Help! Converting to AppleTV

[DiGNAN17]

I would REALLY appreciate some help. I swear I've spent the whole day on this, and I've been all over the site and read the FAQs and Stickies, but I'm pretty much in the same place I was in this morning: nowhere.

What I'm trying to do: I have some hi-def MKV files that I want to be able to give to a friend so he can play it on his AppleTV.

I think my biggest obstacle is how restrictive the AppleTV is as far as video files it can play. I gather I want an H.264-encoded MP4 file with AAC audio, but then there's restrictions on bitrates and whatnot.

What program should I use? I've tried WinAVI (which didn't seem to output to the correct format), Videora (which is hideous and doesn't seem to really work), Xilisoft DVD to Apple TV Converter (which looks like it will take over a day to encode one hour-long program), and lastly Super. Super was the most successful, in that it actually converted a file in about four hours AND the output file played somewhat correctly. Well, at least for a while until the audio got out of sync.

Is there anything else I can do? What's the best method I can use to create AppleTV-compliant files? Can an out-of-the-box AppleTV even play video that's 1280x720?

Please help! Thanks!

[Soopafresh]

If your MKV file is variable frame rate (VFR), then you can expect A/V sync problems. It might be a huge PITA getting those source MKVs converted. Try some other files for testing purposes. See if the output plays.

[DiGNAN17]

Thank you for your help!

How might I find out if I have a VFR file? I've looked at it with GSpot (which doesn't show anything for MKVs) and MediaInfo, but I'm not certain how to read that program yet. It says the video portion is MPEG-4 AVC.

I've made a few conversions with Super now of the same file, messing with settings a bit, but I haven't been able to get rid of the delay, which seems to get steadily worse as the video progresses. It goes from right on to about one second off over the course of the file.

[Soopafresh]

Very difficult to determine, except that your output sync issue points to the existence. Hopefully I'm wrong.


One thing you can try is to demux the Audio and Video out of the MKV file and remux into AVI or MP4 container just to see if the sync is still off even without re-encoding.

1) Download MKVdemuxall http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=169837

2) Demux MKV

3) Remux into MP4 container using YAMB or to AVI using AVImuxer

* You can't mux AC3 audio into an MP4 container, so convert the audio to AAC in the event your audio is AC3







Here's an alternative way to convert MKV to MP4 - depending on your audio, it might not even be necessary to re-encode(that is, as long as you don't have VFR)

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?p=1307440

[DiGNAN17]

Thanks for your help! I tried out mp4mobile, but that produced some pretty ugly results. Badly pixelated, and choppy (possibly due to having to slightly changing the framerate from the source file). But none of that mattered anyway because the audio still got off at the end

I tried MKVdemuxall, but I think I might be using it wrong. I added the file, clicked on "Demux Files," and it almost immediately said it was finished, but then it didn't look like it did anything. There was no new audio and video file. It's weird. And the program has no options to speak of and no help file. Heck, it doesn't even appear to have a homepage with instructions. Any advice?

Thanks for your help so far, though. I appreciate it. It isn't looking good for a positive outcome on this, but thanks for helping me try