Vegas Platinum 8 - Apple TV High Definition

boogers wrote on 10/14/2008, 1:26 PM
I am a complete novice at this, but I have an Apple TV and I want to watch some home videos in high-definition. I have captured my video as a series of m2t files, but can't figure out how to get it to Apple TV in high-definition. I did capture some video as standard definition and then converted it to a format that Apple TV can view just to make sure I can watch stuff on the Apple TV, but trying to make a HD movie on the Apple TV has stumped me - I can't seem to figure out what to do with the m2t files.

My initial thought was to convert the m2t files in an uncompressed format to .MOV format, and then use QuickTime to convert to Apple TV, but that took 140 GB for one hour of video, and then the program failed to complete the conversion. Clearly I am doing something wrong.

I don't know what settings to use once I select 'Make Movie'. Any help will be much appreciated (my wife is getting sick of me spending all of my time trying to figure this out when I should be feeding the kids!).

Thanks.

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 10/14/2008, 1:59 PM
>and then the program failed to complete the conversion. Clearly I am doing something wrong.

No, you didn't. If it failed, it's a bug, and you should send the bug to Sony.

Ok, so, to get AppleTV HD support you might need to get Platinum 9 (there's a trial version if you want to try it). Not version 8, because v8 doesn't have a customizable h.264 encoder. Then, make sure your "project properties" are reflecting your source material (use the yellow icon "match media" to set that). After you edit with Platinum 9.0b, you select FILE/"Render As", not "make movie". In there, you select Sony AVC filetype and its Youtube 30p template. Then you click "custom", and in there you make sure you have the following settings:
"Best" quality
AVC video format
1280x720 custom frame size
Unchecked both the checkboxes about "allow source to adjust..."
Baseline profile
CAVLC entropy coding
23.976 fps (type it) if you are on NTSC, or 25.00 if you are on PAL. AppleTV doesn't support NTSC 30p HD exports.
Progressive field order
1.000 pixel aspect ratio
bit rate of 4,000,000 bps
Leave the other two tabs as is.
Then render a small sample to make sure it works with the AppleTV. Don't render the full 1 hour just to find out that it might not work at the end. 10 seconds are enough.

Don't let an app re-encode that mp4 file or you will lose a lot of quality. It should just work right out of the bat via iTunes. If that doesn't work, you are out of luck with Platinum and AppleTV I am afraid. You will have to export to Huffyuv, and then use a third party app, like SUPER, to do the final encoding for AppleTV.

Let us know how it goes.
boogers wrote on 10/16/2008, 12:45 PM
Thank you VERY much for the detail. I will try this tonight.
boogers wrote on 10/23/2008, 8:16 AM
Eugenia (and anyone else who might be able to help),

The recommendations above worked like a charm. Thank you very much.

However, I do have one problem - using these settings one of my videos ends up being about 2.1 GB and a little over an hour - about 1:15. On this video I get the Quick Time Error 2048 - not a file Quick Time understands.

I have tried many things, but the only thing that seems to work is to make a video that doesn't include the last 10-15 minutes, which also makes the file less than 2 GB. With that file I can open it in Quick Time and transfer it to the Apple TV.

To your knowledge, is there any reason why a video larger than 2 GB wouldn't play in Quick Time (and therefore on my Apple TV)?

If so, can I just render the entire movie to make it somehow a bit smaller than 2 GB, and would it then play in Quicktime and on my Apple TV? Can I change the settings so that it is still high-definition but just a slightly smaller file size?

Thank you again for your assistance.
Chienworks wrote on 10/23/2008, 11:25 AM
File size is entirely about the bitrate and the duration. If your file is 5% too big, drop the bitrate to 95% of what it was. In Eugenia's example she mentioned 4,000,000. Change this to 3,800,000 instead. The difference in quality should be barely noticeable.
boogers wrote on 10/23/2008, 2:02 PM
Brilliant - thank you.