Home Movies to Apple TV Format ?

I had 67 reels of 8mm film spanning 25 years scanned in which created about 4.5 hours of video. I used iMovie and iDVD to create 3 DVDs with about 1.5 hours of video on each. I have chapters for every different part of the films resulting in about 90 chapters over 3 DVDs. Now I want all this content in iTunes and available in Apple TV. I'm not sure the best format so I'm looking for recommendations before I spend 672 hours converting these. So far I could:
1) Put all 4.5 hours into one movie and have 90 chapters. I think this would be hard to find the chapters that I want using the current Apple TV software, and one large file might be harder to manage.
2) Split the movie up into 90 individual movies by chapter. This would make finding a chapter very easy since it would be the title of the movie. Having 90 movies in the Apple TV movie section would be really bad since Apple TV can't currently group movies.
3) Break the movies up into say three movies, with about 30 chapters each. This seams like a crappy compromise.
4) I could have 90 movies, one per chapter, like option #2, but I could make them TV shows and episodes. That way with the current Apple TV software I could group them all as 90 episodes under one TV show which is easier to manage. I sort of liked this but I could not get my sample movies to show up as iTunes as TV shows even after changing the metadata to say they were TV shows. Am I missing something here ?
Has anybody done this or can you offer any suggestions ?

I wouldn't worry about it. many people are concerned about the resolution without giving a thought to datarate. Your tv is limited to the bitrate it can play, at a fixed bitrate a 1280 x 720 movie will have less info per pixel (macroblock-technically) than a 960 x 540 so whilst there are more pixels in 1280 x 720 those in the 960 x 540 movie are higher quality and there is little difference, indeed my tests generally show 960 x 540 to be slightly better.
You could reduce the frame rate of 1280 x 720 to allow it to play on the tv, but this will likely introduce jittery motion.

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    One more question, please.
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    Why? And can I avoid this somehow?

    I wouldn't worry about it. many people are concerned about the resolution without giving a thought to datarate. Your tv is limited to the bitrate it can play, at a fixed bitrate a 1280 x 720 movie will have less info per pixel (macroblock-technically) than a 960 x 540 so whilst there are more pixels in 1280 x 720 those in the 960 x 540 movie are higher quality and there is little difference, indeed my tests generally show 960 x 540 to be slightly better.
    You could reduce the frame rate of 1280 x 720 to allow it to play on the tv, but this will likely introduce jittery motion.

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    I realize this is a late response, but it might help.
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    If you have iTunes copy media to the library, then you are going to eat up a sizeable chunk of disk real estate -- as it sounds like you have a lot of movies. You can turn that option off and on in iTunes preferences. Unless you wanted it copied, I would turn that option off before importing a lot of video.
    As someone else mentioned, you can use some free utilities to convert the files en masse. After they are converted, you do the same thing. Open With > iTunes. No need to call up iMovie. Quicktime Player has built-in preset for AppleTV in the Export option. There are automation scripts available to do this if you don't want to use Handbrake or other utility.
    In my humble opinion, the AppleTV did not have sharing home movies in mind. At least not movies captured on non-apple devices. WDTV can play m2ts and other file formats with no conversion. I have several TB of home movies, so that was my only viable option. Besides, I don't think there is a way to play 1080p home movies through AppleTV. Nor will it play the 5.1 track from home movies, as that gets converted to stereo in the process.
    Hope this helps.

  • Home Movies on Apple TV

    I understand that I can watch home movies on my computer via apple tv. I am planning on buying a second generation apple tv but before I do so I would like to make sure that there is a way to watch the home movies which I have imported into imovie on the apple tv. Can someone point me to some directions as to how I get home movies which stored in imovie into itunes? Under the "Advanced" menu there is "Choose Photos to Share". Does this mean that I need to first get my movies from imovie to iphoto and then from iphoto to itunes? My apologies in advance if I am missing something really obvious here.
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    I realize this is a late response, but it might help.
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    If you have iTunes copy media to the library, then you are going to eat up a sizeable chunk of disk real estate -- as it sounds like you have a lot of movies. You can turn that option off and on in iTunes preferences. Unless you wanted it copied, I would turn that option off before importing a lot of video.
    As someone else mentioned, you can use some free utilities to convert the files en masse. After they are converted, you do the same thing. Open With > iTunes. No need to call up iMovie. Quicktime Player has built-in preset for AppleTV in the Export option. There are automation scripts available to do this if you don't want to use Handbrake or other utility.
    In my humble opinion, the AppleTV did not have sharing home movies in mind. At least not movies captured on non-apple devices. WDTV can play m2ts and other file formats with no conversion. I have several TB of home movies, so that was my only viable option. Besides, I don't think there is a way to play 1080p home movies through AppleTV. Nor will it play the 5.1 track from home movies, as that gets converted to stereo in the process.
    Hope this helps.

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    I am a new ATV owner with many home movies in AVI format on my Windows Vista PC. I have converted them to MPEG4 using Pinnacle Studio 12 and then I copy them into the iTunes Movie library. From there I need to use the "Create Apple TV Version" function. It starts and gets about 3/4 of the way through the movie and fails with the message "Error occurred while converting the file - there is not enough memory available." This is surprising as my PC has 4GB of RAM and my computer hard drive has over 100GB free (if it's looking for paging space) and my 160 GB ATV is only 1/2 full (but this should be irrelevant as it's not even synching yet). I called the Apple tech line and they could not help me and suggested I post here. Would appreciate any ideas from more experienced users. Thanks in advance.

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    Greetings:
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    I have home movies in IPhoto taken with my Canon Elph. Can I watch these on Apple TV? If so where do I find them?

    Niel wrote:
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    However Apple TV and itunes won't recognise them as avi's or mpg's.
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     AAC (16 to 320 Kbps); protected AAC (from iTunes Store); MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps); MP3 VBR; Apple Lossless; AIFF; WAV; Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound pass-through
    Photo formats supported
     JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG
    In addition, TV will also pass through properly encoded AC3 5.1 audio to a external amplifier. (Files are not compatible with Front Row, iTunes, iPhone, or iPod playback on a Mac. Whether or not you can do something with them on a PC I don't know.)
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    Convert unsupported/proprietary compression formats to those listed above. (Some may be converted by iTunes if you have the proper codecs installed.)
    I have found some mp4 converters, but my videos either won't convert because of their size or end up as low resolution copies which are unwatchable.
    I tend to prefer MPEG Streamclip (free) for conversions. Once again you need the proper codecs installed for use. (See MPEG Streamclip web pages for amplifying information for the platform you intend to use. I.e., versions available for both Eindows and Mac platforms.) I normally convert at the same resolution as the source file. Quality is generally most affected by the target video data rate of your conversion. You can experiment a bit here to discover what works best on your system for the content (HD, SD, dimensions, etc.) involved. (I use 1400-1500 Kbps for SD content to be viewed on iPhone, iPod, and TV or as high as 3.5-4.5 Mbps for HD/AC3 content for TV only.)
    I also have major problems retaining the original 16:9 format. Everything seems to want to distort it into the antiquated 4:3 format.
    both 16:9 and 4:3 conversion presets are programmed into MPEG Streamclip. In addition, you can crop source (input) or target (output) dimensions (as desired as well as crop/scale/center content if desired) for other formats like 1.67:1, 1.80:1, 2.35:1, 2.40:1, etc.

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    you people are useless!!

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    I have numerous music movie clips that I have not purchased through iTunes, Is it possible to stream these "home" movies using iTunes to apple TV?
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