Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Handbrake ATV Preset

M

mulligbc

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 23, 2006
2
0
I have been digitizing all my DVDs using the Apple TV preset on Handbrake. Tonight I plugged in my 5th Gen iPod and was surprised that the m4v format was not supported. Not on the iPhone either. So that led me to look at the differences between Handbrake's presets for Apple TV and iPod ..... Seems like the big difference is the Audio in AAC+AC3 on ATV and no AC3 on iPod/iPhone ..

So, What I'm wondering is, is the +AC3 worth it? What's it really adding?

Does anyone have any opinions on Handbrake's ATV preset? The movies I've watched after using it have looked great, but I'm new to this ..

Thanks!
 
um, m4v is supported, but the iPod cannot play the atv preset. bframes among other things are not supported in the iPod.
 
I JUST figured this out yesterday. I spent days recoding all my movies for ATV only to find out NONE of them will transfer to my iPod Touch! I was very peeved to say the least. Now I have to go back and recode my movies AGAIN! So now I will have 3 different formats of the same movie. The original download which are always in avi, the recoded ATV version, and the again recoded iPod versions...sigh what a mess.
 
We're talking about "optimized" here.

The AppleTV preset is optimized for use with the Apple TV - it records two soundtracks to duplicate how Apple themselves have encoded things, and allows for stereos to accept a passed-through Dolby encoded 5.1 sound track: this means you can get better quality sound overall as well as great picture quality.

The iPhone/iTouch preset doesn't do the AC3 passthrough (why bother) and also naturally uses a smaller resolution and lower quality, again optimized for use with the smaller screens and lower audio demands of those devices.

There are some people who will seek a single file to use on both and have found they are happy with the iPhone/iTouch preset but increasing the video quality to 2000 kb/s.

Personally, I keep all the movies in the higher resolution Apple TV format knowing that if i ever want to dump a movie to my phone, I can convert it later in iTunes (slower, but works fine). I did do phone versions in handbrake of about a dozen movies that I wanted pristine (pirates of the caribbean, for example).

In other words, you have to decide which is more important to you: multiple files optimized for each format or a single file that more portable.

N.
 
Nimiety said:
We're talking about "optimized" here.

The AppleTV preset is optimized for use with the Apple TV - it records two soundtracks to duplicate how Apple themselves have encoded things, and allows for stereos to accept a passed-through Dolby encoded 5.1 sound track: this means you can get better quality sound overall as well as great picture quality.

The iPhone/iTouch preset doesn't do the AC3 passthrough (why bother) and also naturally uses a smaller resolution and lower quality, again optimized for use with the smaller screens and lower audio demands of those devices.

There are some people who will seek a single file to use on both and have found they are happy with the iPhone/iTouch preset but increasing the video quality to 2000 kb/s.

Personally, I keep all the movies in the higher resolution Apple TV format knowing that if i ever want to dump a movie to my phone, I can convert it later in iTunes (slower, but works fine). I did do phone versions in handbrake of about a dozen movies that I wanted pristine (pirates of the caribbean, for example).

In other words, you have to decide which is more important to you: multiple files optimized for each format or a single file that more portable.

N.
Click to expand...
Having an AC3 track in the video file does not make it incompatible with the iPhone/iPod. It's the advanced x264 options (as stated by dynaflash earlier) that do. All of my encodes include AC3 (+AAC) and work great on my iPhone and AppleTV.
 
drumpat01 said:
I JUST figured this out yesterday. I spent days recoding all my movies for ATV only to find out NONE of them will transfer to my iPod Touch! I was very peeved to say the least. Now I have to go back and recode my movies AGAIN! So now I will have 3 different formats of the same movie. The original download which are always in avi, the recoded ATV version, and the again recoded iPod versions...sigh what a mess.
Click to expand...

It begs to be asked: what in the world would make you think a preset named "AppleTV" would be iPod compatible ?
 
dynaflash said:
It begs to be asked: what in the world would make you think a preset named "AppleTV" would be iPod compatible ?
Click to expand...

I figured it was just a better picture resolution. I didn't think that the quality of video would effect the compatibility when THEY ARE BOTH m4p FILES. People rip stuff at different qualities all the time. Who knew that little details like advanced settings no one really ever looks at would cause them to not work.

So dont talk to me like im retarded a$$hole
 
drumpat01 said:
So dont talk to me like im retarded a$$hole
Click to expand...

I don't think 'dynaflash' or anyone else for that matter was implying that you were. I think we're all feeling your pain and frustration a bit, with the potential prospect of going back and re-encoding all those DVDs. If it helps any, I essentially started over with my entire DVD collection when ver. 0.9.2 of HB came out, to take advantage of the AC3 sound. For my approx. 100+ DVD collection, I used the Apple TV preset exclusively because my TV is the only way that I ever consider watching movies. I do make a rare exception occasionally for watching on my computer, but I spend so much time parked in front of the PC everyday, it's nice to get away...

For the record, I've never understood peoples' desire to watch movies w/o 5.1 surround sound on a tiny 3-4 inch screen... Okay, sure, maybe short clips, YouTube videos, and perhaps TV shows, I can get that...but do people really enjoy watching (for example) all three LOTR movies on an iPhone or iPod? I mean, what sort of immersive movie experience is that? Sorry, I digress! I guess that's a discussion for another thread.
 
drumpat01 said:
I figured it was just a better picture resolution. I didn't think that the quality of video would effect the compatibility when THEY ARE BOTH m4p FILES. People rip stuff at different qualities all the time. Who knew that little details like advanced settings no one really ever looks at would cause them to not work.

