[MPlayer-users] Dropping x264 into an MP4 Container

[Ivan Kowalenko]

So, I've recently gotten my hands on an XBox 360, and I'm trying to  
use it as a sort of media center machine. I've got some rather unique  
video files containing video with a FOURCC reading "h264" (I'm  
assuming it's encoded with x264, but I don't know) and audio of AC3. I  
planned to convert the AC3 to AAC and drop it all into an MP4  
container. I've been tinkering with MPlayer/MEncoder, VLC and  
QuickTime. QuickTime refused to drop the H.264 into an MP4 container  
(pass-through), I changed the FOURCC to "avc1" so it would use the  
internal H.264 decoder instead of the Perian codec. I've got it to the  
point where I can read the H.264/AAC file wrapped in a MOV container,  
but I can't seem to successfully get it into something the XBox likes.  
After extracting the video and isolating it in its own MP4 file, the  
machine still doesn't like it, even though it's identifying as "avc1".

Anyway, I'm just wondering: what possible differences between an H.264  
video stream and x264 stream, and is there any way to get around  
having to re-encode the whole thing? Thanks!