nerdbombing Posted February 26, 2022 Report Share Posted February 26, 2022 Folks, thanks for letting me tap the vast knowledge here, yet again. I have 3 issues and hope to get at least one figured out, thanks for any help you can give. I didn't have much luck in the search, so I'm sorry if this is a repeat topic, but I'm sure KaosEngineer will prove me wrong yet again #1 Video playback lags in both XBMC and XBMC4XBOX on 2 different V1.6 softmod boxes. I've tried several formats, .avi, .mp4, .m4v, etc., they all open and play, but either have bad/scrambled video, slowed down playback but audio remains normal, and things just don't run like they should (or as I would expect). In XMBC4XBOX, for example, I've tried all the "video" settings I can see, such as pixel shredder, flicker filter, skip loop filter, etc. The same files work fine on my desktop and laptop, nothing wrong with the files I'm trying to watch. -Am I using a bad program, is there a better video player? I'm considering, naively, upgrading to a SSD.... #2 Is there a plain, straight forward tut for video output upgrade, like switching to HDMI or improving from the 480 (or whatever the standard video output is) with a softmod? #3 Far less pressing, on a recent softmod of a v1.6, I get an MS error 07 when I use the restart/reboot action from the dashboard and other apps that offer a restart. It only happens on restarts, I can turn the unit off then on, and NOT get the error, so as of now it's just a minor inconvenience, but makes me wonder why it occurs. New 80pin IDE cable, used in both directions (blue end on mobo and black on hhd, as well as the reverse) and sure to plug them in tightly and completely. Using a 1tb seagate that is listed on the compatibility chart as working. here's the sata-ide adapter I'm using https://www.ebay.com/itm/154372204735  Thanks for the help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaosEngineer Posted February 26, 2022 Report Share Posted February 26, 2022 5 hours ago, nerdbombing said: #3 Far less pressing, on a recent softmod of a v1.6, I get an MS error 07 when I use the restart/reboot action from the dashboard and other apps that offer a restart. It only happens on restarts, I can turn the unit off then on, and NOT get the error, so as of now it's just a minor inconvenience, but makes me wonder why it occurs. New 80pin IDE cable, used in both directions (blue end on mobo and black on hhd, as well as the reverse) and sure to plug them in tightly and completely. Using a 1tb seagate that is listed on the compatibility chart as working. here's the sata-ide adapter I'm using https://www.ebay.com/itm/154372204735 The IDE-to-SATA adapter is slow to initialize after a reset. The BIOS / kernel sends commands to the controller that it does not respond; therefore error 07 - hard drive inaccessible. Power cycle allows it to have more time to initialize and responds when the BIOS queries the hard drive on startup. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaosEngineer Posted February 26, 2022 Report Share Posted February 26, 2022 6 hours ago, nerdbombing said: #2 Is there a plain, straight forward tut for video output upgrade, like switching to HDMI or improving from the 480 (or whatever the standard video output is) with a softmod? Change the video cable to a High Definition component video AV pack or cable, an Xbox-compatible HDMI cable (there are many different devices available) or MakeMHz Xbox HD+ HDMI internal installation (surface mount soldering skill required) adapter. After one of these devices is present, enable 480p and 720p resolutions in the stock MS dashboard's Settings > Video menu. Leave 1080i OFF. (Note: The Xbox must be set to NTSC mode for these high-definition settings to be present in the stock MS dashboard and the high-definition cable connected to the console. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaosEngineer Posted February 26, 2022 Report Share Posted February 26, 2022 6 hours ago, nerdbombing said: #1 Video playback lags in both XBMC and XBMC4XBOX on 2 different V1.6 softmod boxes. I've tried several formats, .avi, .mp4, .m4v, etc., they all open and play, but either have bad/scrambled video, slowed down playback but audio remains normal, and things just don't run like they should (or as I would expect). In XMBC4XBOX, for example, I've tried all the "video" settings I can see, such as pixel shredder, flicker filter, skip loop filter, etc. The same files work fine on my desktop and laptop, nothing wrong with the files I'm trying to watch. What resolution and bit-rate are the videos that you are trying to play? