Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

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compudude
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Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by compudude »

Hi, I'm a big fan of Handbrake and have been using it extensively to convert my SD DVD library over to m4v's that I can stream to my AppleTV.

Recently, with the new version, I have attempted to convert some of my high-def material (from my HD DVD player, since it's pretty much a doorstop these days). Naturally, this source material is different from just sticking a disk in and letting Handbrake have it's way with it via the AppleTV preset.

My ex-roommate converted the movie, but the resulting file was for him to use... he likes MKV files, and converted it to a 720p MKV. I tried unsuccessfully to figure out how to use Handbrake (9.3 beta, at the time) to convert it to something useable on my ATV, but better quality than the just-under-DVD-quality that the canned ATV preset delivered, but I haven't found anything that did the job. Ultimately I'll admit I gave up and ended up purchasing some commercial software (from River Past) that offered an "AppleTV Large" preset, and the resulting file plays nicely in 1280 pixel-width happiness, and looks great.

I like Handbrake better, though, and since RP's program is choking on another file I'm trying to convert, I thought I'd inquire here.

I do see some threads discussing Advanced ATV settings, but they're (a) way over my head) and (b) don't really seem to give a "AppleTV HD for Dummies" summary that I'd like to get. It sounds like people have found some settings that work pretty well, though... so is there any chance they'll be bundled up into a canned script at any point? I'm going to want to do this a lot more once I pick up a Blu-Ray player, which is happening very soon now (I've been promised one for xmas!).

Thanks for your time, and thanks for the great software!
jbrjake
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by jbrjake »

There will be an HD AppleTV preset when the AppleTV can actually play something besides a tiny subset of HD.

Most of the HD content users would use an HD AppleTV preset with are EyeTV ATSC broadcast captures. Those HD broadcast captures do not, by large, easily run at a *maximum* of 23.976fps.

Including an HD AppleTV preset would just mean endless complaints about content not playing smoothly, because it would all have to have its frame rates cut down and lose all variance in the frame durations.

Which is why instead I've gone with HRHD, since 960*540 actually does play on the AppleTV at > 23.976fps.
osohardy
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by osohardy »

To be honest, the stock ATV preset in .9.3 is not far off at all for use for HD in my experience. For EyeTV stuff, I snip the commercials first then load in HB. A lot of modern TV shows are shot at film speed (24fps) despite being broadcast at 30 (NTSC at least), so if you set the detelecine filter, and have removed the commercials, they will come in at 24 or a hair over. This allows you to set the size to 1280 x 720. I have not had any problems with this yet. Shows shot at 30fps you will have to stick to the default 960 x 540, but honestly it still looks great. You may as well make sure you have the decomb filter set, and you will probably have to lower the quality slider to 56-57 depending.

For Bluray rips, I've actually tried the ATV preset at between 58-62% and 1280/720 with great success. But there is some work involved to get there and requires Windows--extracting the blu-ray, removing unnecessary tracks and remuxing (Tsmuxer)...for me I picked up a cheap external blu-ray rom just to experiment with to see how it would look on the ATV and dont own a proper blu-ray player. I've been moving all my SD DVDs over to ATV anyway and don't want to start again with disks---plus I realized I like renting most things thru ATV and will only buy the stuff I REALLY will watch repeatedly. So once I'm done transforming my library I envision just an occasional bluray encode...anyways it's up to you if you think the process is worth it.
compudude
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by compudude »

jbrjake wrote:There will be an HD AppleTV preset when the AppleTV can actually play something besides a tiny subset of HD.
I see what you mean, but in all honesty, isn't an "HD Apple TV preset" sort of implying encoding the material TO that tiny subset of HD that the Apple TV can play? Thus the name "HD Apple TV preset" and not "Mac Mini HD Preset" or "PS3 HD Preset".
jbrjake wrote:Which is why instead I've gone with HRHD, since 960*540 actually does play on the AppleTV at > 23.976fps.
What is HRHD? Is that a preset?
jbrjake
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by jbrjake »

