Brand New User to ATV, Wants Best Quality

[Richey1977]

Hi.

I have a new ATV, straight out of the packet, with software v.3.

I have a bit of experience with DVD ripping, but I'm not an expert. I have a relatively small DVD collection, and a big external hard-drive. I want to convert the DVDs to as close to DVD quality (sound and vision) as possible. Am I right in understanding that:

- Choosing constant quality over 80% is unproductive and doesn't improve picture quality?
- Choosing audio bitrate (with AAC audio) of over 160kbps is unproductive because the ATV can't process it, or down-grades it?

Thanks for any help. Like I say, please assume file size and ripping time aren't a consideration (within reason).

Richey

[thompson]

Hi.

I have a new ATV, straight out of the packet, with software v.3.

I have a bit of experience with DVD ripping, but I'm not an expert. I have a relatively small DVD collection, and a big external hard-drive. I want to convert the DVDs to as close to DVD quality (sound and vision) as possible. Am I right in understanding that:

- Choosing constant quality over 80% is unproductive and doesn't improve picture quality?
- Choosing audio bitrate (with AAC audio) of over 160kbps is unproductive because the ATV can't process it, or down-grades it?

Thanks for any help. Like I say, please assume file size and ripping time aren't a consideration (within reason).

Richey

Use the Apple TV preset. It has been tuned to produce the best encodes for that particular device. The ATV has certain limitations on the types of files it will play and the preset takes those into account. Why reinvent the wheel?

[dynaflash]

Moved to more appropriate Devices forum.

[mduell]

Constant quality over 65% is excessive.

[dynaflash]

If you want to push your atv you could try this http://dynaflashtech.net/2009/11/06/han ... e-setting/. Having said that note the constant quality settings based on sources also note that cabac is not officially supported according to apple. YMMV.

[alehel]

I just did a rip of the Blu-Ray version of Transformers. I chose it because it's one of the few films I have that have True-HD, so I was able to get AC3 passthrough via handbrake. I've spent ages messing around with settings from these forums and trying out my own things. I then noticed that the nightly builds have an Apple TV preset which differs from 0.9.4, so I tried it out. I left everything at the preset settings, with the exception of resolution which I increased to 1280x(whatever the height came to). At first I thought RF-20 would be to much, but it looks brilliant on my TV and doesn't stutter at all, even on the most intense scenes. At least as far as I can tell. The file size came out at around 5gb which is fine by me. Encoding took a while though. My Macbook Pro C2D 2.5GHz mac with 2GB ram had an avarage fps of roughly 6fps. This isn't really a problem though. I just let it stand overnight while I was sleeping. It's not like I'm using it for anything else while in bed.