Apple TV 2

Discuss encoding for devices and presets.
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lowlight
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2010 11:17 pm

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by lowlight »

I just tried downloading the 1080P Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows trailer from the Quicktime website. I dropped it into itunes and streamed it to the ATV2 where it played within seconds and without any hitches. It obviously downgraded the resolution to 720P but I was impressed with how fast it loaded up. Of note, I'm using 80211-N.

When someone hacks into this thing and allows it to display in 1080P, the real tests will start :D
Deleted User 11865

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Deleted User 11865 »

Terc wrote:I also did not realize trellis=2 was available. Last I heard (which was a while ago), trellis=2 did nothing. Only trellis=1 was available. I don't doubt it works now, but when did this change? Trellis seems to do its job for me at 1, but I suppose I could try out trellis=2 and see if I notice a difference.
Don't know. > 2 years, as trellis 2 was available and worked in HB 0.9.3.
Brake
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Oct 01, 2010 4:13 pm

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Brake »

Very interested in this one. Looking forward to a preset for my Apple TV 2G.
Terc
Posts: 40
Joined: Wed May 28, 2008 6:15 am

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Terc »

Rodeo wrote:
Terc wrote:I also did not realize trellis=2 was available. Last I heard (which was a while ago), trellis=2 did nothing. Only trellis=1 was available. I don't doubt it works now, but when did this change? Trellis seems to do its job for me at 1, but I suppose I could try out trellis=2 and see if I notice a difference.
Don't know. > 2 years, as trellis 2 was available and worked in HB 0.9.3.
I'm sure someone told me trellis 2 was selectable, but didn't affect encoding a while back (I think after .9.4). I still can't see any difference, but that might just be me. I think I've settled on some settings at this point, but I'd really appreciate someone testing them out to see if they cause any problems with the new Apple TV. I'd even post up a chapter with some complex scenes if I could get something that wasn't copywriten.

I just want to be sure that anything I encode from here out will work on the Apple TV 2 so that when i get it, I'll already have a decent selection of videos available.

I'll post my current preset in a little while, finishing up another 720P test that should be done in about 30 min.
Deleted User 11865

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Deleted User 11865 »

Terc wrote:I'm sure someone told me trellis 2 was selectable, but didn't affect encoding a while back (I think after .9.4).
Either that person was wrong or you misunderstood.
Scott R
Experienced
Posts: 94
Joined: Wed Nov 07, 2007 5:03 am

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Scott R »

Not to take this thread too far off-topic, but Terc where are you located? Apple stores have gotten these in now, so you may want to head to your closest Apple store and pick one up (which I did a 1-2 days ago).
Terc
Posts: 40
Joined: Wed May 28, 2008 6:15 am

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Terc »

If I land this next big client job, I will be picking one up for sure. Now here's hoping that the jailbreak crowd starts bringing more apps to the Apple TV so it can directly compete with other media center options like Boxee and Plex that pull in content from all over the web. Honestly, that's the only thing holding me back from selling off the Mac Mini and going with the Apple TV as my sole media device.
Nemesis7
Posts: 17
Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2008 12:43 am

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Nemesis7 »

Great work here mate!

One request: could you try a 720p sample encoded with High Profile 4.1 and a bitrate of 10.000 ?

Hope it works!
HotDogWolf

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by HotDogWolf »

High Profile 4.1 bitrate of 4500 every now and then it stutters. Try another bitrate 6000 same stutters every now and then. Converting these two movies with the high profile prest they then both played perfectly.
Nemesis7
Posts: 17
Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2008 12:43 am

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Nemesis7 »

HotDogWolf wrote:High Profile 4.1 bitrate of 4500 every now and then it stutters. Try another bitrate 6000 same stutters every now and then. Converting these two movies with the high profile prest they then both played perfectly.
@720p ?
PVanderVossen
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2010 11:42 pm

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by PVanderVossen »

Howdy guys. newb here, so apologies if this has been answered already. Much of your conversation is way over my head though, so I'm just hoping for a simple answer ;)

I just picked up the new Apple TV, and I'm looking to rip my DVD collection (about 2,000) to put into iTunes (basically a media server) to stream to the AppleTV from now on. I suppose I'd also like the content to work on an iPhone4 and iPad as well, but the main goal is to look/sound the best on the AppleTV. These are all just standard DVDs, so I know its not 720p or anything, but I wanted to know which preset I should use for the best results with my content. The AppleTV will be outputting to either a 32" 720p or 55" 1080p capable (but I guess only 720p used) display, so hopefully it will upscale the content nicely.

