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Apple Releases Apple TV 2.3 Software Update
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Can we get a definitive confirmation from a Visualhub user? Can anyone confirm that a file encoded under the "Apple TV 5.1 + 2.0" survives under 2.3?
Dyna, I hope you know I love HB - I have 250+ movies encoded with the appletv preset (with 2-pass and turbo added) and it sounds like those are safe. It's the other 650+ TV shows that VH makes very easy to convert (.avi and .mkv dragged and dropped, converted and automatically added into itunes makes for a very easy workflow) that I'm worried about.
Dyna, I hope you know I love HB - I have 250+ movies encoded with the appletv preset (with 2-pass and turbo added) and it sounds like those are safe. It's the other 650+ TV shows that VH makes very easy to convert (.avi and .mkv dragged and dropped, converted and automatically added into itunes makes for a very easy workflow) that I'm worried about.
Where does the playlist show up? I tried to do a playlist with TV shows and I can't seem to access it.
Edit: I did what only crazy people do and read back through the thread. As others have noted, Main Menu -> Audio/Video, turn it on there.
My only question now: can anyone get shuffle to work? Even with a "shuffled" iTunes playlist, it still plays the TV shows in (reverse chronological) order.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Yes it would be great to add new features - but not at the expense of getting core functionality and reliability right. They really need to do a lot of work to get the Apple TV even as reliable as our Sky+ set top box (and that's made by some trashy company that I thought had gone out of business years ago).
Yeah, for many users they won't notice Apple's DRM.
Oh, I agree with others that Handbreak is simple to use too, with minimal technical knowledge. However "a Handbreak for Mums and Dads" would be great for me as I'd just configure it once for Mum&Dad, then let them put a DVD in and press "copy to AppleTV".
Sorry I can't till I visit my parents on Monday. Others have confirmed it though. Luckily my brother has AppleTV connected without Dolby Digital and my parents have AppleTV connected with Dolby Digital - so I encoded for both.
In some way it makes sense that Apple wants to reject files which don't meet their standards, it enforces a minimum standard. Still, with this and Boxee breaking perhaps Apple is about to take tighter control.
You might be right. But it would never happen. HB will always be free and is created by many devs that volunteer all of their time to the project. Shareware it will never be. As such it is not market driven. We try to make it appealing to users. But as most of you know, what interests the devs is what gets worked on and developed. Hopefully some of it falls in line with what the average user wants. Hopefully its been working out.
Teaser Alert: some cool new stuff coming up soon that will help with encoding.
Apologies to the OP for temporarily derailing the thread. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
It's Great!
Forget the minor feature updates, the menu response is much improved. Feels much more "final" than "beta". I like it!
Forget the minor feature updates, the menu response is much improved. Feels much more "final" than "beta". I like it!
This is why I dig what you guys do. When it interests you, it makes it so much better. Even if it doesn't have every feature that every user wants, what it does have is phenomenal. Same reason I buy Apple.
Wow. On recommendation from a friend, I checked out the update, and I also hadn't downloaded the Genius update (which is quite nice as well). --But, BY FAR that most practical and useful thing I've seen, is teaching it to use my other remote control. NICE! I wish ALL devices did this! This is one step closer to me being able to hand the remote to my wife and not have her scowl at me.
~ CB
~ CB
Ha. I honestly believed I'd found some type of nervana when I got my Harmony remote... but it failed that oh-so-crucial test. Then, eventually... I got disgusted with it too. With this one change on Apple's part, my life just got a whole heckuva lot easier.LOFL! Do yoou have a camera in my living room!?!?
~ CB
Hi,
This is not a fix but a quick workaround. Using Quicktime Pro I did the following.
1) Created a new Audio recording of less then a second.
2) Imported this fragment into itunes and then converted it into AAC.
3) Opened the AC3 only video in Quicktime
4) Drag & Drop the m4a audio from finder into quicktime
5) Save the video.
The video will now play BUT (!) It will show no video for the length of the aac encoded audio. So how shorter the AAC recoding the faster you get video with AC3. Most of my videos start black anyway, so no problem there.
I would suggest this trick for videos that where transcodes before the 2.3 upgrade. I don't know of this trick can be undone, so make copies of the video's you want future proof.
This is not a fix but a quick workaround. Using Quicktime Pro I did the following.