compudude wrote:
jbrjake wrote:There will be an HD AppleTV preset when the AppleTV can actually play something besides a tiny subset of HD.
I see what you mean, but in all honesty, isn't an "HD Apple TV preset" sort of implying encoding the material TO that tiny subset of HD that the Apple TV can play? Thus the name "HD Apple TV preset" and not "Mac Mini HD Preset" or "PS3 HD Preset".
What are you talking about? I don't think you see what I mean at all. I just laid out a major problem with encoding all material TO that tiny subset it's capable of playing and you're totally ignoring it. Pray tell, how do I ensure users do not get jerky playback from frames being dropped to maintain AV sync and frame durations being distorted to fit a constant frame rate?
jbrjake wrote:Which is why instead I've gone with HRHD, since 960*540 actually does play on the AppleTV at > 23.976fps.
What is HRHD? Is that a preset?
What is it? I just told you what it is. 960*540. What I went with for the AppleTV preset.
Last edited by jbrjake on Wed Dec 03, 2008 4:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: forgot to close a quote
mDot
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by mDot »

osohardy wrote:To be honest, the stock ATV preset in .9.3 is not far off at all for use for HD in my experience. For EyeTV stuff, I snip the commercials first then load in HB. A lot of modern TV shows are shot at film speed (24fps) despite being broadcast at 30 (NTSC at least), so if you set the detelecine filter, and have removed the commercials, they will come in at 24 or a hair over. This allows you to set the size to 1280 x 720. I have not had any problems with this yet. Shows shot at 30fps you will have to stick to the default 960 x 540, but honestly it still looks great. You may as well make sure you have the decomb filter set, and you will probably have to lower the quality slider to 56-57 depending.
Is there any way to determine how many frames per second a TV show is shot in? I have been having a hell of a time playing the guessing game with what settings work with my eyetv recordings.

As far as settings go, is it safe to say that 24fps can get you 720? Any higher framerate and you need to go 540?
compudude
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by compudude »

jbrjake wrote:
compudude wrote:
jbrjake wrote:There will be an HD AppleTV preset when the AppleTV can actually play something besides a tiny subset of HD.
I see what you mean, but in all honesty, isn't an "HD Apple TV preset" sort of implying encoding the material TO that tiny subset of HD that the Apple TV can play? Thus the name "HD Apple TV preset" and not "Mac Mini HD Preset" or "PS3 HD Preset".
What are you talking about? I don't think you see what I mean at all. I just laid out a major problem with encoding all material TO that tiny subset it's capable of playing and you're totally ignoring it. Pray tell, how do I ensure users do not get jerky playback from frames being dropped to maintain AV sync and frame durations being distorted to fit a constant frame rate?
I don't know... you're the expert, I'm the lowly user. Thus my question. I guess I don't fully understand why higher resolution content can't be scaled down and still look good, when clearly it can. I've done it. Lots of people have, including you. I was just wondering if there was a way to make a preset for 720p source material ("HD ATV preset") instead of just using the stock ATV preset, which further reduces the 720p material down to DVD resolution. (or at least I think it did with v.9.2)

Is the problem simply one of 30/60fps material needing to go to 960*540 and 24fps material being able to go to the full 1280x720? Perhaps 2 presets, if there's not a way to analyze the material automatically?
jbrjake wrote:
jbrjake wrote:Which is why instead I've gone with HRHD, since 960*540 actually does play on the AppleTV at > 23.976fps.
What is HRHD? Is that a preset?
What is it? I just told you what it is. 960*540. What I went with for the AppleTV preset.
Sorry, I must have missed the place where you defined HRHD as 960*540. I was unfamiliar with the acronym so it looked like perhaps you were referring to a preset I was unfamiliar with... I googled it to figure out what was meant, just now, and see what you were saying. My bad, I guess.
jbrjake
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by jbrjake »

compudude wrote: I guess I don't fully understand why higher resolution content can't be scaled down and still look good, when clearly it can. I've done it. Lots of people have, including you.
Don't put words in my mouth.

I never said anything about not being able to scale down higher resolution content and still have it look good.
I was just wondering if there was a way to make a preset for 720p source material ("HD ATV preset")
No, you didn't. You asked -- see your thread title -- "Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?" -- and "so is there any chance they'll be bundled up into a canned script at any point" and then answer is no, for the reasons I've already given you twice. No one is stopping you from making a custom preset, but when you're asking us if we have plans for a canned preset, that's a totally different question, now isn't it?
instead of just using the stock ATV preset, which further reduces the 720p material down to DVD resolution. (or at least I think it did with v.9.2)
How many times do I have to tell you that the ATV preset uses HRHD resolution?
Is the problem simply one of 30/60fps material needing to go to 960*540 and 24fps material being able to go to the full 1280x720?
...ATSC broadcasts are not at a constant frame rate, as is obvious if you just watch a stream for a few minutes. They are hybrid. There is no possible way a user or anyone else can know what frame rates are used in a broadcast stream, *especially* when you factor in the amount of telecining used.
Perhaps 2 presets, if there's not a way to analyze the material automatically?
And you are still ignoring me. Again:

Including an HD AppleTV preset would just mean endless complaints about content not playing smoothly, because it would all have to have its frame rates cut down and lose all variance in the frame durations.

