Smokey’s House of Paincakes

If Microsoft would just get it right and natively support Divx, we wouldn’t need this tutorial and everything would be wonderful!

That not being the case, I figured I would put this together because it took me a hell of a long time searching for this correct information. Now we have it step by step.

What you’ll Need:
Microsoft Media 9 Encoder
The Divx Codec
Plus any other Codec you may need to view your Divx file with (ie: AC3).

Once everything is installed, start the Media 9 Encoder and start a New Session.

1. On the Input tab click the File radio button and choose your file. Give it a moment cause it needs to examine the file and it may look like it has frozen. Don’t worry, everything will be fine shortly.
2. On the Output tab, select where and what to call your new file.
3. Now select the Compression tab and click Edit.
4. Under the Media Types section, select Quality VBR for both Audio and Video Modes.
5. Click on the newly created Quality-based tab.
6. For Video Size check the Same as video input box.
7. Change the Video quality to 100.
8. Click Ok to go back to the Compression tab and click Apply to set your options to the video. Again, this will take a few moments to process, so have a little patience.
9. Once applied, click on Start Encoding and watch ‘er go!

This will now create an Xbox 360 compatible WMV at the best possible quality. The file will be significantly larger, but it will work. Burn it to a DVD or stream away with Media Player 11.

If you don’t need the best quality, play around with the options to suit your own needs.

Warning: This method took me 4 hours to convert a 2 hour movie on a Pentium 4 3.4 with HT. The same method was less than 2 hours on a Duo Core Pentium 3.4.