160 GB Appletv storage question.....

[chester0711]

I currently do not store any of my MP4 files on my ATV's hard drive.

I store them on an external 1TB drive and point the Library to it.

My question is this:

Am I losing any playback quality? Since the files are not being held on the ATV itself does this affect playback quality?

The reason I ask is this......recently I have noticed some staggering in some of the movie playback. Usually an action scene (iron man rip) that just plays a little jumpy or something.

Also, my appletv lost connection with the library and stopped playback the other night twice in the middle of a movie.

Am I better off storing these movies on the 1TB as backup and when I want to play them putting them directly on the ATV hard drive and playing from there?

 

[mike457]

The easy answer is yes. Streaming is always going to be an imperfect method of watching files, since there will always be brief glitches in the transmission. (Is someone else in your home using a wireless connection? Are you yourself looking up something on an iPad while the movie plays? Does your microwave/wireless phone hit the right frequency to mess things up? Or your neighbour's for that matter?) You're not so much losing playback quality as there may well be moments when your network goes wrong or the data rate of the film exceeds the available bandwidth. Playing straight from the hard drive is always more reliable.

 

[chester0711]

Thanks Mike...

I assumed this but was not sure, sometimes my streaming is flawless and wonderful and sometimes it isn't.

I chalked it up to "interference" of some sort

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

As pretty much covered already, you'll minimize streaming-related stutter by syncing content you want to watch. Best test would be to sync that Iron Man movie and watch the scene that stuttered. If it doesn't stutter this time, you found the problem. If it does stutter, you may have an encoding problem (too high) which is easily fixed with a re-encode in Handbrake.

An easy strategy when you want to avoid the stuttering issue is to plan your watching and sync when you can. For example, if Friday night is big movie night, try to select your movies between now and then, then sync that selection. Afterwards, unsync those and sync your next selections.

Other good options are to hack the TV to normalize the USB port, then attache a big hard drive to that port and sync everything to that hard drive.

 

[chester0711]

Thanks, this is what I wanting to do, but how do you sync just one movie to the drive?Can you keep your library intact for reference on the ATV?

I started another thread on this topic already, feel free to answer there.

 

[mike457]

In iTunes, click on the Apple TV and use custom syncing. Click on the movie tab and choose sync movies (make sure you avoid the default sync for the latest five files). Then choose the click boxes next to the movies you want to sync. Hit apply at the bottom, and those movies will sync to your ATV. When you are done with them, you can uncheck the boxes next to the movies you have synced and hit apply again. Those movies will disappear from your ATV.

 

[chester0711]

thanks Mike!

I will try it!

 

[Omne666]

I actually tackle this another way by creating a smart playlist that is synced. Usually for the movies I've ripped on the ragged edge of ruin for the TVs specs, then just add a footnote to the title...ie: Iron Man (HD)....and that playlist automatically finds that movie which is then automatically synced to the TV

When I've watched it I remove the (HD) from the titles and they're removed.

You needn't use a smart playlist....just sync a playlist that you drag movies into and out of as wanted. That'd work just as well.

I run the TVs all in a hard wired environment and I still get stuttering as there are like 4 other computers using the network, plus I'm trying to sort out if I have a network issue somewhere in the setup. Bad cable or such.

Funny thing is I used to network them through the powerline/networking method and never had a problem.

 

[chrisjmacdonald]

Pointing iTunes

I currently do not store any of my MP4 files on my ATV's hard drive.

I store them on an external 1TB drive and point the Library to it.

My question is this:

Am I losing any playback quality? Since the files are not being held on the ATV itself does this affect playback quality?

The reason I ask is this......recently I have noticed some staggering in some of the movie playback. Usually an action scene (iron man rip) that just plays a little jumpy or something.

Also, my appletv lost connection with the library and stopped playback the other night twice in the middle of a movie.

Am I better off storing these movies on the 1TB as backup and when I want to play them putting them directly on the ATV hard drive and playing from there?

Can you point just a portion of your library? Since purchasing an ATV I have been cocktailing all my old downloaded files and uploading them to iTunes but my desktop hard drive is filling up. I understand that the whole library can be stored in one location but is it possible to store different parts of the library in different locations? ie music on my computer and videos on an external hard drive?#