deblocking, B-Frame, Partition Macroblock, Rate Control, Motion estimation, Quantizers, Extra, Slicing and Bluray. Should I be in one of those sub sections? Apologies for the lack of knowledge, im fairly cack when it comes to computers these days.
 
Soldato
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The 360 seems to pick-and-choose which files it'll play, unfortunately. It won't seem to play any MKVs that I've remuxed into MPG (using MKV2VOB), even though the PS3 plays them fine. Certain other 'normal' formats don't seem to work on the 360 either, even though they do on the PS3.

Rather annoying, as my PS3 is currently broken so I'm stuck with not being able to watch a lot of stuff because the 360 won't play it.
 
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the remuxing tool i use is called MKV2MP4 or something, i came across it once i realised MKV2VOB was no good for xbox. Its really small and is just a GUI ontop of a load of freeware shell stuff but its fast and works for the 360, unless its a 5.1/dts file.
 
Soldato
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The 360 seems to pick-and-choose which files it'll play, unfortunately. It won't seem to play any MKVs that I've remuxed into MPG (using MKV2VOB), even though the PS3 plays them fine. Certain other 'normal' formats don't seem to work on the 360 either, even though they do on the PS3.

Rather annoying, as my PS3 is currently broken so I'm stuck with not being able to watch a lot of stuff because the 360 won't play it.

Use 'any video converter' it seems to convert MKV's rather quickly.
 
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