AppleTV 3 max practical bitrate

[sphinx99]

Hi! New poster here

I know that the new AppleTV supports HiP 4.0 in 1080p up to 25 megabits/second.

What I wanted to find out is, does the new ATV practically go any higher, and if so, about how much headroom?

I have a ton of h264 content from my bluray library that I keep on a home server; I changed the container to mp4 but the original video is untouched, and imports into iTunes OK. I occasionally sync some of this (stuff like the old Twilight Zone series on BD) over to my iPad when going on short trips.

What I'd like to do is, get an ATV3 and in theory stream this video to my receiver with ATV3 as the playback device.

However some of this content is HiP 4.1... basically average bitrate of about 20 mbps, but with max bitrates spiking to ~ 30-32 mbps. I really do not want to re-encode just to drop the spikes.

So my questions are:

1. If these files import into iTunes OK, and they do sync and play smoothly on the new iPad, should I expect that iTunes will try to stream them to ATV3? Or will iTunes simply get in the way and say "sorry it's 4.1 and I see that it might be over 25mbps so I'm just going to say 'device not supported' " ?

2. If iTunes doesn't get in the way and does stream this content to ATV3, does ATV3 handle brief spikes > 25mbps Ok, or will it also just throw up its hands and give me some unsupported media format error?

Before I buy the thing, I want to get an idea how much of my existing media library will actually play on it. I've gone through great pains to pick h264 blu-ray content, and most of it imports into iTunes properly, but as with many things bluray, bitrates can spike past 25mbps. If ATV3 looks at "profile 4.1" and doesn't even try, then it's probably not the right device for me.

 

[BuddyRich]

I posted my experience earlier:


I just got the Man with No Name Triology on bluray and ripped each with MakeMKV. Remuxed the MKV to an M4V, leaving the video untouched, though re-encoded DTS to AC3 and used Home Sharing via Ethernet to the ATV3 so they would play.

Of the 3, the Good the Bad and the Ugly played fine. MediaInfo lists its bitrate at 23 Mbps.

A Fistfull of Dollars (at a whopping 36 Mbps) and A Few Dollars More (28.9 Mbps) both had issues. They would play but the A5 couldn't keep up and I'd get video artifacts. PLenty of the movie had buffered so I don't think it was network related.

All in all not too bad but I guess they list the L4.0 as the highest profile supported for a reason. (The only difference between 4.0 and 4.1 is the Maximum bitrate 25 vs. 50 Mbps)

 

[sphinx99]

I posted my experience earlier:


I just got the Man with No Name Triology on bluray and ripped each with MakeMKV. Remuxed the MKV to an M4V, leaving the video untouched, though re-encoded DTS to AC3 and used Home Sharing via Ethernet to the ATV3 so they would play.

Of the 3, the Good the Bad and the Ugly played fine. MediaInfo lists its bitrate at 23 Mbps.

A Fistfull of Dollars (at a whopping 36 Mbps) and A Few Dollars More (28.9 Mbps) both had issues. They would play but the A5 couldn't keep up and I'd get video artifacts. PLenty of the movie had buffered so I don't think it was network related.

All in all not too bad but I guess they list the L4.0 as the highest profile supported for a reason. (The only difference between 4.0 and 4.1 is the Maximum bitrate 25 vs. 50 Mbps)

Thanks for the reply. I tried with my brand new ATV3 and my twilight zone episodes are not showing up in ATV when I go to Computers. (lower bit rate stuff does show and play however). The same pc running iTunes with home sharing syncs these same episodes to my ipad3 w/o issues.

How are you even getting the ATV to show this content?

 

[Fasm Trout]

I have a ton of h264 content from my bluray library that I keep on a home server; I changed the container to mp4 but the original video is untouched, and imports into iTunes OK. I occasionally sync some of this (stuff like the old Twilight Zone series on BD) over to my iPad when going on short trips.

I'm new to this whole video container thing and was wondering how you change your blu-ray rips into the MP4 container without transcoding the original video for the purposes of putting them in iTunes and an iPad. Sorry if this is off-topic but I am really quite curious. Thanks!

 

[sphinx99]

I've been using a free program called xmedia recode. Outside of lack of subtitle support for mp4, it seems to do OK. I'm struggling more with figuring out which formats iTunes is happy with vs. iPad vs. AppleTV. (Seems to be all different.)

 

[mic j]

I'm new to this whole video container thing and was wondering how you change your blu-ray rips into the MP4 container without transcoding the original video for the purposes of putting them in iTunes and an iPad. Sorry if this is off-topic but I am really quite curious. Thanks!

If you are working on a mac, Subler is able to passthrough video to mp4. The key is the original has to start in the h.264 codec. The only a container change is needed. If it is any other codec a transcode to h.264 is required.

Subler is also good for adding srt subtitle tracks to create soft subs and tagging metadata to the mp4.

 

[alexioklini]

I'm new to this whole video container thing and was wondering how you change your blu-ray rips into the MP4 container without transcoding the original video for the purposes of putting them in iTunes and an iPad. Sorry if this is off-topic but I am really quite curious. Thanks!

I am using iVI ( from the Mac App Store ) and sucessfully changed the container on nearly 500 movies so far without any problems. It automatically adds meta-data like movie poster, director, cast info etc. Can convert DTS to AC3 5.1 and has tons of other features like subtitle support.

I am not working for the author of this program and havent tried the other ones but would like to mention it.

 

[mic j]

I am using iVI ( from the Mac App Store ) and sucessfully changed the container on nearly 500 movies so far without any problems. It automatically adds meta-data like movie poster, director, cast info etc. Can convert DTS to AC3 5.1 and has tons of other features like subtitle support.

I am not working for the author of this program and havent tried the other ones but would like to mention it.

Does it convert DTS to AC3 5.1 using pass-through (just a container change) or only on a transcode?

 

[alexioklini]

Does it convert DTS to AC3 5.1 using pass-through (just a container change) or only on a transcode?

video is pass-through and audio is reencoded to ac3 5.1.

 

[BuddyRich]

Wirelessly posted

I'm on windows and tried both xmedia recode and muxing with mkvtools and using mp4box to create mp4.

My current tool of choice though is mkv2mp4:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=163050

it shares the same name as an older converter used for ps3 before it got mkv support.

It doesn't re-encode but remuxes the video (if it's h264, vc-1 streams get reencoded as h264) as does any dts track to ac3 dd5.1.

Dts is not supported by atv so you must convert it.

Then I use metax to tag my mp4s. Metax is only windows program to scrape tvdb, moviedb, etc. to populate tags. osx iflicks, Subler, iVI all do this.

 

[alexeliasson]

If you have a 1080p h264 videofile with an average bitrate of 10-12/mb's but some rare occasions of maxbitrate-scenes of 33-45mb/s - is there any program that will "reduce" these tops easily? Or is a full encode the only solution?

I love the MKVTOMP4 program - but 1080p h264 files rarely works perfectly for my ATV3 (wired network). 90 % of the movie is flaweless (the average bitrate) but then there's these tops which make the ATV glitch (since it has a maximum of 25mb/s).

Any ideas? I would really love to just quickly remux...

Also, the preset called ATV3 has a fixed bitrate of 3mb/s. That's almost 10 times below the capacity-level of an ATV3. Why isn't there any preseting that provides the quality that ATV3 actually can deliver?