Hardware Utility to check video for playback compatibility?

[3DPiper]

I have my whole DVD library archived so I can watch them on my PC and XBox..
However, while all the videos work fine on the PC, some do not on the XBox..
I realise the xbox will only playback MPG4/h.264, but I have several videos
that ARE MPG4 that still do not playback on the xbox..

Is there a utility that I can run on videos that do not work that will tell me
what the problem is? I'm hoping it is someting I can fix
without re-encoding if possible..

 

[Rydian]

If it's not the right video codec or the framerate/resolution is out of the expected bounds, re-encoding will be needed to change it. if that's not it and it's an audio issue (rarer but does happen) it'll at least be a shorter encode since you should be able to tell your converter to stream-copy the video data.

</half of an answer>

 

[trumpet-205]

What I have is what I gathered online plus some estimations based on my experience,

H.264 is supported if it has a level lower than 4.1, 8-bit color depth, and,

* 480p with maximum of 8 reference frames
* 720p with maximum of 6 reference frames and no more than 60 fps
* 1080p with maximum of 4 reference frames and no more than 30 fps

MPEG-4 (Xvid) is supported if,

* Bitrate is 5 mbps or lower
* Resolution of 720p or lower and no more than 30 fps

Audio codec is regular AAC (no HE) with 2-channel only. Container is .mp4 only (no .mkv support).