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tkepongo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 31, 2007
102
0
Oregon State University
i'm prepping my itunes library by trying to rip my dvds into apple tv files (h264 or whatever it is). i've tried lots of programs from cucusoft, xilisoft, handbrake, imtoo but whenever i test the trial version and rip my dvds, the video is choppy. could it be my laptop (1.6 ghz centrino, 1 gb ram)?
 

eddyg

macrumors 6502
Sep 5, 2003
331
0
Christchurch, New Zealand
i'm prepping my itunes library by trying to rip my dvds into apple tv files (h264 or whatever it is). i've tried lots of programs from cucusoft, xilisoft, handbrake, imtoo but whenever i test the trial version and rip my dvds, the video is choppy. could it be my laptop (1.6 ghz centrino, 1 gb ram)?

Wrong frame rate? Is it choppy on the ATV as well? Is it only during panning scenes or all the time? What bitrate are you using?

Cheers, Ed.
 

lostless

macrumors 6502
Oct 22, 2005
488
103
Ok heres my guess. It's a frame rate issue. What type of dvd are you ripping? Movies, tv shows, home video? If they are movies, they run at 24 FPS (23.976 to be exact). If you set the encoder to rip at 30 fps, or some may be defaulted to that setting, you will get choppy video. The encoder has to double every fourth frame. as in 1234456788.... ect to fit 24 frames into 30. When played back, it leaves a slight annoying stutter in the motion.
If your source is video as in home movies and TV shows( not all tv shows), you have interlacing issues. Video in America/north america is 30 FPS with 2 fields in each. Each field contains one whole fame, so every real fame carries 2 interlaced frames. So american television is actually 60 Fields per second, and when played back on TV, 60 FPS is what you get. Well most encoders try to deinterlace fields. So what they do is chop out 1 field out of every frame leaving only half the motion, and back to the choppiness. Mpeg4 and H.264 dont to well with interlaced frames. You can deinterlace to 60FPS, but the methods are not easy to do and im not quite sure if the apple TV will play them. I know the video Ipod can.
3rd reason. is that the dvd may be a film with 3:2 pulldown (telecine) hard encoded into the video. Most films are stored progressively at 24 FPS (soft telecine), but some are not. They are stored interlaced at 30FPS like a vhs tape. When you just use a plain deinterlacer back to 24 FPS, you run the risk of the encoder dropping frames and duplicating others, leading to major choppiness. You have a 2/5 chance of this happing. But some movies have the 3:2 pattern change throughout the movie, So a deinterlacer is useless against those. You need a encoder that can perform inverse telecine (IVTC) to be sure that it comes out right.
Now the tuff part is to identify each scenario in the dvd. a good explanation of some of what im talking about (interlaced frames) is at http://www.100fps.com. It mainly talks about European video, but if you can translate 25FPS to 30FPS and 50 fields to 60 fields, you can get american framerates.
Good luck and hope ive shed some light.
PS I think your problem is the first issue, 24fps to 30. so check that issue first.
 

brucewayne

macrumors 6502
Nov 8, 2005
363
630
lostless, that is about the most accurate and concise description I have seen on this.

btw, using mpegstreamclip to 60fps is about the only way i get smooth video when ripping 'tv show' dvds. I have been unsuccessful getting these rips to play on the appletv however.
 

A Mac Fan

macrumors newbie
Aug 10, 2007
1
0
I'm far from an expert but i've had luck dealing with, what appeared to be interlacing/bitrate issues (maybe PAL to NTSC conversion), by using VLC to play the video to a file of type mpeg_ps (progressive transport stream i believe) and then using visual hub. Maybe worth a shot if you have not tried it yet.
 

powerbook911

macrumors 601
Mar 15, 2005
4,003
383
lostless, that is about the most accurate and concise description I have seen on this.

btw, using mpegstreamclip to 60fps is about the only way i get smooth video when ripping 'tv show' dvds. I have been unsuccessful getting these rips to play on the appletv however.

Really? I might have to try that. I archive racing, and I recently discovered the past 1.5 seasons I have choppy video cause of the frame rate issues going to H264. Very upsetting.

Any other suggestions I'd appreciate too.

Most of my stuff is DVDs from DVD recorder.

TV shows that are commercial disks have these issues toO?
 

bootamac

macrumors newbie
Aug 28, 2007
16
7
Choppy Video

Is this issue you are having about streaming the video to your TV via apple Tv and the video keeps hanging and rebuffering?
 

DaftUnion

macrumors 6502a
Feb 22, 2005
689
0
Wisconsin
I simply think that your processor/video card just isn't up to it for playback. Have you seen the requirements for h.264 on Apple's website. They're pretty steep.

