And the winner is? 360 transcoding software benchmarked…

A lot of us here don’t know jack squat about transcoding videos for various devices, especially if your a technophobe. Hey, what with a mother-load of codecs that are out there (DivX and XviD just to name two of the most often confused codecs), ripping the hair off your scalp seems like a better idea than going through the whole complicated process of transcoding.

So, for the newbies out there who are thinking of giving this whole gig one more chance, here’s an informative benchmarking experiment done by Happy Beggar. If you’re not a newbie though, you still might find this worth your while. They reviewed three of the most popular transcoding software out there that lets you bring content into your 360. Their test subjects:

• VLC and my optimized vlcwmv-v2.bat file (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 96kbps WMA)
• WinAvi 7.7 (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 64kbps WMA 9.2)
• Windows Media Encoder (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 96kbps WMA 9.2)

With these three programs, they used the same file to transcode a video, all with a time of one minute. The results are as follows:

• VLC: 3min 33sec of content (transcode rate of 85.1 fps)
• WinAvi: 1min 40sec of content (transcode rate of 39.96 fps)
• WME: 1min 27sec of content (transcode rate of 34.76 fps)

From that alone, you can see a considerable advantage with the VLC. It was able to complete three and a half minutes of video content with a higher frame rate as well. How about the quality of the converted material? Here’s a snapshot of the original video:

To save bandwith, we’ve put the other pics behind the “Full Article” link. Click below to see the comparison in full detail. Who’s the winner? You’ll see after the jump…

A lot of us here don’t know jack squat about transcoding videos for various devices, especially if you’re a technophobe. Hey, what with a mother-load of codecs that are out there (DivX and XviD just to name two of the most often confused codecs), ripping the hair off your scalp seems like a better idea than going through the whole complicated process of transcoding.

So, for the newbies out there who are thinking of giving this whole gig one more chance, here’s an informative benchmarking experiment done by Happy Beggar. If you’re not a newbie though, you still might find this worth your while. They reviewed three of the most popular transcoding software out there that lets you bring content into your Xbox 360. Their test subjects:

• VLC and my optimized vlcwmv-v2.bat file (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 96kbps WMA)
• WinAvi 7.7 (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 64kbps WMA 9.2)
• Windows Media Encoder (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 96kbps WMA 9.2)

With these three programs, they used the same file to transcode a video, all with a time of one minute. The results are as follows:

• VLC: 3min 33sec of content (transcode rate of 85.1 fps)
• WinAvi: 1min 40sec of content (transcode rate of 39.96 fps)
• WME: 1min 27sec of content (transcode rate of 34.76 fps)

From that alone, you can see a considerable advantage with the VLC. It was able to complete three and a half minutes of video content with a higher frame rate as well. How about the quality of the converted material? Here’s a snapshot of the original video:

Now here are the converted vids. Make sure you click the thumbs to see the differences between each of them better.

VLC:

WinAvi:

WME:

There’s a slight difference between the three snapshots, but for the meticulous-eyed, pixelations can be found in the WinAvi and WME pics. Take a good look at the hands on the steering wheel and you’ll notice little squares that have popped up. While this only shows a small difference, imagine what sort of pixelation you’d find in a scene with explosions and fast-paced action…

So. Who’s the grand jackpot winner? Three letters spell it out for you: VLC!