Home movies watchable on Apple TV?

I'm considering buying the Apple TV and I was wondering if I could view my own personal videos on it. These are the video formats I usually work with:
AVI
FLV
DIVX
MOV
MP4
Can I view these on on apple tv or is it exclusive to content purchased via iTunes?
Thanks

No idea if that's free or not but several useful free converters of unprotected legally owned files include:
MPEG Streamclip (may need an MPEG-2 pluging for Quicktime)
Handbrake (used to be frowned upon as a 'ripper' but now more a general file converter that can't directly read any protected material)
Videoredux/Punyvid (previously isquint and visualhub)
amongst others....
having said that converting files is a real chore and loses quality apart from hogging your CPU all day. If you have an Xbox (or if you don't) check out Xbox media center as an option.

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I have Imovie 08 and ripped home movies in the Apple TV mode. IMovie won't import them?

I have Imovie 08 and ripped home movies in the Apple TV mode. IMovie won't import them?

Try this.
Open your home movie in QuickTime Player X. (Or right click on your home movie in the Finder and select Open With... QuickTime Player.
Then click the Commenad Key and the letter I at the same time to open the Inspector.
Tell us what you see next to the word Format: in the Inspector.

"Movies" vs. "Home Movies" assignment on Apple TV

How does iTunes and the Apple TV determine which movies show under "Movies" and which show under "Home Movies"? There does not seem to be any logic as to what shows where.

Please note that "Home Movies" should be "Home Videos".

Turn on home sharing won't work to watch home movies on Apple TV

I have Apple TV 3rd generation. I transferred home movies from my MAC to my Apple TV. I have gone to Apple TV and then Computers and clicked it and there are my home movies. Many times however a message appears to "Turn on my Home Sharing". So I go to my computer and File and first have to turn off and then turn on and put in password and Done. Usually this works but I keep getting the same message and cannot see the home movies. Unplugged Apple TV, unplugged modem and router. Still not working. Any suggestions? thanks

you people are useless!!

Why did the Apple TV update remove "home movies" from the computer option in Apple tv?

AApple TV auto updated. 22 sept 2014. Most of the movies I have on my iMac were under itunes as "home movies". The Apple TV update removed the ability to see home movies in the "computer" option in Apple tv. I can see them on my iMac, but no longer have access thru my Apple tv. I can still see the few that are physically in "movies" in iTunes, but the Apple TV will now only show them. Thanks

Hello bernsteinr,
It sounds like an issue with Home Sharing. Check out the article below for more information on getting Home Sharing working again so you can see all the movies that you have on your iMac show up on your Apple TV.
Troubleshooting Home Sharing
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2972
Regards,
-Norm G.

Is there a way to separate home movies from the movies category?

I want to put home movies on my Apple TV but don't want them to show up along with movies. Is there a way to separate them? I haven't tried it yet so maybe they are separated but I foresee not being possible right now.
For the moment, I've been streaming my home movies from .mac

As Chenks says... just create a genre for them.... just RT-Click on the home movies (can actually multi-select all of then and do them all at once) and change the genre to "home" or whatever you'd like and then when you go to AppleTV go to Genres > "Home" and they will all appear together there.

Home movies freezing and pausing

Up until a month ago, our Apple TV worked well. Before the invention of apple TV's, we collected quite an extensive DVD collection, and decided to purchase the ATV, convert our home movies to apple TV compatible movie files, and store them in the apple TV movie library for easy and convenient access. We also have all of our home movies stored there too, and watch them regularly. This worked a dream, up until a month ago...
Now, any home movie, or movie that we copied and stored ourselves pauses, skips and freezes throughout the movie. Movies we downloaded from iTunes work flawlessly. All of our software is up to date. We have reset the apple TV, turned off the TV, reset iTunes, but now don't know what to do.
Help!!! If we can't fix this, the AppleTV is useless to us!

Hi. Sorry to hear about your problem. Our family also loves watching home movies on it. We easily have over 60 or 70 hours.
1. Are your home movies on a different hard drive than the downloaded movies? If so, you may have a drive going bad. Do these videos skip in iTunes as well or no? If this is the case, back up your movies and get a new hard drive.
2. If you sync the home movies to your Apple TV, do you still have the problem? If not, maybe it is a network issue. Try disconnecting your ATV from the network then reconnecting to it.

