AVCHD to Apple TV Format

You have to convert it to mp4 format. You can do this easily with imovie 08. After importing your videos to imovie 08 share it with itunes.

You'll need something similar to imovie, not sure what there is available for you though. You likely can't just export the raw AVCHD files to AVC, but I'm not sure. Clearly there will be high end applications such as Avid that will do the job but you migh want to look at what M$ offer themselves as a moviemaker option.

Have you tried Nero 8? You could use either of two components in Nero 8: Recode (exporting from dvd or other formats to mpeg4) or Vision (editing and exporting Home video).

you can use Quicktime.

open your movie and choose to Export.

then locate the setting for AppleTV

Hi Guys,
Coming back to first post of guidoac: what is the highest possible video quality on Apple TV (talking about clips from camera).
I tried iMovie or Quick time as suggested here and in both cases always when the original HD file from camera (full HD Panasonic SD9) is converted to Apple TV format then resolution is changed from 1080 to 520!
Is there a way to make Apple tv to play HD camera clips in unchanged HD quality ?

MPEG Streamclip (squared5.com) should handle m2ts files for free - not sure about the moff and modd files. At least I can import from a Sony HD DV cam as m2ts and on the Mac it handles the transport stream. The other files suggest you have a hard drive or disc based camcorder.

If you have a PS3 by any chance it'll probably paly the m2ts as is.

AC

AFAIK there are only two consumer products that will handle AVCHD on the mac; imovie 08 and voltaic. There are high end applications such as Final Cut and other pro-sumer editing applications but we are getting expensive here..

On the PC there are likely more applications that will do this, one of which is likely to be the software that comes with your particular camera, whether or not that software will simply play AVCHD or actually convert it for you depends on the software itself.

Take note though AVCHD is not able to be edited on any platform, you may be able to make simple cuts but for anything else you will need to convert to an editable format (which is exactly what imovie does)

Voltaic is not an editing application and will simply convert AVCHD to AIC, not much use really if you have imovie and an intel mac, but if you have a PPC mac it will allow you to convert AVCHD for imovie, since imovie 08 on a PPC mac will not import (convert) AVCHD.

Mpegstreamclip will handle the m2ts files from your HDV camera because the compression type inside the mpeg2 transport stream is mpeg2, whereas the compression used inside the mpeg2 transport stream from an AVCHD camera is AVC.

But is there a way to export those avchd files originaly 1080i edited in iMovie08 to Apple tv but with 720p resolution (which Apple tv can handle) and not 960x540 which iMovie offers when I pick up Share to iTunes option?

Yes - you have to do a custom export though.

Haven't done it for a while but it worked ok.

Winston's done a fair bit of testing and hasn't found much difference between the 720p format and 960x540 on AppleTV if memory serves me well.

AC

As AC says, I've not seen any difference between the the exports I have done at 720p using custom settings and the imovie large preset, however I just thought I'd add that unless these 720p exports you are wanting to do are 25 fps or less they won't play on the tv.

Winston Churchill wrote:
unless these 720p exports you are wanting to do are 25 fps or less they won't play on the tv.

A PAL bonus for us....

Can you describe step by step how did you do it? I would appreciate it.
I can see a big difference in quality between original avchd file in 1080i from camera and exported to AppleTV 960x540 format.
I found this procedure: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305173 which says that it is possible to export from iMovie to Apple TV in 1280x720, 24 fps Progressive, but that simply does not work. I can't find an option to choose such a 720 resolution neither in iMovie nor Quick Time. Always when I choose as an export: Move to Apple TV then there is no option to choose. Everything goes automatically and result always is 540.
(I have iMovie 8)

You need to Custom Export not use an AppleTV Preset which is fixed.

Bear in mind the official 24fps limit for 720p stuff. Are you using PAL or NTSC frame rate material - Winston has managed to get 25fps running, but AppleTV might fail or struggle to keep up with 30fps, and changing framerates might give a worse effect than lowering the resolution.

AC

JJFlash64 wrote:
Can you describe step by step how did you do it? I would appreciate it.

As AC says, don't use the 'movie to tv' setting, use 'movie to mpeg4', if you have any problems with the settings just ask, but they are reasonably straight forward.

I can see a big difference in quality between original avchd file in 1080i from camera and exported to AppleTV 960x540 format.

That may well be the case depending on how you are comparing the two, you can't however play 1080i through the tv so really your comparison should be 720p vs 540p, in which case I doubt you will see much difference.

I found this procedure: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305173 which says that it is possible to export from iMovie to Apple TV in 1280x720, 24 fps Progressive, but that simply does not work. I can't find an option to choose such a 720 resolution neither in iMovie nor Quick Time. Always when I choose as an export: Move to Apple TV then there is no option to choose. Everything goes automatically and result always is 540.

If the 'movie to tv preset' results in a file at 540p then you are not starting with 24 fps video. Why do you want to change the framerate of your video, this will result in jerkiness in your movie. Unless you have a really compelling reason to change the framerate of any movie don't.

You don't say whether you are using NTSC or PAL, whichever you are using you should resist changing the framerate. If you are using NTSC then you are stuck with 540p, the tv simply won't play 30 fps any higher than 540p. If your using PAL then you can use the 'movie to mpeg4' as described hereinbefore to export a movie at 720p and 25 fps, however in my opinion there is little or no difference between these exports and simply exporting to a large movie format.

I think there may well be a benefit to using 540p over 720p in some ways since 1080 is a multiple of 540 but not 720. You can see a comparison of 540 vs 720 here:

http://web.mac.com/gartside1104/z002

(uploading now - you may have to wait a little if you're trying to view shortly after I made this post)