This guide is for people who want to watch the HD mkv videos on their XBOX360. As we all know it takes hours to convert HD video to MP4, this way takes about 10 - 15 mins for small files like YIFY encodes which I use all the time as they are very decent quality 720p for small file sizes. These are really easy to do as they have only stereo (2 channel) sound, if the file has 5.1 (6 channel) sound then the audio will need converting which I will show you how to do in the second part of this guide. Converting just the audio is extremely fast (10 -20 mins depending on your computer specs) and is much more preferable to converting the video as well, which as I’ve already said can take at least several hours. All the software used is free and you can use the links I have provided below to download them.

Yamb
Yamb » Yet Another MP4Box UI


Audiocoder
Download AudioCoder (MediaCoder Audio Edition), the free transcoder for digital audio enthusiasts, yet the fastest audio transcoder

Firstly, click on the link to Yamb above and download Yamb-2.1.0.0 beta 2 with installer. Next install Yamb making sure to set it to FULL install, when you get to the option in during install just tick the box next to MKVextract as shown below. This is needed to read the mkv files.



Next install Audiocoder. Audiocoder likes to connect to the internet when it is used, if you don’t want it doing this then just block it in your firewall, but I would let it connect the first time you run it then block it. It will say that some features will not be available without an internet connection but don’t worry as it makes no difference for what we want to do, it’s just for the rss feed that is at the bottom of the window when it runs. If you don’t want to use this program because of this then just use your usual audio conversion software.

[size=medium]Part 1. Mkv to MP4 with stereo (2 channel) audio.
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This is the easiest to do as there is absolutely NO conversion needed.

1. Open Yamb and select ‘Click to create an MP4 file etc’.





2. Drag the file that you want to encode into Yamb, there is no browse function so you have to drag it over. The list of video, audio and subtitles will appear in the box. Make sure you deselect the subtitle file (Usually says UTF plain text, see below) as the XBOX can’t play subtitles in MP4 format, they have to be hardcoded into the video, there is no easy way to do that as the whole video file needs to be converted.



3. Just click next and let it run. When it’s finished go to the folder which the original file was in and it should look something like the screenshot below. It extracts the audio and video to compile them back into an MP4 so you can delete these files now as they are not needed anymore. So just delete the h264 file, the aac file and you can also delete the Yamb file as it’s just a log file of how long it took to make the file. Check the new MP4 to make sure it is ok before deleting the original mkv just in case, although i have used this program time after time and never had any problems with it.



Just burn the file to disk, put it on a usb memory stick or whatever you usually do to watch it on your XBOX!! 

[size=medium]Part 2. MKV to MP4 changing the surround sound (5.1, 6 channel) audio to stereo (2 channel)[/size]

1. Open up Yamb and drag the file into the program box. HD mkv files that have surround sound usually have DTS surround sound as well and Yamb isn’t compatible with it so you will get the message below, just click ok, we don’t need it anyway. It will still show up but will be deselected. As with part 1 make sure you deselect the subtitles track.





2. Click next. Once it’s done you will end up with the created files in the original file folder. The MP4 that is created at this point isn’t needed so you can delete it, we just want the h264 and ac3 files.



3. Next open up Audiocoder. You might get the error message ‘Can’t find XVIDCORE.dll’ if you do then you can download it from here > xvidcore.dll Free Download - DLL-files.com, just unrar it and copy it to the Audiocoder program folder (C:\Program files\Audiocoder). Click add, and add the ac3 file. Change the format to LC-AAC, select ‘average bitrate’ and change the bitrate to 128 or 256, you won’t need it any higher than that.



4. Click on the ‘sound’ tab and make sure it is set to ‘stereo’ in channels. Leave the output folder set to original folder and click start.



5. Your original folder should now look something like this. The audio file we just created is the one that is aac (highlighted below)



6. Open up Yamb again, click on the create an mp4 button, drag the h264 video file and the aac audio file you just created into the window , click next and wait for it to finish.

Once it’s done you will end up with the original folder looking like the one below, with the newly created MP4 file in it. As before you can now delete the extra files. That’s it!