Conversion Help Needed for Apple TV

Discuss encoding for devices and presets.
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whoshebe
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Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:18 am

Conversion Help Needed for Apple TV

Post by whoshebe »

I thought I would be ready for Apple TV when it arrived and 3 weeks ago started converting 300 DVD's to mp4 format using mediafork.
The settings I used was H.264 / constant quality @ 70%/ audio sample rate 44.1 @ 192.

Now that I have Apple TV installed, I find that the when the converted video is streamed from my library, they are almost all Jerky and stutter...

Very annoying...

Can anyone shed some light on this for me??

I then tried some video I had converted for my ipod (h.264 / 2 pass encoding and 320x240 picture siz) and I was surprised to see the video quality was acceptable on my 50" plasma and the best part was, the video was not jerky at. I could even fast forward fairly well without the movie crashing..
rhester
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Post by rhester »

Are you streaming the content wirelessly? It sounds like you have network congestion/throughput issues.

Rodney
whoshebe
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Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:18 am

Post by whoshebe »

Yes, I am streaming tyhe content. I am using the new Apple Airport base station./ I do not think it is a network issue because when I try to view a dvd file formatted for my ipod, I did not have the "jerky" results..
hawkman
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Post by hawkman »

The 320*240 video you tried would have a much lower data rate. Therefore, it would stream more easily over a slow/congested network. I would still put that as the most likely reason you saw stuttering on the other files.
distortedloop
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Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Conversion Help Needed for Apple TV

Post by distortedloop »

whoshebe wrote:

Can anyone shed some light on this for me??
The easiest way to solve the dispute over whether it is network congestion or a playbck issue with the aTV is to turn on the sync feature, sync the files in question to the aTV and then play them direct from the device. If they stutter, it's the files, if they don't, it's your network.

You have the Airport Extreme, but is it the new "n" version? Are you on an n-exclusive network, or could "g" and "b" devices be slowing down the network?

Many report no problems with aTV on g networks, but that was not my experience. I had to isolate the g network devices to get trouble fre performance with the aTV in my setup.
dynaflash
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Post by dynaflash »

Also, I use the new airport "n" with my appleTV. When the atv was in my component cabinet by my tv, I had extremely crappy streaming and synching was so slow, it was basically worthless. Moved the appleTV on top of my av cabinet (distance of about 18") and suddenly everything started working as advertised. Obviously I had an interference issue from something in the av cabinet.

Try changing the location of the atv and see if it helps. The synching test mentioned above is a great way to see if its network issues.
nightstrm
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Post by nightstrm »

I had a similar issue when trying to stream content from my iMac to my AppleTV when both were using 802.11n to connect to the network. Since my iMac is right beside my router, I ran an ethernet cable and it is working perfectly again. The only time I see jerky playback is if my computer is trying to do some other process that is reading/writing a lot from the hard drive. I'm tempted to move my iTunes Library to a USB2 drive to see if this problem goes away completely.
distortedloop
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Post by distortedloop »

dynaflash wrote:<snip>Moved the appleTV on top of my av cabinet (distance of about 18") and suddenly everything started working as advertised. Obviously I had an interference issue from something in the av cabinet. Try changing the location of the atv and see if it helps. The synching test mentioned above is a great way to see if its network issues.
The aTV and the new AEBS are both very attractive, clean looking devices, LOL, if you like little white and silver boxes in your setup, but one thing of concern for me is that if you look at any other n-class device, it has multiple large external antennas. Apple's decision to keep the box aesthetically pleasing by allowing no external antennas surely impacts the range/connectivity of the things compared to other brand devices. Not complaining, as I'd rather not have some unsightly antennas in my home theater cabinet, but it is a consideration in placement of the thing.

Given the heat of the aTV as well, I think outside a case is probably healthier for both it and your other components. LOL
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