1) Created a new Audio recording of less then a second.
2) Imported this fragment into itunes and then converted it into AAC.
3) Opened the AC3 only video in Quicktime
4) Drag & Drop the m4a audio from finder into quicktime
5) Save the video.
The video will now play BUT (!) It will show no video for the length of the aac encoded audio. So how shorter the AAC recoding the faster you get video with AC3. Most of my videos start black anyway, so no problem there.
I would suggest this trick for videos that where transcodes before the 2.3 upgrade. I don't know of this trick can be undone, so make copies of the video's you want future proof.
Gaia: If Handbrake did video pass-through, and copied all the metadata, you could simply reencode adding the downmixed ac3 as aac. Then in
A jiffy your atv 2.2 incompatible files become comaptible.
Shame that it can't, bloody slack developers if you ask me
Cheers Ed
A jiffy your atv 2.2 incompatible files become comaptible.
Shame that it can't, bloody slack developers if you ask me
Cheers Ed
For all the people complaining that their single AC3 track recordings are no longer working... Apple themselves posted a support document in March stating that both an AAC and AC3 track were required for proper surround playback on the AppleTV.
Man those Handbrake devs are smart!
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA25199
(Thanks to the HB user that posted this link on the app forums.)
Man those Handbrake devs are smart!
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA25199
(Thanks to the HB user that posted this link on the app forums.)
Ok, but Apple has said from the very beginning that Apple TV is made for wide screen TVs and of course that means wide screen content. Congrats on having a $10,000.00 TV haha, maybe encode your videos so they don't need to be stretched!?
P.S.
1) Why does the Apple TV freak out and restart so many times when updating?
2) Why the F is it taking 6 hours to download a non-hd movie on my Apple TV??? My connection seems fine. Anyone else having problems with this? They are supposed to start in like 30 seconds to a minute which they always have for me until recently. NOT HAPPY
3) Love that they finally added volume control, but they need to add it to movies and everything not just music.
I've been playing with 2.3 some more and updated my 2nd AppleTV to 2.3. Here are my conclusions about AirTunes issues:
Keep in mind that I stream my entire music and music video library from my PowerMac in my den (using two 500GB Sata drives, one to back up the other with Carbon Copy Clone) so something may behave differently if you store it locally. IF I go to the AirTunes menu from the main menu and select my upstairs AppleTV unit and then deselect the dowstairs unit (the one I'm controlling) and go and try to play a song, it will fail to start playing most of the attempts, but one time did start and stopped shortly thereafter and then locked up. Once it stops 'attempting' to connect to the upstairs ATV, I can go back to unselect that unit and reselect the downstairs one. At that point, if you start to play a song, it goes to a black screen and appears to lock up, but in actuality, if you wait long enough (a few minutes), it will eventually come up with an error message stating it can't play that song. In fact, no song will play at this point. Music artwork wasn't coming up so I suspected the Mac in the den had crashed but it hadn't. I had to play a locally stored video to get audio back and then music would play again (otherwise, I'd have to reboot the unit).
That describes the failure of AirTunes control from ATV and it's a repeatable BUG as far as I can tell. Now IF I select the play the upstairs room IN ADDITION to (instead of in replacement of) the downstairs unit, both units will successfully play without issue. I forgot to try to then remove the upstairs unit and see if continues playing after both start playing. I'll try that next. But the problem appears to be related to removing the ATV you're using before starting to play a song. It may also be related to streaming and I also can't dismiss the possibility something else was going on since it did start playing that one time but then stopped and locked up shortly thereafter, but plays fine when selecting to play both. Finally, AirTunes always works fine from iTunes on the Mac.
I've tried out the new remote control feature and it's pretty slick (a learning component instead of a learning remote! What a novel reversal). I've set three other remotes to be able to control it, which means whatever other stereo component I happen to be using can control it so I don't have to put that remote down if I switch to AppleTV.
I don't know what people are talking about when they say standby isn't on the menu anymore. It's under general preference settings and works the same as before. Holding the play/pause button down from the main menu also goes to standby as before.