How, exactly, do you expect someone to know which preset they'd need to use short of encoding the content with it and then watching the entire thing on the ATV to make sure it never ever gets jerky? People would really love that. Everyone enjoys wasting hours of their life on a total crapshoot, right?
osohardy
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by osohardy »

osohardy wrote:To be honest, the stock ATV preset in .9.3 is not far off at all for use for HD in my experience. For EyeTV stuff, I snip the commercials first then load in HB. A lot of modern TV shows are shot at film speed (24fps) despite being broadcast at 30 (NTSC at least), so if you set the detelecine filter, and have removed the commercials, they will come in at 24 or a hair over. This allows you to set the size to 1280 x 720. I have not had any problems with this yet. Shows shot at 30fps you will have to stick to the default 960 x 540, but honestly it still looks great. You may as well make sure you have the decomb filter set, and you will probably have to lower the quality slider to 56-57 depending.


Is there any way to determine how many frames per second a TV show is shot in? I have been having a hell of a time playing the guessing game with what settings work with my eyetv recordings.

As far as settings go, is it safe to say that 24fps can get you 720? Any higher framerate and you need to go 540?
One quick way if you aren't sure is to see what the Itunes Store offers in HD that are also broadcast...cause these will have to be 720p at 24fps for NTSC stuff...eg The Office, 30 Rock etc. Or if you start an encode with detelecine on, you will see a bunch of "Video-->Film" lines in the activity log. Then you know from then on that show can be detelecined and set to 1280--commercials have to be out completely though. If the show is natively 30 fps, then the max you can do is 960/540, yes.
rhester
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by rhester »

How does examining content from the iTunes store tell you anything? Maybe they took 60fps content and brought it down to 24fps via a combination of detelecine and frame blending - which HandBrake doesn't do (nor do I ever want to see it capable of such). Maybe the average iTunes Store purchaser is more forgiving of the "hiccups" that would result. We don't know, we can't know, and if I have been adamant about anything over the past two years, it's that HandBrake should not make gross compromises to suit a small audience. I do not want to see HandBrake bastardized into creating "sort-of" content because a single back-end player doesn't have the muscle to actually do HD reliably.

Rodney
jbrjake
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by jbrjake »

osohardy wrote:One quick way if you aren't sure is to see what the Itunes Store offers in HD that are also broadcast...cause these will have to be 720p at 24fps for NTSC stuff...eg The Office, 30 Rock etc. Or if you start an encode with detelecine on, you will see a bunch of "Video-->Film" lines in the activity log. Then you know from then on that show can be detelecined and set to 1280--commercials have to be out completely though. If the show is natively 30 fps, then the max you can do is 960/540, yes.
This does not work.

Example:

Lost is shot at 24fps film. It is broadcast on ABC, which is an ostensibly 720p24 channel.

You know what dynaflash gets when he captures it from his cable using EyeTV?

59.97fps with non-interlaced hard telecining.

Furthermore, like I explain in the docs, HandBrake's teleciner is *stateless* and it uses *variable frame rates.* Even when you cut out the commercials, there is no way you can guarantee that pullup is going to drop one frame from every 5 in a regular pattern because it only drops frames when it sees combing and can reconstruct a progressive frame by reweaving fields from adjacent frames.
osohardy
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by osohardy »

wow, i didn't make any guarantees to the previous poster about knowing the source fps nor did I make any request for HB to be "bastardized" or do anything different from what it does. I have no idea where this came from:
We don't know, we can't know, and if I have been adamant about anything over the past two years, it's that HandBrake should not make gross compromises to suit a small audience. I do not want to see HandBrake bastardized into creating "sort-of" content because a single back-end player doesn't have the muscle to actually do HD reliably.
all i said was a lot of TV shows are telecined to 30 from 24fps. And in my experience using HB with edited EyeTV recordings they come out to 24fps after detelecining, unedited--never...obviously there are exceptions. That was just my experience. Forget the Itunes then, geez. Secondly, I only told the poster an indication of telecined content can be seen in the HB logs. No guarantee was made to the final output fps.
rhester
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by rhester »

osohardy wrote:all i said was a lot of TV shows are telecined to 30 from 24fps. And in my experience using HB with edited EyeTV recordings they come out to 24fps after detelecining, unedited--never...obviously there are exceptions. That was just my experience. Forget the Itunes then, geez. Secondly, I only told the poster an indication of telecined content can be seen in the HB logs. No guarantee was made to the final output fps.
The title of the thread is "Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?". We have explained - ad nauseum - why such a thing is fundamentally impossible beyond HRHD (which is already implemented) due to limitations in the performance of the software and hardware in the present-day Apple TV.

