Installing Perian on the AppleTV

[jzietman]

What's the general consensus on installing perian on atvs? Is it a good idea, or would you rather have quicktime alone there? I know it allows quicktime to play high profile x264 files, which would allow for the use of b-pyramid frames, etc. on the atv.

[sierramadre]

It's a mixed bag: some advanced 264 features are just too much for the CPU of the ATV, even with perian installed. It depends upon the encoding.

For example I am now using the Hauppauge HD-PVR to make HD H.264 720p files, but because it uses CABAC, the ATV just can't handle it, even with perian, so I must transcode them to CALVC to get them to play properly on the ATV.

Incidentally when installing Perian, when it asks if you want to keep the Apple H.264 component, the answer is YES, keep it.

[jzietman]

Yet in the advanced atv 2.0 settings thread, the first post says that cabac must be left on for those who participate. Can the atv then just not handle cabac on top of lots of other h264 settings?

[dynaflash]

Well specifically we have found that with the right combination the atv *can* handle cabac by itself, probably most importantly proper vbv buffering constraints. I don't want to digress into that here, but its pretty much covered in that thread. Suffice it to say I run bone stock atv 2.02 software and haven't encoded in CAVLC for quite some time.