XVid / DivX to WMV.

[Shagga]

I'd appreciate some advice and recommendations please.

Firstly, I've carried out a new installation of Vista and of course lost the majority of Codecs used for Audio and Video nowadays when played in WMP.

I want to keep this latest installation as clean and free from clutter as possible. What I mean by this I don't want to install an abundance of different video players so that I have to use different players to play different types of encoded video if that makes sense. All I want to do is use "Windows Media Player 11" which ships with Vista (which might leave a bad taste in some of your mouths for sure)

What I want to be able to do, is stream video from my PC to my XBox 360 and as some of you know the Xbox doesn't support XVid/DivX, but WMV works fine. I am aware of some free transcoding software that "fools" the Xbox into thinking it's playing WMV even though it's not, but this means installing more software I don't want. I'm quite prepared to decode all my XVid/DivX video and encode them to WMV to avoid clutter. So,

Can anyone recommend -

1) Where to get the codec only for Xvid/DivX which doesn't include the players that often come with them so at least I can play this type of video through WMP on the PC and...

2) The best piece of software for converting XVid/DivX to WMV.

Having a child a few years ago has meant I cannot any longer keep up to speed with changes in Hardware / Software and technology generally, hence the reason I'm asking a fairly simple question I would have thought. It's amazing how much you for get.

Thanks again Guyz and Galz.

 

[WildHorse]

Edit: Apologies, but I've just noticed that Vista isn't listed among the supported OS' for the WinAVI Converter mentioned below. It isn't clear whether or not it'll play on Vista.

The best piece of software for converting XVid/DivX to WMV.

Can't say it's "the best" because I haven't made a comparison, but one you might take a look at, which I use, is
WinAVI Converter.

It translates
AVI to DVD
AVI to MPEG
AVI to VCD
AVI to MPG
Flash SWF conversion
Converts all formats to MPEG1/2, VCD, SVCD, and DVD and burn to VCD, SVCD, or DVD disc.
Converts all video formats to AVI/WMV/RM/ASF/Divx/Xvid
QuickTime MOV conversion.
Real DVD Navigator encoder included.
DirectAC3 technology supports AC3 5.1, which is state of the art technology. It is up to 20% faster with AVI files including AC3 audio.
Real Dolby AC3 audio encoder included.
Burning VCD/SVCD/DVD.

I have good experience using both WinAVI Converter (not free, more versatile, faster) and DVD Flick (free, less versatile, pretty darn slow) for conversions.

When I convert with WinAVI Converter & burn with Nero Burning ROM 6.6, pretty often the audio & video on the resulting DVD are out of synch. Not always, but often. I don't yet understand the source of the problem, whether with the conversion or with the burning.

The DVD Flick has an "Advanced" button on the Video settings where you can select 2-pass encoding. I always use that, but it's very slow. Resulting DVDs never have the audio/video synch problem, but this converter doesn't handle as many formats as the WinAVI Converter.

 

[Rottie]

Alive Video Converter it is a small program that wont eat up your system resources and it will convert to many formats. It is not free but it is worth it. It also support Vista too

 

[AeroEngy]

I use TVersity to stream my PC's videos to my 360. I use it to real time transcode all of my various video formats(Divx, Xvid, Mpeg-2, etc.) to WMV. It works really well, you just need a decently fast PC. This way I didn't have to do the time consuming task of re-encoding all my videos to MWV upfront. If you do go this way just realize that your PC will be unusable when you are watching videos on the 360.

Another program to try which I liked alot before I switched to TVersity is Encode360. This program will convert your various formats to WMV. It has lots of options for different codecs, bitrates, scaling etc.

Hope that helps