I still wish they would add a visualizer option for music playback (would be great for Pink Floyd and a nice change from endless slide shows). Clearly, the unit is capable of running Safari just fine (i.e. hacks prove it) so now that ATV has iPhone/Touch remote support, you'd think they'd add their own official browser support. Given the HD resolutions, it'd work great on my 93" projector/screen. I shouldn't have to hack the thing to get what should be obvious future features.
Edit:
I just tried my upstairs audio-only system since upgrading the ATV and the latest "Remote" for the iPod Touch. I still see a delay for artwork sometimes when accessing an AppleTV directly, but sooner or later it starts working. But the best addition I noticed since updating the ATV units is now there *IS* a "Speakers" bar across the "Now Playing" screen, making it much easier to control the rest of the house via Airtunes. It's also now present in the "Settings" section for AppleTV units (formerly was only in the iTunes Library control section).
Unfortunately, direct control from the ATV does NOT have a "computer" speaker option. I can only control other AppleTV and Airport Express speakers from an ATV. If you want to access the computer, you have to use the main iTunes library. Even then, it can only control THAT specific computer. My MBP running iTunes and PC running iTunes do not appear in the speaker lists. Only the computer you are accessing directly.
One other nice new feature that appeared on the iPod Touch was the ability to create and edit new playlists, but only for the computer libraries. It does not function on the AppleTV units. It's also still not as straight forward as Signal's playlist, which you can add to as you play and without a separate playlist. On the other hand, you can save the iTunes playlist and even add new ones directly from the iPod Touch (or iPhone).
I'd still like to see the ability to play music from any of my music libraries directly TO the iPod Touch itself (through headphones) without having to have that music stored on the iPod Touch. Similarly, it'd be cool to be able to stream music videos and movies TO the iPod Touch from my iTunes library. And of course, it'd be nice if you could AirTunes stream FROM the iPod's own music library to any AirTunes device around the house. These are the major features still missing from the equation (along with a visualizer for both AppleTV and the iPhone/Touch).
Keep in mind that I stream my entire music and music video library from my PowerMac in my den (using two 500GB Sata drives, one to back up the other with Carbon Copy Clone) so something may behave differently if you store it locally. IF I go to the AirTunes menu from the main menu and select my upstairs AppleTV unit and then deselect the dowstairs unit (the one I'm controlling) and go and try to play a song, it will fail to start playing most of the attempts, but one time did start and stopped shortly thereafter and then locked up. Once it stops 'attempting' to connect to the upstairs ATV, I can go back to unselect that unit and reselect the downstairs one. At that point, if you start to play a song, it goes to a black screen and appears to lock up, but in actuality, if you wait long enough (a few minutes), it will eventually come up with an error message stating it can't play that song. In fact, no song will play at this point. Music artwork wasn't coming up so I suspected the Mac in the den had crashed but it hadn't. I had to play a locally stored video to get audio back and then music would play again (otherwise, I'd have to reboot the unit).
That describes the failure of AirTunes control from ATV and it's a repeatable BUG as far as I can tell. Now IF I select the play the upstairs room IN ADDITION to (instead of in replacement of) the downstairs unit, both units will successfully play without issue. I forgot to try to then remove the upstairs unit and see if continues playing after both start playing. I'll try that next. But the problem appears to be related to removing the ATV you're using before starting to play a song. It may also be related to streaming and I also can't dismiss the possibility something else was going on since it did start playing that one time but then stopped and locked up shortly thereafter, but plays fine when selecting to play both. Finally, AirTunes always works fine from iTunes on the Mac.
I've tried out the new remote control feature and it's pretty slick (a learning component instead of a learning remote! What a novel reversal). I've set three other remotes to be able to control it, which means whatever other stereo component I happen to be using can control it so I don't have to put that remote down if I switch to AppleTV.
I don't know what people are talking about when they say standby isn't on the menu anymore. It's under general preference settings and works the same as before. Holding the play/pause button down from the main menu also goes to standby as before.
I still wish they would add a visualizer option for music playback (would be great for Pink Floyd and a nice change from endless slide shows). Clearly, the unit is capable of running Safari just fine (i.e. hacks prove it) so now that ATV has iPhone/Touch remote support, you'd think they'd add their own official browser support. Given the HD resolutions, it'd work great on my 93" projector/screen. I shouldn't have to hack the thing to get what should be obvious future features.
