"Movie format not recognized"

When this happens to me I just close iTunes and re-open it.

angelop wrote:
Since the 3.0.1 update....
"The movie format cannot be recognized, and can't be played on this Apple TV!"

This error is vague and often crops up - it can simply mean the content isn't accessible - eg external drive where me4dia is stored is ejected/unavailable.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if such a drive is green and sleeps that an access 'timeout' error occurs just before the drive wakes and issues this inaccurate error message.

Angel,

This ususally occurs after a sync is interrupted. Close iTunes, unplug ATV. Wait 30 seconds. Plug in ATV, wait for reboot. Restart iTunes. This will solve the problem.

To avoid this, turn off automating sync on ATV in the menu.

Eric

I'm having a similar issue. I'll drop the autosync and see if that resolves the issue in the future and let you all know.

When I do the conversion do I end up with the original file and the converted file?

Hello All- Chiming in on my experiences. I have a 2TB drive with my entire video and music libraries synced with ATV. I have uploaded several movies to ATV and they play with no problem. The TV Eps I usually stream as they are smaller files and play without incident. That is, until the evil "Movie Format" snake rears it's ugly head.

This problem seems to be arbitrary in that it only appears to be on video items I stream. If uploaded and present on the drive it plays without a problem. My drive's downtime has been throttled back so it sleeps very little when on. The video's that it picks on varies from time to time. I have auto-sync disabled so that's not an issue for me (have tried it both ways and it happens with either setting). It will just seem to pick on a particular series of eps and refuse to recognize them BUT will allow me to play/stream others without any problem whatsoever. I called an Apple Expert and explained the problem (they were not aware this was an issue for end users at all...which sort of answers the question of whether or not Apple Techs watch the boards) and due to the randomness of the problem suggested that I rebuild the iTunes library (which would wipe the library from ATV and thus necessitate a full upload of the 140gb of movies...painful). They had no other advice to offer to fix the problem (and they went up the techie ladder on this one).

My resolution is to upload the episode I want to watch by checking it in the episode list for that particular program and then unchecking it when I am done to remove it from the drive. An irritating resolution to say the least. I would accept that it could be a drive sleep problem if it was universal in all of my TV Eps being classified as such, the problem is that they are the files purchased FROM Apple and therefore by default should be in their ATV format. Since it will pick on one series one time but another series eps at another seems to point to an internal software bug that they haven't bothered to take care of. Given the 'rebuild your library' as the only available option to resolve I am not confident we will see the end of this problem anytime soon.

Has anyone tried the 'rebuild library' as an option? With nearly 2TB of files I am not sure I want to live through that if it doesn't work as a resolution. Any takers with less to process?

I'll chime in as well. I think I am having the same or similar problem.

I believe it is related to the new "wake on demand" that I have found to "just not work" as advertised. This feature is supposed to allow the host computer to sleep but still advertise its content that is available for streaming. When you select something that is not synced to the Apple TV hard drive the host computer is supposed to wake up and serve up the content for streaming. Sounds great in theory but doesn't work well in practice. If the computer is asleep and I try to play a file I get the dreaded error. I can tell this is going to happen because the files description shows up on the Apple TV but not the artwork. The thing is, the host computer does wake up in response to the network request. But something goes awry in the process and Apple TV doesn't seem to be very patient about waiting for the file to show up.

Subsequently, even after manually telling iTunes to re sync with the Apple TV I can't access any content that streams from the host computer. Restarting iTunes sometimes fixes it but sometimes I need to also restart the Apple TV.

The best solution I can find is to turn off "wake for network..." in the Energy Saver preference panel. That way streamed content should simply disappear when the computer goes to sleep and reappear (hopefully) when I wake the computer up.

What I wish Apple would do is simply allow you to hook a huge hard drive up to the Apple TV directly so you can choose to just sync everything. With cheap access to external USB drives, this would be economical and easy. Or build the Apple TV software into the Time Capsule and add an HDMI port. Then the Apple TV interface could have access to everything through your back up files. And they might be able to make the Apple TV more of a success by integrating everything into one home media hub that serves up wi-fi, back-up, media playback, and rentals. This would eliminate the need for three devices to work perfectly together in order for one to work properly.