So dont talk to me like im retarded a$$hole
Click to expand...
Fair enough, but if you took a little bit of time to look at other posts here and on the Handbrake forums, you'd know that the iPhone is capable of playing the same resolutions as AppleTV (in regards to DVD sources). It's pretty common knowledge around here now.

If you don't want to take the time to understand what you are doing when you click the encode button, don't blame the authors of the program when the output doesn't work exactly like you think it should.
 
drumpat01 said:
Who knew that little details like advanced settings no one really ever looks at would cause them to not work.

So dont talk to me like im retarded a$$hole
Click to expand...
It was not my intent to insult you. But realize that those "little details" are what can make *all* of the difference, and its because you not necessarily expected to know that difference that the presets are named as plainly as they are.
My apologies for insulting you, again not my intent. But you seemed quite amazed that the AppleTV preset would not produce iPod compatible files. So I had to ask.
 
NightStorm said:
Having an AC3 track in the video file does not make it incompatible with the iPhone/iPod. It's the advanced x264 options (as stated by dynaflash earlier) that do. All of my encodes include AC3 (+AAC) and work great on my iPhone and AppleTV.
Click to expand...

So as an adjunct to this thread, can anyone help me figure out the best way to get AppleTV vids recoded for iPod quickly and easily? I have some burned cartoons for my kids that I coded for AppleTV, and now I figured I would want them in an iPod compatible format for travel viewing. Since I don't have the original videos anymore, all I have are the mp4 files. I tried opening them in HB and recoding them using the iPod preset, but this didn't work.

I thought about using the "Create iPod version" in iTunes, but this seems to take FOREVER. Any thoughts?

Thanks.
 
I use the iPod Legacy preset in HB. I'm not so particular about audio or video quality as long as I can hear and watch the videos fine. The videos play fine on my iPhone as well as my 32" widescreen TV @ 720p.

I haven't tried it yet on my 46" TV. I'm hoping I won't have to re-rip with ATV preset.

EVP
 
I used the iPod Preset and increased the quality. I tested several settings until my son's and I were happy with the size/quality compromise. I also tested watching on the ATV, iPhone, iPod and XBOX to makes sure my preset worked on everything.
 
KakaduDreamer said:
For the record, I've never understood peoples' desire to watch movies w/o 5.1 surround sound on a tiny 3-4 inch screen...
Click to expand...
I watch movies while on the plane on my iPhone to kill the time (movies I have seen before). You may want to give it a try. It is actually pretty good. This is the reason I encoded my library to play on any device. I have 180 movies.
 
If anyone wants just one file to use on all your Apple devices (ATV, iPods, iPhone) I think that's what the Apple Universal HB preset is for. :)

For converting pre-encoded ATV movies to iPhone, if Handbrake doesn't do it (not sure why it wouldn't?) I'd try mpegstreamclip (disclaimer - not done this myself, I've always used VisualHub but that's now defunct, of course).
 
in Handbreak I just been using the normal preset, have had not problem with ATV, but non of the movies will play on my 5th Gen iPod but will on the iPhone.

are their any benefit of ATV preset over Normal preset?
 
I use the Apple Universal preset, and they work great on my ATV and my iPhone/ iPod Touch. I haven't tried putting one on my Nano with that encoding yet though.
 
alFR said:
If anyone wants just one file to use on all your Apple devices (ATV, iPods, iPhone) I think that's what the Apple Universal HB preset is for. :)

For converting pre-encoded ATV movies to iPhone, if Handbrake doesn't do it (not sure why it wouldn't?) I'd try mpegstreamclip (disclaimer - not done this myself, I've always used VisualHub but that's now defunct, of course).
Click to expand...

I hear you about the Universal preset, but the kids vids get watched on the Apple TV about 98% of the time and only on the iPod when we have long car trips (not often), so I defaulted to the AppleTV preset.

Also, I'm not sure why HB can't take the file and reencode it, maybe someone else has thoughts on that?

Finally, I will try mpegstreamclip. I'm using that now to trim my mp4s anyway, so I can see if it will work.

Thanks again.

Ed
 
Handbrake can take a file in AppleTV format and convert it for iPod, at least it seems to do it ok for me. Also as the files are already on your computer it's easy to set them up in a queue.
 
Shuttleworth said:
Handbrake can take a file in AppleTV format and convert it for iPod, at least it seems to do it ok for me. Also as the files are already on your computer it's easy to set them up in a queue.
Click to expand...

I shoudl clarify, I generally used the HB settings but then made some adjustments since I'm encoding cartoons. I'm not sure if these changes are leading to the fact that I can't reencode the videos. I guess I need to do some sleuthing to find out why they are choking.

Also, I tried mpegstreamclip (another suggestion from a post) but it took about 4 hours to reencode a 22 min video. Not my idea of a quick process. I guess it's back to the drawing board. I have an old copy of Nero Recode (v 6). I suppose I can always try that.
 
I used to AppleTV preset and wasn't happy with the quality. HD space is so cheap these days that an extra gig in each file isn't a concern. I'm digitizing my entire collection of classics, westerns and WW2 pictures.

The 59% didn't work for me. I then tried 63, like the quality but its now taking too long to encode. 2 hours at 59% and almost 5 hours at 63.

Is there a middle ground? Anyone have some experience with other settings? I don't feel like running another encode at 61% to compare. Will I be able to tell the difference if I downgrade to 61% quality? The jump from 59 to 63 was VERY noticeable to my eyes

eV
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back