HandBrake

What is strange is that it only happens once the movie is fully buffered onto the Apple TV. I also experience the stuttering on DVD rips.

I have movies that are about 5000 bit-rate and don't have the stuttering issue.

I am at a loss to why this is happening. It shouldn't be this difficult to play back movies smoothly. As someone else said in these forums, It's a turd.

Still no encoding log...

nightstrm wrote:

mduell wrote:

kenliles wrote:I'm trying High Profile again (with large file size checked);

I haven't seen any posts on this, maybe I'm just missing it somewhere; But is it known to the forum that the AppleTV preset (.9.4) produces files that the new AppleTV 2 cannot keep up with? (I have to drop to Average bitrate setting -2500 or less); [These are BD 1080p that I downrez via Picture Settings to 720, starting with the AppleTV preset];

The stuttering issue is widely reported; wait until the whole movie syncs before playing.

A lot of the stuttering reports that I've seen say that the problem starts once the movie has fully copied onto the AppleTV v2. I have confirmed this in my own testing, but the issue presents itself very infrequently. I can't think of any setting in the .9.4 AppleTV preset that would prevent the new AppleTV from streaming reliably (save the infrequent dropped frames).

Changing the bitrate isn't going to affect that kind of stuttering, ergo that's not his problem.

I feel the issue is out of our hands, we all need to wait for Apple to adress this problem. This might take years knowing Apple.

This discussion really doesn't belong in this thread.

yes - just verified, it's happening precisely at the moment the movie fully buffers; In fact, if you menu out at that moment and Play-Resume, it fixes until fully buffered again.
Agreed with all- this no longer belongs in this thread -; the problem is clearly an ATV2 software bug from Apple and not related or even really fixable via HB settings;
[and I tried various bit-rates etc. to verify- ]

mduell- you're right, bit-rate was not the issue (just masked it to occur at different times - sorry)- encode logs won't help here;

I'll report anything else I find or bug fix etc. in a new thread. Sorry chaps...
thanks for the responses- much appreciated- helped isolate the issue... gotta wait for Apple I guess

ken

I have the ATV2 and I have stuttering and frame drop on a converted 720p movie with hi profile setting. It is real a shame, because the picture quality is extraordinary.
What is strange is that with a converted DVD, the frame drop is very rare.
So, if I well understood is an ATV2 issue, and we can only wait for the fix, correct?

Regards,
Giuseppe

Well, after being away from the forums for a while, I rashly downloaded a nightly build last week (r3678) and encoded a DVD chapter for the first-gen Apple TV. The result froze the device, and naturally, the problem was that b-pyramid wasn't turned off. So once I learned this fact, I figured now would be a good time to inquire from the HB dudes:

What's the current best practice for encoding hand-drawn (as opposed to CGI) animation from an SD DVD source to Apple TV? My primary criterion is to have high enough quality with no stuttering, so color and line drawings are as good as they can get. I don't care about encoding speed, and not as much with file size. Is the following sufficient, or are any further adjustments in order?
(from dynaflash's 2010-06-30 post, with the default subq setting increased from 7 to 9)

Thanks in advance!

Edit: I'm trying a new string after thinking a little further about things and patiently re-reading the tooltips:
Is 'no-fast-pskip' still honored? I no longer see it, I think, in the HB advanced pane.

dynaflash wrote: Sooo, fwiw I am using:

Code: Select all

ref=3:mixed-refs=1:bframes=3:me=hex:subq=7:b-adapt=2:8x8dct=1:trellis=0:weightp=0:vbv-maxrate=5500:vbv-bufsize=5500

with an rf of 22 for HD sources and 19 for SD sources.

In testing I am rarely hitting the vbv cap on all but the most stuttering source content and am getting smooth playback.

Stuttering/smooth playback (HD source) is affected by which setting?

Thank you.

Hey guys,

I have a MKV file thats 720P with a resolution of 960x720. I wanna convert it to use with my ATV1. I'm using the latest nightly build with the ATV pre-set and DynaFlash's extra additions.

However, everytime the encoding is done, i always have black bars on the side of the movie. Is there any way to avoid this? If not, when I put it into my ATV, is there a way for ATV to strech the sides like QuickTime Player does?

Thanks!

Karman15 wrote:Hey guys,

I have a MKV file thats 720P with a resolution of 960x720. I wanna convert it to use with my ATV1. I'm using the latest nightly build with the ATV pre-set and DynaFlash's extra additions.

However, everytime the encoding is done, i always have black bars on the side of the movie.

