My home movies load, but won't start (home sharing)

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Level 1

25 points

My home movies load, but won't start (home sharing)

Hi everyone,

I've been using AppleTV for the past five years, upgrading over the years from the previous versions that could only play 720p content to the latest unit, that can play 1080p movies. I have an iMac with four USB drives connected, holding some 6Tb+ of movies. Tthese are family vacation videos (encoded with H264 in 1080p at 23Mbps).

My ATV is connected to my iMac (10.9.5) (which runs iTunes 12.2 w/Home Sharing) via Gigabit Ethernet cable through the latest Airport Extreme.

Here is what works on my AppleTV:

- Netflix, iTunes Rentals, HBO Go - they all stream almost instantly and work fine. Running a Network Test through Settings confirms that streaming speed is not an issue.

The problem lies in Home Sharing. When attempting to play back some of the movies, they will indeed load - the ATV playhead will appear, and the load bar will grow quite quickly as the movie loads, but it never starts playing. The play/pause icon is the spinning "loading" animation. Pressing Play/Pause on the ATV remote does nothing.

These movies play just fine on my iMac, and just as well on my iPhone and iPad when using Videos -> Shared -> Home Sharing. They load almost instantly on my iPad Air 2. Attempting to "AirPlay" the movie off my iPad to my ATV causes the same issue. The screenshot of the movie in its current position will appear on the screen, so will the playhead. However, the spinning "loading" bar will remain and the movie won't start.

I'm able to skip chapters, and a screenshot off that chapter instantly appears on ATV, but it won't play.

Thus far, I have tried the following:

- Updated the software on my iMac

- Updated the software on my ATV

- Updated the software on my Airport Extreme (even though this has no effect, as my iMac and ATV are connected via ethernet)

- Uninstalled iTunes from my iMac completely. Reinstalled it, and re-added all movies to my library from scratch.

- Ran Disk Utility on my iMac to ensure the four external HDDs connected to my iMac that hold the movies are in good running order

- Reset my ATV to factory settings, and reinstalled latest software

- Replaced my ATV with another ATV (that I use at work), and performed the same hard reset

- Replaced the ethernet cables from my iMac/Airport Extreme/ATV

- Replaced the external HDD that held some of the movies that would fail to play with a new HDD, and re-added those movies to the iTunes library

- Turned off "Share files on my local network" in iTunes settings

At this point I'm at a loss. For some reason or another, ALL of my movies used to play perfectly fine up until the latest ATV/iTunes updates.

I would welcome any other suggestions any of you may have. I'm hoping the newest ATV just announced may remedy the issue, but I'm not holding my breath.

Posted on Sep 13, 2015 4:32 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 13, 2015 4:40 AM in response to gordonf238

Those data rates are far higher than they need to be and suggest they may even be encoded using a complexity profile that isn't supported by the Apple TV, exactly what settings do you use (include the level and the type of profile used)

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Answer 2

gordonf238 Author

Level 1

25 points

Sep 13, 2015 4:49 AM in response to Winston Churchill

As I understand it, Apple TV (3rd gen), which sports a single-core A5 processor, can decode videos at level 4.0 (25Mbps). None of my home videos exceed 23.5Mbps, and used to play perfectly fine over the last three years. Do you know if anything has changed in the latest ATV Firmware update? It's either that, or something in iTunes 12 and Home Sharing needs to be troubleshot.

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Answer 3

Sep 13, 2015 5:17 AM in response to gordonf238

That's correct, if that's what you are using, but the data rate is wholly unnecessary for what you are doing which suggests that might not be the case. Just because something played before doesn't mean it conformed to the specifications.

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Answer 4

gordonf238 Author

Level 1

25 points

Oct 5, 2015 2:58 PM in response to Winston Churchill

HI Winston. Unnecessary or not, those bit rates are well within ATV3's specs. I was finally able to figure it out. My wifi signal, giving ATV roughly 30Mbps of bandwidth wasn't sufficient. Plugging it into Ethernet resolved the issue. All the more reason to stick with wired connections for 1080p content.

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