35 replies to this topic

[viccy]

prototype_sx, on Dec 4 2007, 01:46 PM, said:

its not transcoded, the app jus takes the video feed no matter the type, and the audio, no matter the type, and puts them in a mov container so its the same audio and video so no change whatsoever except the container.  You can then add the files to itunes   One thing though, is that you will have to use the same program if you wish to go back to mkv or any other format, reason being is that clearly x264 and ac3 is not in the .mov container specs normally, so programs like mkvtoolnix try to use the standard mov reader and cant extract from it.  Also, u can use visualhub to go to dvd

hi

PROTOTYPE_SX

I have atleast 3 TB of .mkv files and hope to get more


to convert them to ATV format , I have dedicated one of mine intel mac to visual Hub because thats the only  program which work with .mkv files to ATV
infect I have all the program including apple's compressor to sorenson to elgato turbo .264

but the best and the most reliable is visual hub
and to day i was searching and found your thread about mpeg stream clip and i tried the way you said and I almost screamed, why ??? because I was able to change .mkv to MOV in few minute and the transfer the same to itune while keeping my finger crossed and YES it was playing in my itune

now the reason I am writing all this stupid detail is BECAUSE  when i open my ATV and connect
that shared lib under Movie it is not showing the movie i saved as MOV with mpeg  streamclip

can you tell me why or just tell me the way to do it please


thanks and please reply to my request

[nostra]

hi guys,

i am running into the same issue, i tried it with nito, sapphire and also boxee - the ATV is simply to slow.
it consumes a 100% CPU if i watch MKV files. M4V runs fine with all applications...

so what i want to ask - atm i am using HANDBREAK to convert those movies which works great. it also has a preset for appletv and a smooth de-interlacing feature - it also converts 5.1 perfectly.

anyhow it takes something like 3 hours with my macbook pro to convert a mkv to m4v - is this faster with virtual dub??
i have somehting like 50 MKV files around here.. so this would be 150 hours just decoding time .. :-(

whats your experience?

[rampar]

Wow, I can't believe how easy it is to get MKV's to play on aTV after reading these posts.  Here's what I did to get it all to work.

Download Perian 1.1.3
Download MPEG Streamclip (you can find it on Apple's downloads and it's Freeware!)

You need Perian, because MPEG Streamclip won't open up MKV files without it.  Apparently it hooks into the framework somehow to allow Streamclip to open it up.

So, after you open up MPEG Streamclip, you click File -> Open... and select your MKV file.  It takes about 5minutes on my 1.6 Macbook Air.  I'm assuming it has to read the complete file before actually opening it up (oh, and these files average about 4.3GB).  Afterwards, I just click File -> Save As... and then select MP4 format.  It takes about 3-4 minutes on mine to save it as an MP4, but after that it's good to go.  You can import it in to iTunes and it plays.  I don't know if you can stream it from another computer to aTV though, I just copy all my stuff over to an external HDD and run it from ATVFiles on there.

Hope this helps somebody out.  The quality looks to be amazing, and I haven't had any problems with it yet.  The file size is about 1GB smaller than the MKV, but I haven't noticed it being because of a quality issue (hopefully just better compression).

Thanks!

[shurakai]

rampar, on Jan 25 2009, 11:46 PM, said:

Wow, I can't believe how easy it is to get MKV's to play on aTV after reading these posts.  Here's what I did to get it all to work.

So, after you open up MPEG Streamclip, you click File -> Open... and select your MKV file.  It takes about 5minutes on my 1.6 Macbook Air.  I'm assuming it has to read the complete file before actually opening it up (oh, and these files average about 4.3GB).  Afterwards, I just click File -> Save As... and then select MP4 format.  It takes about 3-4 minutes on mine to save it as an MP4, but after that it's good to go.  You can import it in to iTunes and it plays.

I gave Streamclip a try, as well as someone else's suggestion of simply re-saving the file in a .MOV container from within QT Pro. The .MOV file will load in iTunes and plays just fine there, but won't download to my aTV. QT doesn't give the option of saving out as an MP4, only exporting as such, which, even with an Elgato Turbo.264 and a dual 2-GHz G5 takes 10+ hours for a 1-hour 720p movie. Streamclip, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem saving the video track in an MP4 container, but didn't understand or couldn't read the audio track, which was encoded in AC3 format, and so stripped it out entirely. iTunes won't pass the MP4 file over to the aTV either.

