Since we have received an overwhelming amount of requests to make a more in depth, step by step Tutorial on how to Play any video file on your Xbox 360 from your Apple Mac computer, we have decided to do just that, here. So here it goes:

What You Want to Do:

So your sittin’ in front of your macbook or your imac, and your wondering, why am I watching all of this HD stuff, when I could be watching it all on my bigscreen? Good question! Well, chances are you have video in the following formats:

• mkv, h.264, ogg, vorbis, wmv, divx, mpeg, mp4, mp2, blu ray,HD-DVD, etc.

and you are using VLC to watch them.
But the PROBLEM is that you want to watch them on your bigscreen and your just not sure how. Well, that is where VanillaHD.com comes to the rescue with a plain as Vanilla explanation of how to do it! But, there are 2 ways, the $20 way (more complicated, less expensive) and the $43.32 way (Easy as pie). I have opted to explain the $43.23 way, because it is just better in every way, except you pay $23.32 more. No biggie, just eat 4 less extra value meals from McDonalds this week, you nerd.

How to play any video file on your Xbox 360 with your Mac - The $43.26 way that is as easy as pie:

Here Is What You Will Need:

• Xbox 360 - Preferably the Elite version… just cause its black. And has black controllers.
• Apple Computer - iMac, MacBook Pro, Apple Air, etc.
• Connect 360 Only $20- By: NullRiver - Has a Free Trial!
• Visual Hub Only $23.32 - By: Techspansion - Has a Free Trial!

Here is what I assume before I start the tutorial:

• You have downloaded and installed Connect 360 and Visual Hub
• You have “Media Sharing Enabled” between Connect 360 and your Xbox 360.
• That you know how to read.

How to play any video file on your Xbox 360 with your Mac:

1. Choose a small video to test for you first video, as encoding and conversion times can be lengthy if you choose a full movie. Try downloading a trailer for a movie in your favorite format that the Xbox 360 can’t read. Like: mkv, ogg, vorbis, and a lot of other weird formats.
2. Open up Visual Hub. Visual Hub is a phenomenal video conversion tool,it takes the “what the heck is bit-rate, and khz mean for video and audio” out of the process.
3. Drag to the stage or open your small video file.
4. At the top right of the visual HUB window it shows the format we can convert to. Choose mp4.
5. Drag the slider to the “Go Nuts” quality.
6. Check the box that says “H.264 Encoding”. It is the best (I’ll explain later).
7. At the bottom right, click on the “Edit” button.
8. Choose a folder that is associated with “Connect 360″. Generally your default Apple Movies folder will be the best place. I know that you are tempted to click on the “Advanced” button. Don’t do it. The settings I gave you will make the video look phenomenal!
9. Click Start! Then wait… once you get the delightful “ding” then you are ready to go to test to see if it worked.

Testing Your Video File:

Ok, now it is time to test and see if everything came out ok. Chances are it did! But here is your test. First, on your mac, open up your new file in VLC and in Quicktime. Make sure it can play in both (Not necessarily at the same time). If you have done that, now it is time to move to your 360. Follow these instructions:

1. Tun on your Xbox 360
2. Navigate over to the “Media Tab”, and select the “Videos” option.
3. IMPORTANT! Since the Xbox 360 Dashboard update of about 6 months ago, once you click on”Videos” it will just show you all of the videos on your Xbox 360 hard drive. So press “X” to change the current source. Then browse down to your Apple / Mac computer. Mine is an iMac. It will always have the Connect 360 appended to your computer name. Select your Connect 360 Mac Computer.
4. Click on the “Movies Folder”. That is why you should have saved the file there earlier.
5. Now browse through your video files and select your sweet, newly converted, (mine was mkv) video file, that was small; and play it!
6. Watch and Enjoy! Nothing like watching the TMNT trailer in all of its Hi-Definition glory!
7. You’re Done! You did it! Now you can follow that same process when watching any video that you stole from and torrented on your Xbox 360 from your Mac.

Why Questions:

Now I am sure you have a couple of questions, so I will try to guess your questions and explain them here. I will also just share some sweet knowledge.

Why do you use the H.264 codec instead of straight up mp4. or any other format for that fact?

Because, H.264 is a newer, more advanced video compression type. Videos compressed with H.264 will look better than the default MPEG-4 counterparts at the same resolution, and will take up less disk space. Of course, there’s a catch. It takes much longer to compress to H.264 than MPEG-4.

What really makes something High Definition, and am I getting the best quality I can?

Great question! Below is a table that ranks the BEST quality HD stuff to the lowest quality H-Def stuff. In other words, companies claim that their stuff is High-Definition, now of all of that stuff, what is the best quality and what is the worst, but is still in the category of High Definition.

Source/service	CODEC	Resolution	Bit-rate
Blu-ray	H.264 or MPEG2	1920×1080 1080i/p	40
HD DVD	H.264 or VC-1	1920×1080 1080i/p	28
ATSC HDTV	MPEG2	1920×1080 1080i/p	19.39
Digital cable	MPEG2	1920×1080 1080i/p	~ 16
Verizon FiOS Video on demand	MPEG2	1920×1080 1080i	15
DISH HD	MPEG2/MPEG4	1440×1080	< 10
DIRECTV HD	MPEG2/MPEG4	1280×1080	< 10
IPTV	H.264	?	< 10
Xbox Live Video	VC-1	1280×720 720p	6.8
DVD	MPEG2	720×480 480i *	8
Apple iTunes	QuickTime/H.264	1280×720 720p	4
Web “HD” downloads	H.264	1280×720 720p	1.5

So if you notice, the best quality Codec, is H.264, with a bit rate of 40. In Visual Hub, when you slide that bar to “Go Nuts” you are making sure it is at the highest bit rate, and when you click on H.264 encode, you are making sure it is the highest quality of available encoding methods.

What is the less expensive way of doing this?

Frankly, I do not want to explain it, because it gets into customizing open source software and tweaking, which takes a whole lot of time and the end result is not as good. So I say just fork out the $23.32 for Visual Hub and make it easy! But for those of you freakin’ cheap stubborn peeps, I get you started in the right direction. Go download FFMpegX its free and make sure to get all of the binaries. Then if you really want a Tutorial, I will need 10 comments below asking for it. Otherwise, I’ll assume the demand is not there.

Conclusion:

Well, I think we did pretty good. I remember back in the days of Windows XP when the 360 first came out. You essentially had to know how to program perl in order to get something like this to work. Today, on a MAC, it is just knowing the right combos of software, and then you really can play almost any possible video formats on your Xbox 360 using visual Hub.

Feel free to post comments!