Visual Hub is turning into my new best friend, and last night I tried some different things with the encoding process. I hadn’t used the H.264 encoding option before because it almost tripled the time that it takes to encode the files, but last night I decided to give it a try, just to see if there was a significant difference in quality…and holy crap, is there ever.
The H.264 encoded video looks at least twice as good as the standard encoding method, and I highly recommend using this option on anything you encode.
On the watching the AppleTV front, very little has changed. I still really like the interface, and I don’t see a reason to go back to standard cable.
Was I disappointed that we didn’t hear anything iTunes related at NAB? No, not really. NAB doesn’t have a history of consumer related announcements, and what we saw announced was pretty much what everyone expected to see.
10 more days to go…I wonder if anything will change between now and then?
4 thoughts on “30 Days of AppleTV – Day 20”
While I agree that h.264 is great looking, the time it does take to encode is a HUGE drawback IMHO. For me also it is not as good because I use Xbox Media Center on my modded Xbox to watch most of my content and it does not handle h.264 very well at all.
Glad you are enjoying VH more and more. It is well worth the money!
Do you know anything about that hardware h.264 encoder for Mac? It’s supposed to hook into the OS and speed up whatever software you are already using.
https://iphone-scene.com/iphone-forums/iphone-software-forum/2007/apr/02/h-264-hardware-encoder-mac-encode-movies-ipod-apple-
Yes it does but it costs about $150.00USD