Airplay Video quality and buffering

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Level 1

1 points

Airplay Video quality and buffering

I'm new to apple TV and am trying to watch my home movies (holidays etc) over airpay. However, I've found that if I try to watch in Full HD there's a considerable amount of buffering (2-3 mins) before the movie will start to play, and if I skip if buffers again. Basically is seems any file over 1.2GB struggles. I can convert the video using a lower bitrate etc which reduces the file size, but then obviously you lose quality.

Is there a way of playing Full HD video of large file sizes without buffering, or a way of compressing the video files without losing picture quality? I've tried MP4 and .MOV but the file sizes are very large.

TIA

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on May 3, 2013 5:07 AM

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Answer 1

mario49

Community Specialist

May 6, 2013 6:42 AM in response to snerkler1

Morning snerkler1,

Troubleshooting AirPlay and AirPlay Mirroring has a good section called Troubleshooting performance issues with AirPlay or AirPlay Mirroring.

Also buffering compensates for variations in connection speed, resulting in smoother playback. So the larger the file the more it will need to buffer.

Hope this helps,

Mario

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Answer 2

snerkler1 Author

Level 1

1 points

May 6, 2013 8:52 AM in response to mario49

Thanks for the help, but this did not solve my problem. I have found a workaround though which is satisfactory.

What I've found that ideally the bitrate needs to be around 15, 20 and above it struggles regardless of file size. I tried converting with wondershare with a lower bitrate (eg original bitrate 23, converted 15) but the quality was noticeably worse. I tried passthrough using quicktime pro 7, but as you'd expect the bitrate didn't alter.

What I found by trial and error was to open the original .mov file using quicktime player 10 (10.2), go to file > Export and in the format dropdown select 1080p. The exported movie has a lower bitrate with no/VERY VERY little loss in video quality. These then play over airplay with no lag/buffering 😎

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