Airplay and the AppleTV. What are the causes that prevent a video from showing the Airplay icon in Quicktime?

There are no documents that I can find anywhere on Apple's support sites that mention the requirements for a video to be able to be played over Airplay from one Apple Mac device to an AppleTV.

I'm trying to find out WHY a video (or many) is prevented from displaying the AirPlay icon. Which properties of the video are defeating AirPlay from being enabled within Quicktime on my 2023 16" MBP with 32 GB of RAM?

At our house in Namibia, Africa, I have one of my older AppleTVs hooked up to a Samsung 60" TV. We shot some video with a drone and wanted to play it back to the audience. Annoyingly, when we opened the video in QuickTime, we couldn't because there was no AirPlay indicator. We had to mirror the whole screen to the AppleTV which worked just fine.

When back at my other house in the US, I could open the video on the same computer in QuickTime, the AirPlay icon showed up and I could AirPlay it to the TV just fine.

I know that there are KB/s requirements to enabling the AirPlay icon in the QuickTime Player, but this is the SAME FILE on the SAME COMPUTER. So, why is it functioning in one area and not another.

The problem gets more annoying too. On some of my computers, AirPlay is not enabled for some videos and on other Macs, it appears enabled as expected

Just yesterday, I used 4KDownloader to download this video at what I thought was 1080p.

Note: Name of video is included because this is what you do when reporting an issue that you expect any person helping you to try and reproduce the issue.

"Keynote Presentation The Outlook for Vanadium Supply Demand Projections and Analysis"

I open the file up in the QuickTime Player and there's no AirPlay icon. So, I decide to run a test and compare file size and resolution against whether the QuickTime Player displays the AirPlay icon or doesn't.

Since I had specified the video to be downloaded at 1080p, I label the video as such and then export copies at 720p and 480p from QuickTime Player.

Names, file sizes and average bitrate are supplied below.

For the record, I am looking directly at the TV and typing on the MBP (Which has 32 GB of RAM).

File name

Keynote Presentation The Outlook for Vanadium Supply Demand Projections and Analysis

WHAT?

OK. It turns out that the video on YouTube only goes up to 720p in resolution. Neither the original or the exported 720p file allow AirPlay when opened in the QuickTime Player. But exporting it as 480p, the file size and bitrate is 3x what the larger dimension files are!! And oddly enough it's the file with this 3x greater bandwidth where AirPlay actually is enabled!

What? How? WHY?! This is counterintuitive. The 3x bitrate file allows AirPlay while the smaller ones don't?

Is the AirPlay option displayed when the file is opened in QuickTime on my 2023 MBP?

WHAT?

Of the two files exported from the QuickTime Player, the one with the bandwidth that is 3x larger than the source file and whose dimensions are the smallest is the only one that works on my Apple TV which is hooked up to a 4K 72" display? WHAT?

OK. So I have multiple Macs, but this MBP is my studliest. Let's copy the files over to my 2020 Mac Mini which has 16 GB of RAM and test if the AirPlay icon is displayed in the QuickTime Player for the same files.

Is the AirPlay option displayed when the file is opened in QuickTime on my 2020 Mac Mini?

WHAT?!

On the weaker machine, ALL VIDEOS have AirPlay enabled!

How? Why?!

Mind boggling. On my most overpowered machine, AirPlay is not enabled in QuickTime for the SAME FILES and is enabled for all of the files on an older weaker Mac?

Can you see why I'm trying to determine just what the requirements are for AirPlay to be enabled within the QuickTime Player?

The requirements for Airplay don't even seem to be documented anywhere on Apple's sites either.

I'm trying to use AirPlay to demo to business partners just how competent our Apple solution is and not only are the criteria of what the requirements are are undocumented, it's maddening trying to figure out if your videos are AirPlay enabled AND they vary depending on which device is used to attempt to initiate AirPlay!

Just where are the AirPlay requirements documented and what are they? I can't use this to stream to from Mac to TV for business partners if it's going to be a crapshoot whether it works or not!

Can anyone help solve this and point me to the actual requirements for a video that allow AirPlay to be enabled within the QuickTime Player??

Thank you. This is beyond frustrating.

[Edited by Moderator]