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbombing Posted February 26, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 26, 2022 4 hours ago, KaosEngineer said: The IDE-to-SATA adapter is slow to initialize after a reset. The BIOS / kernel sends commands to the controller that it does not respond; therefore error 07 - hard drive inaccessible. Are you suggesting the adapter is the problem and is of low quality? None of my other mods suffer from this issue. 3 hours ago, KaosEngineer said: Change the video cable to a High Definition component video AV pack or cable, an Xbox-compatible HDMI cable (there are many different devices available) or MakeMHz Xbox HD+ HDMI internal installation (surface mount soldering skill required) adapter. Can you throw me a bone with a link to an example of the soldering route please? As far as a cable, is this the right ball park: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V73764F/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_GB4SN1014NY5J2R6Z97Y 3 hours ago, KaosEngineer said: What resolution and bit-rate are the videos that you are trying to play? On my laptop, I found a video file I have issues with playback on xbox, opened properties and it says the following: Frame width: 720 Frame height: 432 Data rate: 1998kbps Total bitrate: 2126kbps Frame rate: 30fps One other example file looks like this: Frame width: 1280 Frame height: 720 data rate: 4207 kbps total bitrate: 4270 kbps Frame rate: 23 fps Thanks again Kaos, you xbox guru! Â Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbombing Posted February 27, 2022 Author Report Share Posted February 27, 2022 (edited) I found this link for the Original Xbox digital HDMI upgrade, https://www.retrorgb.com/xbox-hdmi-by-makemhz.html Anyone here follow this one or similar steps? I'm diving into the details now myself.... *EDIT*: I just saw the price tag and unavailability of the mod chip the tut prescribes. Plus, I'd like to just keep the box softmodded, and wondering if something down this route mandates a hardmod Edited February 27, 2022 by nerdbombing wanted to add details Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbombing Posted March 1, 2022 Author Report Share Posted March 1, 2022 One thing I've noticed is that I don't have access to enable 480p, 720p, or 1080i. In the MS dash it only allows me to choose between screens: Normal, Widescreen, and Letterbox. When I go into unleashX menu, those options are on the menu but not changeable. I then went into the "Boot softmod menu" and it's the same as the settings that are on the softmod dash... Within XBMC4XBOX I found the same options but they are greyed out and unselectable. Perhaps because I'm using standard RGB AV connection? In XBMC4XBOX it says: Video Encoder: Excalibur, Screen resolution: 720x480NTSC 4:3 60fps, A/V cable: Standard RGB, Video and XBE region: NTSC M, North America MPlayer Cache> Video/Audio/DVD cache - Harddisk: 4096kb (the largest it goes) And, so far, every video I've tried has some sort of issues. Slower video then audio with the audio staying normal speed, buffering freezes/pauses between a half second up 20 or more in both audio and video but sometimes just video, and sometimes there's artifacts or just a black grey or black screen while audio stays normal. What's weird is it does it in at least 2 of my boxes, testing a third right now. Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaosEngineer Posted March 1, 2022 Report Share Posted March 1, 2022 On 2/26/2022 at 8:53 AM, nerdbombing said: Are you suggesting the adapter is the problem and is of low quality? None of my other mods suffer from this issue. Possibly not all IDE-to-SATA adapters work well with the Xbox. Have you swapped out the stock IDE cable with a high-speed 80-wire 40-pin cable. Quote Can you throw me a bone with a link to an example of the soldering route please? As far as a cable, is this the right ball park: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V73764F/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_GB4SN1014NY5J2R6Z97Y XboxHD+ by MakeMHz Quote On my laptop, I found a video file I have issues with playback on xbox, opened properties and it says the following: Frame width: 720 Frame height: 432 Data rate: 1998kbps Total bitrate: 2126kbps Frame rate: 30fps One other example file looks like this: Frame width: 1280 Frame height: 720 data rate: 4207 kbps total bitrate: 4270 kbps Frame rate: 23 fps Thanks again Kaos, you xbox guru!  Download and install videolan.org's VLC Media Player on your PC. Play the video. While it is playing from the text menu select: Tools Codec Info. Which codecs were used to encode the video and audio streams being played? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbombing Posted March 1, 2022 Author Report Share Posted March 1, 2022 @KaosEngineer thanks again, I see you already answered a similar question, that searching would have never been findable. Somehow I lucked out and just happened to see "intro video" thinking to myself "hey, do they mean the boot screen, cause that would be neat to change..." , not so, but still useful and ty https://www.ogxbox.