New Home Movies from iTunes not showing up on Apple TV

I edit a lot of home movies in Final Cut. When I am done I use "Compressor" to convert the uncompressed movie files to an Apple TV format. The problem I am having now is that after I import them into iTunes they aren't showing up on either of my two Apple TVs when i use Home Sharing on my local network. I am able to play the movies in iTune and play them on my Apple TV by using AirPlay, but I would prefer not having to do this.
A few things to note:
1. Software is up to date on Apple TV
2. I have "Share my library on my local network" checked and "Share my entire library" selected under SHARING in my iTunes preferences
3. I am using Compressor 4.07. The preset option I use is " 1080 for Apple Devices (10Mbps)- Compatible with Apple TV (3rd gen.) and iPad (3rd Gen.)
Name: 1080p for Apple Devices (10 Mbps)
Description: Compatible with Apple TV (3rd gen.) and iPad (3rd gen.)
File Extension: m4v
Estimated size: 4.5 GB/hour of source
Device: Apple TV 3rd Generation
Frame sync rate: Automatic
Video Encoder
    Width and Height: Automatic
    Pixel aspect ratio: Default
    Crop: None
    Padding: None
    Frame rate: (100% of source)
    Frame Controls: Automatically selected: Off
    Codec Type: H.264
    Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: On
    Pixel depth: 24
    Spatial quality: 50
    Min. Spatial quality: 50
    Temporal quality: 50
    Min. temporal quality: 50
    Average data rate: 10 (Mbps)
    Maximum data rate: 14 (Mbps)
Audio Encoder
    Sample Rate: 44.100kHz
    Channels: 2
    Bits Per Sample: 16
    AAC encoder quality: high
    Data rate: 128 Kbps
Include Dolby 5.1 Audio track
Compatible with Mac, PC, Apple TV (3rd gen.), iPad (3rd gen.) and iPhone 5, iPod touch (5th gen.)

Are the files in the library?
I notice that music and movie categories exist, and I can watch the movies I have converted using handbrake, and iMovie for home movies that we're added to my iTunes library....but... I want to sort this into kid movies, parent movies, and home video categories. Apple TV will be so much more useful if I don't have to use my iPad to air play my home movies. Browsing a single list of video that includes these 3 distinct functional categories is pretty lame.   Where is my apple freedom here?
I expect this fixed or more easily configured with the new Yosemite and iOS update. I hope there is an Apple TV update to make this better too.

Can Apple TV 2 stream purchased videos / home movies converted to MP4 and in my iTunes library?

Okay, so we currently own a 1st Gen ATV and love it, however 99% of it's use is streaming purchased content and/or home movies etc. that I've used visualhub/handbrake to convert and imported into my iTunes library. All in all, once I gave up and surrendered my video content to iTunes and started streaming to my 1st Gen ATV I've grown hooked, I love sorting stuff however I want (I have about 250 movies, entire seasons of X-Files etc. that I've ripped from my own (LEGAL) media and put in iTunes, so when it's sorted properly it's very clean, when it's all alpha, it's a nightmare.
I've tried a few media servers for the PS3, however they just pile all the movies into one big alpha sorted mess, music isn't sorted by genre, no genius, TV shows are not tagged by watched, won't resume properly etc. Boxee / XBMC are a little better, but then again I run those on my ATV as well, and still Boxee doesn't really seem to sort stuff quite as well or play playlists properly.
We're getting another TV for our den and have been looking into other media streaming options, what I love about the Apple TV is the way I can sort all our movies, shows etc. by genre, so the kids can just go to the stuff I've tagged as Kids Movies or I can make video playlists for them and mix up some Planet Earth and Dora the Explorer for our babysitter and movies /shows are tagged as watched/unwatched, if you stop one it will ask if you want to resume, etc.
Looking into the ATV2 it seems like it's just geared for rentals, If that's the case I really am not interested. I like the Netflix option, but then again most newer internet connected TVs do that as well as my PS3, not sure how viable an option the WD TV Live plus or Boxee box is, I'd like to get some newer hardware, but I'm just not sure what route to go.
Does the ATV2 stream media in iTunes TV Shows/Podcasts/Movies folders? It doesn't sync right? So it it all Airplay now?
Is my best bet just to get another 1st Gen? Are there any other media servers that are able to sort stuff by played/genre/etc.
Ug, I'm at a loss! I really love the features of my old Apple TV, and would love to get a new one, but I'm just not sure if it will do everything I'm used to, or if any of the other standalone boxes are better options?
I know this is a bit of a ramble, hopefully someone can make enough sense out of where I'm going and help me out! Thanks!

Welcome to the Apple Community.
The Apple TV 2 will play all the content in your iTunes library that your Apple TV 1 does. It can no longer sync any of it but can stream it all just as the older model did. Airplay is a different feature that lets you stream from an iPad/iPhone, the Apple TV 2 has Airplay the first didn't.
You can still sort and search content by genre, it still marks content watched and unwatched and mainly still lets you organise much as the Apple TV 1 did, with one exception. It doesn't do nested folders, so the ability to tag a movie as a show (ie James Bond) and have all the associated movies in a James bond folder has gone and it lists all these movies individually.
It has a similar situation with TV shows. It will put all TV shows in a series in a folder as the older one did, but the new one lists each series separately whereas the older model would put all the series in one folder.
Not nesting folders is a bit of a pain with large libraries and whilst I don't like it, it's more or less the only compromise I have to make and of course I get additional features too.