QuickTime 7 System Requirements

For 852x480 (480p) video at 24 frames per second:
QuickTime 7 for Mac OS X:
1.25 GHz PowerMac G4 or faster Macintosh computer
At least 128MB of RAM
64MB or greater video card
--------------------------------
QuickTime 7 for Windows:
2.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or faster processor
At least 512MB of RAM
64MB or greater video card
Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista
--------------------------------
For 1280x720 (720p) video at 24-30 frames per second:
QuickTime 7 for Mac OS X:
1.8 GHz PowerMac G5 or faster Macintosh computer; 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo or faster
At least 256MB of RAM
64 MB or greater video card
---------------------------------
QuickTime 7 for Windows:
2.8 GHz Pentium 4 or faster processor
At least 512MB of RAM
64MB or greater video card
Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista
----------------------------------
For 1920x1080 (1080p) video at 24 frames per second:
QuickTime 7 for Mac OS X:
Dual 2.0 GHz PowerMac G5 or faster Macintosh computer; 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo or faster
At least 512MB of RAM
128MB or greater video card
---------------------------------
QuickTime 7 for Windows:
3.0 Ghz Intel Pentium D (dual-core) or faster processor
At least 1GB of RAM
64MB or greater video card
Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista
 

pdpfilms

macrumors 68020
Jun 29, 2004
2,382
1
Vermontana
I recently downloaded the newest Handbrake (0.9.0), and got a choppy movie as well. Horribly unplayable, even crashed quicktime 50% of the time.

I think it's an issue with the newest software. I reverted back to the old copy (0.8.6, I believe), and the same movie ripped smoothly.

Which version are you using?
 

eaghra

macrumors newbie
Aug 30, 2007
2
0
HandBrake and choppy definitely signifies a bad frame rate choice. Leaving it on auto/default almost always picks the wrong option. You need to know your content if you're going to get a good rip. The reason the difference between the old and new version results is that they radically changed the detection of the framerate, and frankly, it still stinks but the old version may have accidentally chosen a better option for you due to the old logic. Other reasons for choppiness is using more of the x264 options available in the new version than the old version allowed or gave you access to. Some of those options won't work on the atv and if you chose one of the newer presets or ticked off more boxes in the advanced tab than the atv allows, you'll either get no video or choppy video since the atv is very underpowered to deal with some of the advanced features of h.264.
 

GreenLED

macrumors newbie
Oct 28, 2008
1
0
Ok heres my guess. It's a frame rate issue. What type of dvd are you ripping? Movies, tv shows, home video? If they are movies, they run at 24 FPS (23.976 to be exact). If you set the encoder to rip at 30 fps, or some may be defaulted to that setting, you will get choppy video. The encoder has to double every fourth frame. as in 1234456788.... ect to fit 24 frames into 30. When played back, it leaves a slight annoying stutter in the motion.
If your source is video as in home movies and TV shows( not all tv shows), you have interlacing issues. Video in America/north america is 30 FPS with 2 fields in each. Each field contains one whole fame, so every real fame carries 2 interlaced frames. So american television is actually 60 Fields per second, and when played back on TV, 60 FPS is what you get. Well most encoders try to deinterlace fields. So what they do is chop out 1 field out of every frame leaving only half the motion, and back to the choppiness. Mpeg4 and H.264 dont to well with interlaced frames. You can deinterlace to 60FPS, but the methods are not easy to do and im not quite sure if the apple TV will play them. I know the video Ipod can.
3rd reason. is that the dvd may be a film with 3:2 pulldown (telecine) hard encoded into the video. Most films are stored progressively at 24 FPS (soft telecine), but some are not. They are stored interlaced at 30FPS like a vhs tape. When you just use a plain deinterlacer back to 24 FPS, you run the risk of the encoder dropping frames and duplicating others, leading to major choppiness. You have a 2/5 chance of this happing. But some movies have the 3:2 pattern change throughout the movie, So a deinterlacer is useless against those. You need a encoder that can perform inverse telecine (IVTC) to be sure that it comes out right.
Now the tuff part is to identify each scenario in the dvd. a good explanation of some of what im talking about (interlaced frames) is at http://www.100fps.com. It mainly talks about European video, but if you can translate 25FPS to 30FPS and 50 fields to 60 fields, you can get american framerates.
Good luck and hope ive shed some light.
PS I think your problem is the first issue, 24fps to 30. so check that issue first.

I'm having a similar problem. My issue I think is either FPS or a combination of interlacing or some other issue you've mentioned. Is there any product (freeware) that can identify some of these problems. When I play my copied video it has a horrible "play-pause, play-pause" choppiness. It's extremely irritating. I don't know and can't identify what the "original" fps are, so I can't adjust the output fps to fix the issue. I've tried using odd and even deinterlacing as well as "interpolation" to try to affect the output. The only one that had a good effect was even, but still it's painfully obvious that the movie is choppy. NOTE: Audio is PERFECT, no choppiness. Only the video is choppy, this may help you identify my issue. Let me know what other features and hints you need for me to solve this issue. Thank you in advance. I hope you can help me out. You seem to have some good knowledge of this type of work.
 

Nogglebert

macrumors newbie
Aug 17, 2015
1
0
West Midlands
Hi there! Had the same problem ripping DVDs on my late 2008 aluminium MacBook running Yosemite converting to Apple TV 3 format. The frame rate solution issue seems to make a lot of sense but my MacDVDRipperPro was already using 23.97 fps. I solved the problem by selecting "keep origin" in the settings instead of 23.97. Hope that helps :)
 
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