Comments on: Apple TV: So I Finally Did It

By: Clark

Clark — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:59:28 +0000

Mp-4 will work for editing but it’s not ideal because it’s so heavily compressed that it uses a lot of CPU power to just play. I suspect that if iMovie imports it they’ll just be converting it to a different format that they can edit on the fly with.

I’ll see what else works as I’ve not had a ton of experience ripping DVDs.

By: Abby

Abby — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:49:38 +0000

Clark, it was the Apple one-to-one class where I learned to export via Handbrake and they even recommended MP4. I’m questioning their knowledge (dorks), because I specifically told them I wanted to download old home videos (Years ago I had them transferred from the analog to DVD) so I could edit them.

What would work for editing??

Thanks for you help.

By: Clark

Clark — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:34:53 +0000

OK, I’ll check when I get home.

From what I’ve read it should work via drag and drop but is quite slow.

Unfortunately I believe Handbrake only exports via Mpeg-4 and won’t work with other codecs. That’s unfortunate since mpeg-4 is a delivery format and not an editing format. So it’s not ideal for use editing.

By: Abby

Abby — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:03:59 +0000

Clark, I’m using iMovie 08 and used MP4 format.

By: Clark

Clark — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:56:38 +0000

My problem with Handbrake is that some disks it has trouble with. The Wallace and Grommit DVD (the three shorts, not the movie) it crashes on every time. I've not figured out how to use it with shorts yet either (say the Bugs Bunny DVDs). Anyone have some suggestions? I'm thinking of installing the hack via the USB thumb drive which lets you add all sorts of things to it. You can actually buy one with all the stuff pre-installed. I'll probably just do it the hard way though. I don't have a whole lot of avi files so Perian isn't that big a deal to me. I do like the integrated weather plug in from Awkward TV. There's also one with sport scores and even Safari for the aTV. The one I want most is Sapphire which give advanced organization for your movies. (Nice once you get past the 20 movie stage) Abby, iMovie is pretty picky about the formats it will import from. What format did you encode it to? And what version of iMovie are you using? 08?

By: Abby

Abby — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:43:30 +0000

I’m going to high jack this thread in hopes someone can answer a quick question about my Apple Mac Book. I used Handbrake to copy a home DVD, but it ended up on my desktop and not in my imovie. Does anyone know how to get the movie into imovie? I would like to be able to edit the material and when I open the movie from my desktop it opens Quick Time Player. I’ve already tried dragging and dropping into the imovie. HELP!

By: jjohnsen

jjohnsen — Fri, 30 May 2008 04:43:32 +0000

I took the plunge shortly after that last thread, and our Incredibles dvd was destroyed.

I agree with the cons you listed, though none of them are that important other than the synching thing. It sure would be nice if you could just load everything from every Mac you own. I’m using Handbrake as well, and it’s full of 60 movies and a bunch of Top Chef episodes.

The rentals are overpriced and take too long to download on my connection. I haven’t even considered actually purchasing anything. The synched photo look amazing on my tv. Podcasts aren’t the greatest quality, but they download quickly.

Overall I’m very happy with the purchase.

By: clark

clark — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:32:18 +0000

I got the 140 G (which I think is a 160 G drive with 20 G being taken up by software) I’ve not tried to hack it yet. In theory you could get a cheaper 40 G one and expand the drive with a cheap 250 G.

I’ve not hacked mine at all but I suspect I’ll expand the formats it plays as well as a few other things once I have time.

Of course the size doesn’t matter as much I’ve now found. I was just so underwhelmed by streaming with the XBox 360 that I got the higher drive thinking it was necessary. But streaming on a local network is impressively fast.

By: hayes

hayes — Tue, 27 May 2008 04:51:13 +0000

we are gearing up for a move overseas, and i was thinking of dropping some cash for one…since I won’t have cable,I want to be able to pick up Lost and such.

What size hard drive did you get?

By: clark

clark — Tue, 27 May 2008 04:42:43 +0000

To add Susan it has a real cool feature. You can have it sync for immediate access some number of movies. But other movies that you have on your Mac’s hard drive stream when you access them. So you might have 20 movies on the Apple TV’s hard drive but say 300 more on a big hard drive for your computer. So it is as if they are all on the Apple TV.

I’m very impressed with how fast streaming is on it.

The real nice thing is how integrated video podcasts are with the Apple TV. And there are dozens of them that you can quickly browse. Some are full 720p podcasts. Most are either SD or lower though. But some such as National Geographic’s are quite good. There are tons of cooking podcasts that I am surprised how great they are. (Such as America’s Test Kitchen) Then there’s a lot of tech podcasts on Photoshop or digital photography. Beats buying books.

I’m actually getting much more impressed with this.

I’ve not tried renting any movies yet because I think the price is way too high. (I can go to Redbox at McDonald’s or any of the local grocery stores and rent a DVD for $1. Why pay much more to get it through Apple? And $5 for an HD rental? Ugh.)