Apple TV is jerky when panning

Welcome to the  Discussion Forums.

This is likely an issue with the video file rather than the tv, you may not be able to do anything about this unless you have created the video yourself. You might also want to check you have the tv set to output the correct frequency.

Winston Churchill wrote:
Welcome to the  Discussion Forums.

This is likely an issue with the video file rather than the tv, you may not be able to do anything about this unless you have created the video yourself. You might also want to check you have the tv set to output the correct frequency.

the OP has said the movies are from the itunes store, so i'm not so sure that it will be the movie files at fault in this instance.

Yeah, i noticed that while test driving ATV at the Apple Store, specifically (solely) on pans . . . looks like a codec issue to me . . . i see that when frame rate is decreased. As if the compression of the HD content required there to be dropped frames, therefore it appears to jump. I still bought the **** thing, though. Now i'm debating on swapping for a Mini before opening it up.
I also noticed wash outs or hot spots on well lit white faces . . . lack of definition that should be there on a 1080 image. Is the ATV upscaling 720 to 1080 on all the trailers and stuff on iTStore?

Same experience here.
It seems to work better when I have set output resolution to 720p instead of 1080p and thus let the TV do the upscaling rather than ATV (when playing HD content from iTunes store which I understand is 720p content). I see jiggering also when playing SD content from iTunes store, I guess that's because the ATV then must upscale to 720p.
I first thought it was the HDMI cable, based on some other threads on this forum. So I bought an HDMI 1.3 category 2 cable which should be sufficient for transfering 1080p, but it didn't help with the problem.

I compressed some home HD movies for play on the TV and noticed in the compressor presets that the frame rate is locked at 24fps or lower. This is definitely the reason for the 'jumping'. I believe they do this for two reasons: it's the prevailing frame rate of film and it keeps the bit rate down.
Basically, it's throwing out whole frames to fit the format. If it was interlaced it would be a smoother effect as it would be throwing out half frames . . . i believe.

Hello all,

I have just recently received an Apple TV as a gift and I have noticed a slight occasional jerkiness when watching HD video downloaded from Itunes. The movies are still ok to watch but I am somewhat of a perfectionist when I play with my electronic toys. I think that I set my ATV to 1080p when configuring the box. Does anyone still notice the jerkiness and do you have any suggestions? I see that one suggestion was to set the ATV to 720p? Does this work? I have not tried it yet.

Thanks,

T

Another factor is of course the TV which could be doing nothing with the output image, or interpolating frames to achieve a different or higher framerate. Some TVs do very odd things when they interpolate and one Panasonic set I looked at never showed an original frame in a particular mode!!!!

If your TV has various 'enhancement modes' I'd fiddle with these in case it's introducing some jerkiness, but to be honest I've noticed jerkiness from DVD/HD DVD/AppleTv and off air on several sets and I think that in general as we've got bigger sets it's more apparent than on the small boxes we used to watch. I've even been aware of this sort of thing in the cinema with digital projectors (eg LOTR I, oanning around the hillsides near the start).

In reality there are many potential contributors from original encoding, playback device struggling or altering movie, to TV altering framerates, and of course a combination of the lot!

Hi

I have noticed the same jerkiness especially on HD content from the itunes store e.g Lost. It actually happens with my own HD encodes as well - doesn't make any difference if the content is on the apple tv or is streamed over ethernet. I'm guessing this a limitation of he Apple TV hardware if they do another update they may have to beef up the graphics card and or processor. The AppleTV only plays HD content at 720p regardless of what resolution it is set at which again is probably down to the power of the hardware.

what resolution do you have the appletv set to ?

Encoding is certainly a cause - I downloaded an episode of lost SD once and it was very jerky, unlike the rental DVD I tried it against.