Comments on: Liberate Your Memories: Home Movies on Your Apple TV

By: Pete

Pete — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:17:15 +0000

I'm thinking of buying an Apple TV. All of my HD home movies were downloaded to iMovie on my Mac Book initially from my HD Video Camera Hard Drive. Right now I do not have a good way to play my HD home movies since I can't burn HD DVDs. Will I be able to play my home movies in HD via Apple TV or will it be in a degraded video quallity? Thanks for the help.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:40:28 +0000

Hi Weldon – great article – and I’ve already downloaded HandBrake and MetaX!

From your experience – what Tags in MetaX produce the best results for browsing your movies as episodes in a TV Show on your Apple TV?

I ‘m not seeing the Episode Title – just “Home Movies” and “Home Movies” – what info do you put in Title, Show, Season, Episode ID etc in MetaX.

Keep up the good work!

By: Safe and Sound Video

Safe and Sound Video — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:06:51 +0000

What a great idea – setting up your movies in season/episode format.

I am in the process of digitizing all my family movies and storing them on several external drives. I may borrow your idea – thanks!

By: Jeff Zylstra

Jeff Zylstra — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:19:14 +0000

Thanks for the great article and fantastic suggestions. I particularly like the idea of organizing home videos as a tv series. Perfect!

Over the holidays I began the laborious project of cataloging my family’s miniDV memories onto my Mac for the purpose of doing exactly as you have described. What a great use for our under-utilized Apple TV! In the process of importing all of the footage, my Sony miniDV camera died — with only five tapes left! So now I am in the market for a new video camera. With keeping a Mac-friendly, Apple TV-based collection being my primary objective, could you suggest a new video camera? HD or SD? MPEG or AVCHD or H.264? Tapes or tapeless? Any advice would be appreciated.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:16:11 +0000

I am looking to do something similar. How much room does Apple TV have. Can I write my movies to an external HD?

By: Weldon Dodd

Weldon Dodd — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:38:13 +0000

iMovie ’08 has better support for HDD camcorders. You can find a list of tested camcorders here… http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014 – that may be the simplest method, but iLife 08 costs money. MPEG Streamclip can help you convert the mepg2 files, but you might try the development snapshot of Handbrake. The support for other input files is new, but Handbrake’s preset for AppleTV will give you the best picture with the smallest file sizes.

By: Lee Webb

Lee Webb — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:45:49 +0000

What can I use for storing my home movies other than iMovie? My movies are in mpeg2 format (HDD camcorder). What format do they need to be converted to to work in iTunes/Apple TV?

FYI, I’ve had too many problems with iMovie. The last time I tried to connect the camcorder, iMovie refused to see it. I don’t really have a need or desire to edit my home movies, so what else can I use?

Can I literally drag and drop from the Cam and then convert the file format?

Thanks