960x720 == 4:3. If you have a widescreen TV (or a recent computer monitor), you will have pillarboxing.

Karman15 wrote:Is there any way to avoid this? If not, when I put it into my ATV, is there a way for ATV to strech the sides like QuickTime Player does?

It's possible your TV can do it.

What do you mean by pillarboxing?
And I would be playing this file on my Apple TV, on a new Samsung TV that I purchased this year...does that mean it will have those black bars on the side regardless?

Karman15 wrote:What do you mean by pillarboxing?

Black bars on the sides.

Karman15 wrote:And I would be playing this file on my Apple TV, on a new Samsung TV that I purchased this year...does that mean it will have those black bars on the side regardless?

Maybe your TV can zoom or stretch the image.

Rodeo wrote:Maybe your TV can zoom or stretch the image.

Ah...ok I see what you mean and I have a function on my TV, when it's connected to an HDMI source, a button called "Picture Size"...and it gives me the following options:

-4:3
-Screen Fit
-16:9
-Wide FIt

So once my Apple TV is connected with an HDMI, I just have to use that function?

Thanks for your help Rodeo!

Karman15 wrote:So once my Apple TV is connected with an HDMI, I just have to use that function?

If you prefer stretched video to black bars, yes.

Hi, I've been playing around with the Apple TV Preset and have finally found the perfect one for me, I am now using the nightly download and using the Apple TV2 preset, using an RF setting of 19 and leaving the 2 audio tracks (5.1 downmixed to both 2 ch stereo and AC Passthru) this gives me 5.1 when neededed on my Apple TV

The only thing i really change is the cropping settings, I remove all of the black bar crops, this leaves them in place but what it does mean is that I am left with a file that is either 1280x720 for my Hidef Rips or 1024x576 for my SD rips. (i'm not sure of the impact on convert times)

The reason for this is to provide best compatibility for my iPad aswell, when Handbrake was cropping the black bars it was leaving the 720p rip as only around 400 vertical lines, this meant on my iPad i could either view it in massively letterboxed form or full screen (I didn't like this as it zoomed in too much and most of the picture was lost) Now when I zoom I get more of a 16:9 representation on my ipad and there is not too much of the picture lost as some of the black bar is retained.

Using this preset, I am getting an average bit rate of anything between 1900 and 2600 depending on the source and on my 50" Pioneer Kuro the results look stunning.....along with 5.1 on my Apple TV when I want and full compatibility with my iPad....I couldn't be happier

I was previously using the Apple TV1 preset which gave equally stunning results

Nick

nick270881 wrote:Hi, I've been playing around with the Apple TV Preset and have finally found the perfect one for me, I am now using the nightly download and using the Apple TV2 preset, using an RF setting of 19 and leaving the 2 audio tracks (5.1 downmixed to both 2 ch stereo and AC Passthru) this gives me 5.1 when neededed on my Apple TV

AppleTV 2 compatibility is not hard. This thread is all about achieving compatibility with the AppleTV 1 (with which the ATV 2 preset is not compatible).

I've noticed that after encoding both SD and HD using the Apple TV 2 present in the beta that playback is fine on ATV and QT7 but in QT10 the playback gets pixilated and blocky from time to time. Anyone else notice this?

Using the latest nightly? Known issue - there is a fix, but it hasn't been committed yet.

Note that if you uninstall Perian, you should see the issue in QT 7 and iTunes too.

Rodeo -- I'm not using the nightly but rather the most recent Mac GUI beta release. Not running Perian.

astathedog wrote:Rodeo -- I'm not using the nightly but rather the most recent Mac GUI beta release. Not running Perian.

There are no beta releases of HandBrake. Moreover, the only builds of HandBrake with an AppleTV 2 preset are the nightlies.

Does the issue go away if you add qpmin=3 to your advanced x264 options?

Anyone have problems with using any Advanced Options String with 0.9.5? I commonly used
But under 0.9.5 I end up with video that my AppleTV can't play. It'll do about a second of video, followed by gap in the audio -- the audio will then continue to play but the video remains frozen.

I was able to encode properly using the default AppleTV setting under 0.9.5, but that's it. Downgrading to 0.9.4. and using the Advanced Option String above produced videos that the AppleTV can play.

Handbrake no longer overrides the libx264 default of b-pyramid being on and this will cause issues with playback on the ATV1. Try dynaflash's most recent advanced string instead.

TedJ, you ruined my post

The OP could have figured it out by himself with a little hint…

TedJ, thank you!