Did you do something else with your aTV? Hack it in any way? What codecs were the audio and video streams in originally in the file you converted?

[subetha]

check out xbox media center, i was running it as my media center on a mac mini, and then we got an appletv at work, wich i also installed it on. it can play mkv files without a problem.

xbmc.org

[IKSOVIET]

shurakai, on Jan 26 2009, 09:23 PM, said:

I gave Streamclip a try, as well as someone else's suggestion of simply re-saving the file in a .MOV container from within QT Pro. The .MOV file will load in iTunes and plays just fine there, but won't download to my aTV. QT doesn't give the option of saving out as an MP4, only exporting as such, which, even with an Elgato Turbo.264 and a dual 2-GHz G5 takes 10+ hours for a 1-hour 720p movie. Streamclip, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem saving the video track in an MP4 container, but didn't understand or couldn't read the audio track, which was encoded in AC3 format, and so stripped it out entirely. iTunes won't pass the MP4 file over to the aTV either.

Did you do something else with your aTV? Hack it in any way? What codecs were the audio and video streams in originally in the file you converted?

I upgrade PERIAN to 1.2 and Still MPEG StreamClip didn't recognize the file. I still insisted with "Open Anyway" option, and only got the audio of the movie.

Any other solution?

[gengstapo]

viccy, on Nov 4 2008, 02:17 AM, said:

hi

PROTOTYPE_SX

I have atleast 3 TB of .mkv files and hope to get more


to convert them to ATV format , I have dedicated one of mine intel mac to visual Hub because thats the only  program which work with .mkv files to ATV
infect I have all the program including apple's compressor to sorenson to elgato turbo .264

but the best and the most reliable is visual hub
and to day i was searching and found your thread about mpeg stream clip and i tried the way you said and I almost screamed, why ??? because I was able to change .mkv to MOV in few minute and the transfer the same to itune while keeping my finger crossed and YES it was playing in my itune

now the reason I am writing all this stupid detail is BECAUSE  when i open my ATV and connect
that shared lib under Movie it is not showing the movie i saved as MOV with mpeg  streamclip

can you tell me why or just tell me the way to do it please


thanks and please reply to my request

Hi there, what dya mean by "because I was able to change .mkv to MOV"??
Do you export or just use the function "Save As.." .mov the .mkv files?

Thanks~

[Zee.Ynoc]

I have tried a streaming server from atvapps.com - it works pretty well so far, playing mkv's although I do not get smooth playback with 720p mkv's and ac3.
Had to pay 7.99$ for a license but and I'm trying to convert the audio into mp3 and see if the atv is able to play it now. Checking back later with results.

Y

[Zee.Ynoc]

there's still a small lag - I exchanged emails with the dev and he told me that he'll put some optimizations to the player...

[Zee.Ynoc]

Ok we got it working alright. Still some frames are dropped but the movie is watchable and the audio stays in sync. I received a config file that provided that.
Now I am very happy that I can watch my 720p mkvs on my AppleTV over the network...

I hereby recommend atvapps.com and their streaming solution for the appletv.

Y

[Sarah Hastings]

Boxee Rocks!

[brettt]

Ideally, you dont really want to convert or transcode the MKV file because that (usually) means you are compressing the file again. What you want is to remux the file, with no loss of video or audio quality, to a format that iTunes and AppleTV will be happy with. Full disclosure, I work for a small company that had the same problem, although we were trying to watch MKVs on our PS3, but the same file plays on AppleTVs as well. So we wrote a simple tool. Its $9.99 and available here http://shedworx.com/mkvwatch I hope its helpful for you.

If you come across an MKV file that doesn't work, or you have some ideas or feedback we'd love to hear from you.

[camoguy]

If you jail break an apple tv 2nd gen, you can install plex client on it and watch mkvs amongst other things, pretty much anything else. But you need plex server installed on a pretty fast computer that can transcode on the fly and feed it to the apple tv.