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Sparky9292

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 1, 2004
831
0
Ok, I download tons of AVI's and MKV's (legally of course) using bittorrent.

My AppleTV2 setup is simple. I simply plug the HDMI cable into my Sony Bravia and use the lousy two speakers that are built into the TV. I don't have any fancy surround sound setup. I just have the little AppleTV2 box and the 32" LCD Sony.

As you probably know, most groups release 480p quality tv shows as AVI and 720p/1080p as MKV. In fact they never seem to like native mp4 formats. So generally the containers require these codecs:

AVI's are:
Video: mpeg4 (This can be pass thru as AppleTV2 supports it!)
Audio: mp3 2ch (Needs to be transcoded to aac format)​

MKV's are:
Video: h264 (No need to transcode, can be pass thru since AT2 supports it)
audio: ac3 6ch (Must transcode too aac UNLESS you are using optical out to a reciever box)​

Conversion Process:
  1. Download the torrent
  2. Unrar the multi-part using UnRarX
  3. Copy into MKVTools 2.4.4
  4. Select Device as AppleTV
  5. Set Video to Pass Thru
  6. Set Audio to AAC (2 ch)
  7. Press the CONVERT button
  8. Drag the resulting M4V file into iDentify 2
  9. About 70% of the time it will tag it automatically
  10. Hunt for imdb id number, or type in the correct TV show name (have to do this for the Daily Show)
  11. Press SAVE FILES and wait for iTunes to copy it into it's libary

Is this the fastest way to convert these to AppleTV2 format? Do you know of a way to do this more efficiently?
 
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