Comments on: 30 Days of AppleTV – Day 10

By: Fitz

Fitz — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:02:13 +0000

OK — This may be a really stupid question, but I am kinda new to this stuff. Great Blog by the way, tons of useful info. I purchases that AppleTV this past weekend and have DVDs that I want to convert over. Tried the AppleTV Converter last night and it worked. Just under two hours so not to bad. I am able to play the movie in iTunes but unable to get the movie to show on the AppleTV. Do I need to put the movie in a specific directory?

Also — I realized that AppleTV Converter will not convert DVDs that I have saved on my harddrive. They are currently stored in .VOB files. Anyone have a solution for this…short of reburning all of the movies to DVD?

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:39:24 +0000

Why not use ffmpegX? It's free and it'll transcode whatever you throw at it into whatever you need. I haven't tried converting a DivX to H.264 but it's handled everything else that I've thrown at it.

By: David

David — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:07:26 +0000

I can also vouch for Handbrake, I have used it to convert about 30 movies for my iPod. I started out using the 320×240 settings and was pretty happy with the way they looked in my iPod but once Apple updated the firmware to display 640×480 I have been very happy with it. The only downside is that it takes me 4-6 hours on my 1st gen maxed out mac mini.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:06:31 +0000

I’m thinking of converting everything as well. I haven’t tried converting a DVD yet, but I have the DVD to Apple TV software from that company as well as Handbreak…so when I do I will compare the two for speed and quality.

and I will be giving Visual Hub a try soon.

By: DaveD

DaveD — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:23:35 +0000

For converting DVDs I use Handbrake. It’s free open source software.

I use a two-pass conversion for the best video, and not only did it convert a DVD in just under 2 hours, the video quality was as good as the DVD. The only thing I didn’t get was a way to name my chapters. In iTunes I didn’t even have chapters, but in AppleTV clicking forward/backward seemed to have it move about 5-7 minutes per click.

I used the default audio bitrate on my first two DVDs and felt the audio was not quite up to par. My next conversion I’m going to up it and see how muchh it improves.

For all other conversions (FLV, etc.) I use VisualHub.

FYI – I debated with myself how I’d end up after using my AppleTV, and right now I expect I’ll convert all my DVDs and store everything on my 2 terabyte NAS. However, I’m not sure what I’m doing yet with my boxed sets.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:59:47 +0000

Michael,

Check out VisualHub. It is iSquints big brother and is an awesome program for doing any video converting. I use it all the time!