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.
Thanks,
Andrew

I realize this is a late response, but it might help.
Try opening the movie file with iTunes. Right click on the video file, and select Open With > iTunes. If iTunes opens it and plays it, then it is ready to go for AppleTV. If it doesn't, then it is not in a format that iTunes or AppleTV support. This can be a huge time saver if you have a lot of clips.
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.

I have numerous music movie clips that I have not purchased through iTunes, can I stream these "home" movies to apple TV? And if this is not possible, is there another complete program available that I can purchase to have my music movie clips stream to a

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?
And if iTunes will not allow it, is there another complete program available that I can purchase to have my music movie clips stream to a TV and/or another computer?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Thanks, Winston C, I've actually tried everything you suggested. I'm thinking now that the Home Sharing problem likely is related to Bonjour--I've seen several people mention this with similar (but not identical) problems. The solution that seems to work for some people is to uninstall and reinstall Bonjour. Frankly, I don't want to go through the trouble given that the iOS 7 release is imminent.
One thing that I haven't tried is resetting the ATV to factory settings. I'll give that whirl.
Thanks for your advice!

Syncing Home Movies to Apple TV

Running iLife '09 with all latest updates ...
I recently bought a Sanyo VPC-FH1A camcorder (HIGHLY recommend it by the way) ... bought it because it had the Apple logo on the side and was touted as the first camcorder to adopt "iFrame" format from Apple ...
What I was looking for was EASY ... I want to pop out the SDHC card, copy it to my iMac via an external card reader, and mess with it later, just like I do with my still camera, i.e., copy my .jpegs to a folder and import/edit the files in iPhoto later, and synch them to my AppleTV ... ALMOST got all of that.
The problem I'm having is that the movies that come off the camcorder (.mp4's) immediately play in Quicktime, iMovie, and in iTunes (i.e., no conversions required) ... however, those movies added to the iTunes library do NOT sync to my AppleTV ... I have to go the the Advanced ... Make Movie Compatible with AppleTV ... that process esentially cut the file size by a factor of 4, and named the new file with a .m4v ... ??? ... then it synced fine ... problem is, iFrame is already about 1/4 size of "true" Hi-Def, and this is 1/4 of that ... maybe when AppleTV plays it, it decodes the compression back to my original iFrame quality?
I have other older home movies that I painstakingly converted to .mp4's, and they sync just fine (used MPEG Streamclip) ... when I do a Get Info on the two new files, it looks like the same codec's are used ... any ideas how I can not have TWO copies of every single video clip? Actually, THREE, since my new camcorder shoots videos & stills (very nicely and easily I might add ... HIGHLY recommend this camera) and so my first attempt at dumping stuff to the Mac ended up with everything in iPhoto ... it would be nice to have them stored there as the original video source, but I'd like to have iTunes just have a Link to the videos rather than yet another copy, which I then have to convert for playing on AppleTV too ...
Thanks,
Mike G

You camera shoots 1920x1080 video. An Apple TV supports 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps and 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps.
Your 1920x1080 video needs to be converted to 960x540 for use on your Apple TV.

Converting home movies to apple tv format

One more question, please.
I converted my 1280 x 720 home movies to Apple TV format in iTunes and they were "downrezzed" to 960 x 540.
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.

I rented a movie on my apple computer but it won't play on my apple tv. i have never had a problem until a month ago. Home sharing is on, and internet is fine.

I rented a movie on my apple computer but it wont play on my apple tv. never had problems till 1 month ago. internet fine, home sharing on.

The movie must fully download to iTunes.
If you have an AppleTV1, have you downloaded a 1080p movie rental as it can't handle that, in which case alter your Preferences for downloads to 720p, contact iTunes Store support and see if they can re-enable the download or refund so you can rent again at 720p.
If you have black model ATV2 or ATV3, then I assume you are looking under the Computers icon where a new Rentals row appears in order to play rentals downloaded to iTunes.
AC

All is set up ok but when I view a home movie the apple tv reverts to the menu at random times, sometimes every 30 secs or so, sometimes plays for mins before cutting out and then i have to enter menu, go to movies and select the movie then resume play bu

Whwn viewing home movies the movie cuts out back to the general menu at random, forcing me to enter menu again, reselect the movie and hit resume button.
this happens everytime I try to play a movie, maybe after 1 min of play then again after 3 mins, next time it might play for 6 mins then cut out and so on. The macbook pro is not reverting to sleep mode or closing down and the wifi signal is strong. So is the apple tv an expensive load of junk or what?

Welcome to the Apple Community.
Intermittent problems are often a result of interference. Interference can be caused by other networks in the neighbourhood or from household electrical items.
You can download and install iStumbler (NetStumbler for windows users) to help you see which channels are used by neighbouring networks so that you can avoid them, but iStumbler will not see household items.
Refer to your router manual for instructions on changing your wifi channel or adjusting your multicast rate.
There are other types of problems that can affect networks, but this is by far the most common, hence worth mentioning first. Networks that have inherent issues can be seen to work differently with different versions of the same software. You might also try moving the Apple TV away from other electrical equipment.

Home movies watchable on Apple TV?

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