Another discussion about Apple TV and 5.1 Surround Sound

[miksterman]

I'm in the process of converting over all my DVD collection to play on my Apple TV. But I want to do the conversions so that they have the best quality I can get out of them including the 5.1 surround sound. I looked at Handbrake and had nothing but problems with which I think has something to do with me using Snow Leopard. I was using iSkysoft DVD Ripper for Mac but discovered that the 6 ch audio option wasn't really true 5.1 audio so I tried iSkysoft's iMedia Convert which doesn't do anything different. So I'm now looking at iFunia DVD to Apple TV Converter and it does have a 5.1 audio option and it does say "multi" beside the audio channels in the get info from iTunes of the movie that was converted but it doesn't sync with my Apple TV. I get a error when I try to sync it that say's "Movie Name" was not copied to the Apple TV "Apple TV" because it cannot be played on this Apple TV. So does the Apple TV still not support true 5.1 Surround Sound even to this date? One thing I should point out that will lead into another question is that I don't currently have my home theater connected with my Apple TV but plan to in the future. Does the Apple TV need to be connected to a home theater with 5.1 surround sound in order for it to recognize and sync with a movie from iTunes 9 with 5.1 surround sound? Help if you may.

 

[GreatDrok]

Handbrake does a fine job of ripping DVDs at high quality with 5.1 surround on Snow Leopard. I use it all the time for use with my ATV ripping directly from DVDs or from rips of DVDs made with Mactheripper. The 5.1 surround comes through just fine on my amp. Make sure that the DD output is turned on in your ATV setup though.

 

[miksterman]

Tried HandBrake and I can't get it to work.

The problem I'm having with Handbrake is I can't get it to work when I load it. It won't recognize the VLC media player. It gave me the message Handbrake could not find VLC or your VLC is out of date. So I selected the button that said "attempt scan anyway" and browsed and found VLC in my apps folder, I now get a message that say's "This version of HandBrake is 64 bit, VLC found but not 64 bit!". When in fact it is the 64 bit version of VLC version 1.0.3 that is in the Applications folder.

 

[Cliff3]

The problem I'm having with Handbrake is I can't get it to work when I load it. It won't recognize the VLC media player. It gave me the message Handbrake could not find VLC or your VLC is out of date. So I selected the button that said "attempt scan anyway" and browsed and found VLC in my apps folder, I now get a message that say's "This version of HandBrake is 64 bit, VLC found but not 64 bit!". When in fact it is the 64 bit version of VLC version 1.0.3 that is in the Applications folder.

1.03 is 32 bit only. I have no idea why. Here's a link for 64-bit version 1.02: http://www.videolan.org/mirror-geo.php?file=vlc/1.0.2/macosx/vlc-1.0.2-intel64.dmg. It works fine with Handbrake 64.

 

[miksterman]

Thanks, That Worked! But....

Thanks a bunch! That did work. So far all my testing all the way up to getting it to sync with the Apple TV has worked. Now one question about screen resolution. Is there away in HandBrake to change the screen resolution so that the output screen resolution is 1280 x 720? The other programs that was trying to do conversions with would let me do that. Or is that a no, no to up the screen resolution like that?

 

[CPD_1]

@Cliff3

VLC 1.02 64bit displayed some problems, which is why 1.03 isn't available in a 64bit flavor yet.

 

[Cliff3]

Apple TV seems to do a competent job of resizing source material to fit the resolution of the output device, in my case a 720p 50" plasma. I'd just leave it be.

 

[Cliff3]

@Cliff3

VLC 1.02 64bit displayed some problems, which is why 1.03 isn't available in a 64bit flavor yet.

After posting, I found a comment that it was 1.03 that had some bugs that prevented its release. I've been transcoding away with 1.02 for the past couple of weeks with no problems.