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6842-intro-video/Â , within the post, you linked to David Lambdan's article on video types and how modern video files are "encoded" differently. He mentioned hitting the 'black button' during replay and once i did that I see my videos are playing at 5-10fps and 100% CPU usage. I'll recheck the section on converting video files tot he correct type, but he sums up with "why waste the effort and time to use an OGxbox for videos anyway?"... which I somewhat agree with. Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbombing Posted March 1, 2022 Author Report Share Posted March 1, 2022 3 minutes ago, KaosEngineer said: Download and install videolan.org's VLC Media Player on your PC. Play the video. While it is playing from the text menu select: Tools Codec Info. Which codecs were used to encode the video and audio streams being played? thanks for the reply. Codec H264, just like David Lambdan says is too hard on the CPU.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaosEngineer Posted March 1, 2022 Report Share Posted March 1, 2022 Yes, it's H.264 AVC video and MPEG AAC Audio, not H.263 DivX or XviD and MP3 audio. I think it's more the video stream causing problems with playback than the audio stream. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbombing Posted March 2, 2022 Author Report Share Posted March 2, 2022 21 hours ago, KaosEngineer said: Have you swapped out the stock IDE cable with a high-speed 80-wire 40-pin cable. XboxHD+ by MakeMHz Yes, I used this 80 wire cable: https://www.ebay.com/itm/274553744014 I'm trying to figure out ffmpeg, but so far it's not produced anything for me. I followed a link @antonic901 posted over at https://www.ogxbox.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6742-wip-stream-movies-tv-shows-on-your-original-xbox/ which has been useful but as of yet I haven't converted anything. I wish there was something less "command line" and more "UI" that I could just drag and drop several files at once..... maybe pay for "FreemakeVideoConverter"? nah, not yet anyway... But at the least an actual walk through of the process, maybe a few pics of the process, where files should be located, etc. David Lambdan did most of the work, but then there's details missing like realworld examples, where files should be located in what directory, and such. He gives a nice command, but even after reading the article a few times, I don't know how to implement it. Â Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbombing Posted March 2, 2022 Author Report Share Posted March 2, 2022 1 hour ago, nerdbombing said: Â I wish there was something less "command line" and more "UI" that I could just drag and drop several files at once..... DivX Converter V.10.8.9 seemed to do the trick to convert mp4's to divx. I selected the "Home Theater" output profile. The resulting file is larger then the original mp4, but it plays on the xbox w/o issues now 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antonic901 Posted March 10, 2022 Report Share Posted March 10, 2022 (edited) On 3/2/2022 at 3:38 AM, nerdbombing said: Yes, I used this 80 wire cable: https://www.ebay.com/itm/274553744014 I'm trying to figure out ffmpeg, but so far it's not produced anything for me. I followed a link @antonic901 posted over at https://www.ogxbox.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6742-wip-stream-movies-tv-shows-on-your-original-xbox/ which has been useful but as of yet I haven't converted anything. I wish there was something less "command line" and more "UI" that I could just drag and drop several files at once..... maybe pay for "FreemakeVideoConverter"? nah, not yet anyway... But at the least an actual walk through of the process, maybe a few pics of the process, where files should be located, etc. David Lambdan did most of the work, but then there's details missing like realworld examples, where files should be located in what directory, and such. He gives a nice command, but even after reading the article a few times, I don't know how to implement it. Follow link from last post in that Topic. On that link you'll find how to install FFMpeg on Windows. After that converting is simple. Open folder where your video file is located, in address bar type CMD and press enter, and in command prompt enter: ffmpeg -i name_of_your_video_file.mkv -scodec copy -acodec copy -vcodec mpeg4 -b:v 3000k -maxrate 5000k -bufsize 4096k -s 1280x720 -f matroska -y name_of_output_file.mkv  Edited March 10, 2022 by antonic901 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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