Edit:
I just tried my upstairs audio-only system since upgrading the ATV and the latest "Remote" for the iPod Touch. I still see a delay for artwork sometimes when accessing an AppleTV directly, but sooner or later it starts working. But the best addition I noticed since updating the ATV units is now there *IS* a "Speakers" bar across the "Now Playing" screen, making it much easier to control the rest of the house via Airtunes. It's also now present in the "Settings" section for AppleTV units (formerly was only in the iTunes Library control section).
Unfortunately, direct control from the ATV does NOT have a "computer" speaker option. I can only control other AppleTV and Airport Express speakers from an ATV. If you want to access the computer, you have to use the main iTunes library. Even then, it can only control THAT specific computer. My MBP running iTunes and PC running iTunes do not appear in the speaker lists. Only the computer you are accessing directly.
One other nice new feature that appeared on the iPod Touch was the ability to create and edit new playlists, but only for the computer libraries. It does not function on the AppleTV units. It's also still not as straight forward as Signal's playlist, which you can add to as you play and without a separate playlist. On the other hand, you can save the iTunes playlist and even add new ones directly from the iPod Touch (or iPhone).
I'd still like to see the ability to play music from any of my music libraries directly TO the iPod Touch itself (through headphones) without having to have that music stored on the iPod Touch. Similarly, it'd be cool to be able to stream music videos and movies TO the iPod Touch from my iTunes library. And of course, it'd be nice if you could AirTunes stream FROM the iPod's own music library to any AirTunes device around the house. These are the major features still missing from the equation (along with a visualizer for both AppleTV and the iPhone/Touch).
I figured it out. It's not an issue with AppleTV, it's an issue with the third party remote. If your third party remote is programmable, change its programming to work with a different piece of equipment (such as a Sony DVD). Once my third party remote was emitting more 'standard' infrared signals, the AppleTV learned the new remote perfectly.
For all the people complaining that their single AC3 track recordings are no longer working... Apple themselves posted a support document in March stating that both an AAC and AC3 track were required for proper surround playback on the AppleTV.
Man those Handbrake devs are smart!
They are so smart that if you use the Handbrake default Apple TV preset you encode with both the AAC & AC3 audio tracks.
They are so smart that if you use the Handbrake default Apple TV preset you encode with both the AAC & AC3 audio tracks.
Exactly. Those having problems are those that NEITHER followed Apple's instructions NOR used HB's correct settings.
Update installed on my AppleTV, EVERYTHING fine as usual...GO APPLE!
Apple TV and other wireless devices
I have upgraded today my Apple TV but now when I use my wireless Panasonic system which is connected to my TV and Apple TV my computer no longer finds the Apple TV, soon as the Panasonic surround system goes off up comes Apple TV on my computer screen, has anyone any answers to this so all cal be running as before
I have upgraded today my Apple TV but now when I use my wireless Panasonic system which is connected to my TV and Apple TV my computer no longer finds the Apple TV, soon as the Panasonic surround system goes off up comes Apple TV on my computer screen, has anyone any answers to this so all cal be running as before
I finally upgraded today and can confirm:
- any file encoded by handbrake with the AAC+AC3 profile works fine
- any file encoded by visualhub with the 5.1+2.0 profile works fine
- any file encoded with only a 2.0 / AAC track also works fine
- any file encoded with only a 5.1 / AC3 track has no audio
- the extension of the file (.mov or .m4v) has no impact on whether it works or not
- the fix for AC3 only files (copying and pasting an AAC clip into the show/movie in Quicktime) works and the AAC clip can be even just 1/10 of a second
Cheers,
N.....
- any file encoded by handbrake with the AAC+AC3 profile works fine
- any file encoded by visualhub with the 5.1+2.0 profile works fine
- any file encoded with only a 2.0 / AAC track also works fine
- any file encoded with only a 5.1 / AC3 track has no audio
- the extension of the file (.mov or .m4v) has no impact on whether it works or not
- the fix for AC3 only files (copying and pasting an AAC clip into the show/movie in Quicktime) works and the AAC clip can be even just 1/10 of a second
Cheers,
N.....
Yeah, but it is a pain that it worked then suddenly doesn't. If it works, why fix it?
As said above, Apple explained that there is NO surround sound with AC3-only files...and the HB setting for AppleTV has always used both, so I really don't get the problem with some of you.