Any help is appreciated.
mduell
Veteran User
Posts: 8187
Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:54 pm

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by mduell »

High Profile preset. Drop AC3 if you don't have a capable receiver. Filter as appropriate.
sys3175
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 08, 2010 7:58 pm

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by sys3175 »

Terc wrote:Ok, here is my cpu intensive preset. It plays great on the iPhone 4, includes the ac3 track for perfect audio when attached to the surround system, and has a stereo 128kbps aac track 2 for playback on the iPhone 4/iPad/iPod Touch 4th gen (which is automatically selected on apple devices that won't play ac3!). Would anyone be so kind as to test this out on their new Apple TV? I'm especially interested in what happens with very high complexity scenes. I've tried both DVD and 720P resolutions with great results - both on my Mac Mini 1.6 core duo and on my iPhone 4, but no 1080P (which it sounds like wouldn't be output to any display anyways). I'm very impressed with the iPhone 4 chipset, amazing what it can do.

Here's the preset download link http://cl.ly/1eddcc79a70ace5dbfe9


Warning - This preset uses lots of high profile settings. It's going to take quite some time to encode. With my 3.33 quad core, I'm getting about 33fps average encode rates on 480P and 20 fps on 720P content. It's SLOW, but you're going to get relatively small files with very, very good quality video.

I am using your preset, with the changes which were recommended by others. The only issue I have is that it defaulted to 320b audio, I'm guessing based on the specs of the ATV that this will fail. Will I have to set the bitrate for audio lower whenever I have a higher quality source?
Berylium
Posts: 23
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:44 pm

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Berylium »

Following a sojourn into ATV1 + XBMC + CHD I went back and ran a couple more 720p tests on the ATV2 in an attempt to find some practical decoding limits. I say “practical” because I’m sure there’s a way to kill the ATV2 with constant quality encodes at RF 10 or something equally ridiculous but that doesn’t interest me as I’m trying to find the best quality at settings that would be considered conventionally reasonable. I worked with two of the scenes I used previously, the first “waterfall” scene in Avatar and the “birds” scene in Planet Earth episode 1. And I took Mduell’s suggestion and started with the “very slow” preset.

I tested three different encoding settings (all at 720p output):

Code: Select all

                     Setting A   Setting B   Setting C
               
RF                   18          18          18
Ref Frames           5           4           4
B-Frames             8           6           6
CABAC                On          On          On
8x8 transform        On          On          On
Weight P             On          On          On
Pyramidal B          On          On          On
               
Adaptive B           Optimal     Optimal     Optimal
Adaptive Direct      Spatial     Spatial     Spatial
Motion Estimation    U M-H       U M-H       U M-H
Subpixel ME          10          10          9
Partition Types      Most        Most        Most
Trellis              2           2           1
No DCT Decim.        Off         Off         Off
Adaptive Quant.      1.1         1.1         1.1
Psychovisual RD      1.2         1.2         1.2
Psychovisual Trelli  0.1         0.1         0.1
Here are the objective results from each test:

Code: Select all

                          PSNR Mean        
Setting A      SSIM Mean  Y       U       V       Avg     Global  kb/s       Size (MB)  FPS
Planet Earth   0.9738864  41.463  44.227  48.004  42.431  41.387  13,012.08  184.9      4.21
Avatar         0.9811149  42.984  46.804  48.029  43.999  43.722   7,850.84  144.8      5.79
          
                          PSNR Mean        
Setting B      SSIM Mean  Y       U       V       Avg     Global  kb/s       Size (MB)  FPS
Planet Earth   0.9739075  41.47   44.235  48.013  42.438  41.393  13,032.46  185.2      4.34
Avatar         0.9811456  42.99   46.812  48.037  44.006  43.729   7,850.05  144.2      6.17
          
                          PSNR Mean        
Setting C      SSIM Mean  Y       U       V       Avg     Global  kb/s       Size (MB)  FPS
Planet Earth   0.9738340  41.546  44.273  48.022  42.506  41.499  13,335.18  189.4      12.24
Avatar         0.9813229  43.103  46.939  48.137  44.120  43.843   8,321.83  152.7      13.39
Each of these tests played back perfectly on the ATV2, no stuttering or frame drops. To my eyes each of these tests were indistinguishable from the 1080p source when both are viewed on a 720p television.

The FPS column in the above results is the speed at which HandBrake was able to transcode the scenes, obviously, that number is going to be different for everyone depending on your encoding machine. For the sake of comparison, I’m running a 2.8Ghz x 8 Mac Pro from early 2008 with 6GB of RAM.

The settings I intend to use for my own movies will be something like the above Setting C. Setting subpixel motion estimation at 10 is a CPU killer and I’m willing to forgo 2%-6% of additional file size in exchange for 200%-300% encoding speed gains when the resulting video quality in all situations is ideal for my purposes.

-Berylium
wvy
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2008 2:18 pm

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by wvy »

Also looking forward to the presets to use with my new Apple TV2 and Handbrake.

If possible to post the plist-file here for use in PAL systems.
I need good HD converts for my DVD's with Dolby 5.1

Thanks !!
Deleted User 11865

Re: Apple TV 2

Post by Deleted User 11865 »

wvy wrote:I need good HD converts for my DVD's with Dolby 5.1
DVD and HD are mutually exclusive.
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