I've ripped my DVDs with Handbrake and my Apple TV says certain ones like The Lion King are in HD, when it isn't. Why is this and how do I change is?
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Apple TV says movie is HD when it isn't
- Thread starter TheSeagull
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What resolution is the file? Use get info in iTunes to find out. Sounds like you've encoded at the wrong size.
There are several reasons that this can happen, but the most likely is if you ran the file through MetaX there is a simple toggle field that can add the "HD" tag. You can do this for any file HD or not.
It seems that AppleTV automatically tags anything with resolutions higher than 640 x 480 as being HD, even if it doesn't meet 720p.
Tagging a file as HD makes no difference to Apple TV. I tag SD movies as HD when I have two versions of the same movie at different resolutions, and I want iTunes to list them only once in my library. iTunes flags it as HD, but Apple TV knows better.
The problem is with the height of 608. DVD's resolution is either 720x576 for PAL or 720x480 for NTSC. After encoding and allowing for a stretch in the horizontal resolution to account for the anomorphic widescreen flag you should end up with a final resolution of 1024x576 for PAL or 854x480 for NTSC. As far as I know (but I could be wrong here) the AppleTV flags anything with a height of over 576 as being HD.
The AppleTV uses the catalogID tag to group SD and HD versions of the same file together. As far as I know the only tagger thats supports this is the Windows version of MetaX.
You can use Subler on the Mac to adjust both the HD and cID tag.
OP, my Lion King (Special Editon DVD) rip is 836x480. Sounds like you upscaled the image by accident or it’s a PAL issue.
That's right - the Handbrake presets often do this with PAL sources. For example, using the "Universal" preset on a lot of PAL DVDs gives a height of 592: this will then not play on the iPhone/iPod as it is larger than 576. It also has a HD flag on AppleTV. This has been mentioned a few times on the HB forums, but they don't seem to be able to fix it. The thing to do is to check the encoded video size before actually starting the encode: if the height is more than 576, then go into picture settings and reduce the width until the height is 576 (or less).
In Handbrake I always use the Custom Anamorphic setting and enter my own settings so I know there gonna be right because the Strict and Loose settings are very unreliable.