Apple TV and File converting Questions

[jriddel]

Ok I have a few questions as I am currently in the process of ripping all of my movies to my new shiny 640g hard drive and then encoding them on handbrake to be used to stream to my eventual Apple TV. I am running windows xp so all the programs I need will have to work with windows.

I am currently using dvd shrink to rip then queing them up in handbrake. I am using the iPod hi-rez preset and changing it to match the sticky in the forum and so far my results seem to work out pretty well. I want to get as good of quality as possible when I get my Apple TV here in the next few months so if it takes longer to encode for better qualitiy I don't really care. Any tips would be appreciated.

If I hook up my ATV to my HDTV using HDMI will it upscale the movies?

Also what is a good program for converting some AVI and MKV files that I have downloaded on torrent? And also what are the good settings to get the best quality out of these?

What is a good windows application like MetaX that I can use to tag all of my uploaded movies and tv shows? Also what are good settings to use in handbrake for a 4:3 TV show that I will need to rip which are Family Guy, Futurama, Batman TAS?

What are the best possible settings to use on the iPod Hi-Rez setting that I can get for my apple tv without the size getting too big?

Lots of questions I know but I was just wanting to make sure I do it all right before I really get into it. And I will be getting my first mac (new MBP) whenever the new updates come out so no knockin on my sweet gaming pc

 

[jriddel]

Anybody?

 

[LeoFio]

I'll take a stab at a couple of your questions..

I use my ThinkPad with Vista to rip movies since it does it in a fraction of the time as my 3yr old Powerbook G4 does ..so I do have experience with this with windows!

I use DVD43 to read the DVDs so Handbrake for Windows can rip it.

The question really becomes this: Do you want to rip these movies for playback only on Apple TV, or do you want to be able to play them on your ipod as well? I do the former since I want to make the movies look as good as reasonably possible on my 40" LCD without taking up an insane amount of space. I use the Apple TV preset in Handbrake, bump up the video bitrate to 3000, and audio to 256 kbps, and set to 2-pass encoding (takes twice as long, but with better results). The resulting file is about 2GB for a 90min movie or 3GB for a 120 min movie, and looks good on my TV (obviously not HD though).

The problem with using the iPod preset is that it will look great on an iPod, but not as great on a larger TV that has many more pixels (the resulting picture will not be as sharp and will be more grainy, but not un-watchable).

The HDMI cable will not upscale your picture quality, it will only make your movie file look the best it can. Your Handbrake settings is what will judge your picture quality, and using an HDMI cable will not take away any of that quality...if that makes sense.

As for your other questions, I don't have any experience in those fields, so I can't answer those.

Hope this was of some help..let me know if you have other questions or want clarification.