The very first reply to the post both summarized and went into detail about the above, and yet we are now up to 12 replies (including my own) to this thread. I should have simply locked it, but I allowed my irritation to drive me to respond instead. That was my fault.

You aren't the first to try to make the Apple TV be more than it is (the "can I encode SD DVDs as HD so I can see the new logo on my ATV?" thread was classic), and you won't be the last...but we didn't make the device, we aren't responsible for its shortcomings, and we've already done far more research and experimentation than it probably deserves in order to support it *better* than Apple themselves do.

Rodney
osohardy
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by osohardy »

Rodney,

I did not request a new preset. Merely responded to the original poster. In the context that HB can accept, for example, bluray m2ts streams or HD eye TV recording in addition to SD DVD I merely said it is possible using the current ATV preset with some minor adjustments to get a great result with all three inputs, instead of the poster having to go through trial and error with many settings to get close. My intent was to point out that a new "HD" preset is not necessary, especially given the constraints of what ATV can handle at varying framerates. I fully understand and appreciate why there is only one ATV preset, and why the default aspect ratio is what it is etc. No complaints from me. Nor do I expect anyone, HB team included, to make ATV anything more than it is. I only want Apple to do that.
rhester
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by rhester »

Oooooooops. :/ My apologies. I honestly did confuse you with the OP. Sorry for not paying more attention.

Rodney
osohardy
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by osohardy »

no problem. Though now I want to go back and re-encode my dvd's to get that addicting HD logo because of your last post....j/k :D
rachel
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by rachel »

Posting an update here because this thread came up on a google search for - well, pretty much the topic, but the non-answer given is now out of date.

After reading this I thought, "I don't believe it, I'll make a preset myself", and went to do so but discovered that when I dropped a higher-resolution(1) movie in, HandBrake on the AppleTV preset now automatically selects a 720p output profile. My only customisation was turn on the decomb filter. The resulting file is a bit bigger than the EyeTV-exported-to-AppleTV version, but it plays perfectly on the AppleTV. And, of course, shows the little "HD" box in the menus. ;-)

(As to the latter point, Handbrake SD encodes from DVD sometimes show as HD too, at least in PALworld; presumably the metric the AppleTV uses to determine if something is HD is if the resolution is greater than some particular number and I'd guess some rips from PAL exceed that depending on what the autocropping does.)

(1): 1080i h.264 mp4; BBC HD recording losslessly-exported from EyeTV. I was doing this because that earlier AppleTV export had become corrupt, but I ony had the intact lossless export, not the original EyeTV recording.

NB: The version of Handbrake for which this applies is self-built from svn; About shows: "svn2442 i386 (2009052301)". It's possible it doesn't apply to the latest official release if it still pre-dates that when you read this; but I think it would as it comes from the presets, which are separately updated. I ran the svn build in May to solve a specific problem the release version had with a particular DVD, but we're not concerned with DVDs here.
jbrjake
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by jbrjake »

Please don't post information based on extremely out of date development code. Presets are *not* updated separately from SVN commits and in fact the presets have undergone some serious restructuring since the obsolete revision you're basing this all on.

Furthermore, the ATV preset does *not* set a height of 720. It sets a maximum width of 960. This is HRHD just like I explained at the beginning of this thread.
PluueeR
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by PluueeR »

I've converted a 1080P mkv to 720P using Handbrake with a modified Apple TV preset. The Movie Inspector in Quicktime says the frame rate is 23.98. Do I understand correctly that this file will be played smooth on my Apple TV? Or might there be some VBR kinda stuff going on during playback which will cause stuttering? Just curious.
nightstrm
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Re: Any plans for an HD AppleTV preset?

Post by nightstrm »

PluueeR wrote:I've converted a 1080P mkv to 720P using Handbrake with a modified Apple TV preset. The Movie Inspector in Quicktime says the frame rate is 23.98. Do I understand correctly that this file will be played smooth on my Apple TV? Or might there be some VBR kinda stuff going on during playback which will cause stuttering? Just curious.
I use the current appletv preset (with some modifications, like raising width to 1280) for my hddvd and bluray encodes and they all play nicely on my appletv.
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