HD700 footage on Apple TV

[dalemiller]

Hi all



I'm new to the forum, so hello! Wondering if anyone can give any insight into this problem..

I have a Xacti C4, and have recently been considering a CG65. However, the HD700 has caught my eye....

I downloaded some clips from this site, and found the will not play on my Apple TV, the Apple TV can handle the 720p, but only at 24FPS, not 30 as the HD700 shoots. I converted the files using iTunes, but it looks like the conversion changes the resolution down & keeps the 30 FPS. Does anyone know if it's possible to convert to 24FPS & keep the full HD resolution?

Or, should I get a CG65?!



Thanks



Dale

[Caelum]

I don't have an Apple TV, butI seethat it not only has the 720/24p limitation, but a 5Mbps bit-rate limitation as well.Considering that 30fps does not translatewellinto 24fps, it might be best to let iTunes convert the resolution down?

Did you try converting to 720/24p using Quicktime, iMovie, or even a third party tool like VisualHub to see? Never mind that... I just tried Squared5's free Streamclip software and it canexport the HD700's videos to 720/24p (think of it as a free version of Quicktime Pro, but better,for both Macs and PCs). Using Streamclip, Open the MP4, use the "Export to MPEG-4" option and speficy "Limit data rate: 5Mbps", sound: 128Kbps, "Frame Rate: 24", set quality to 100%, turn on "Multipass" and "B frames", and make sure to uncheck all interlace options (tokeep itprogressive); finally "Make MP4". If it still does not work on your Apple TV, try lowering the data rate.

[Sanyo]

dalemiller wrote:

Hi all



I'm new to the forum, so hello! Wondering if anyone can give any insight into this problem..

I have a Xacti C4, and have recently been considering a CG65. However, the HD700 has caught my eye....

I downloaded some clips from this site, and found the will not play on my Apple TV, the Apple TV can handle the 720p, but only at 24FPS, not 30 as the HD700 shoots. I converted the files using iTunes, but it looks like the conversion changes the resolution down & keeps the 30 FPS. Does anyone know if it's possible to convert to 24FPS & keep the full HD resolution?

Or, should I get a CG65?!



Thanks



Dale

This is just my personal opinion, but I would go with the HD700 over the CG65. You still get the CG65's 640x480 resolution mode, but in addition, you get 16:9 widescreen in your 720p of which you can easily get to your TV with the Apple TV. Yes, Apple will downsample them to 540p (or something like that) as it does for my Apple TV, but again, you still have the original video files including whatever edits you made in your computer and if Apple TV v2 allows full 720p/30 or even higher in the future then you might be kicking yourself for only having 640x480 files from the stuff you shot today.

[megalaser]

Hi, thanks I tried it but the resulting image quality was terrible, very blocky and smeared (I have the same problem when converting to MPEG4 using quicktime, but the iTunes convert to video works fine (but of course knocks the HD back to SD)

[Private Idaho]

I have a Mac, but don't yet have an Apple TV.

Still, I've done a lot of video editing.

And I would experiment with the Sanyo's 720p video and the Apple TV in a few different ways.

First, I realize the Apple TV specifications suggest that the supported 1280 x 720 frame size is tied to 24 frames per second.

Second, I'm not so sure that's true.

Third, even if it is true, I would point out that you have -- on every Macintosh -- the built-in "Apple Intermediate Codec," which is designed to take long GOP formats such as MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 and convert them to be I-FRAME .MOV files that can be edited or transcoded.

And this "Apple Intermediate Codec" is what I would use, if I had a Sanyo VPC-HD700.

My experiment would go like this.

1. Convert the raw Sanyo clips to "Apple Intermediate Codec" files at 960 x 540 resolution, which is the 30 frames per second format supported by the Apple TV.

2. Convert the raw Sanyo clips to "Apple Intermediate Codec" files at 1280 x 720 and specify 24 frames per second.

Now, these are going to be huge files because the price you pay for an "intermediate" codec file is that you get an easily edited I-FRAME file with excellent quality preservation.

But, I would then take these two files into iTunes and do the conversion for Apple TV.

Then compare the result.

See which one looks best.

My bet is they both will look pretty good.

Private Idaho

[Private Idaho]

Forgot to mention that you can do the conversion from your raw files to your Apple Intermediate Codec files using QuickTime Pro.