Only last week I purchased Popcorn. I bet they are not offering an upgrade for me to this crunch for free. I mean really it is just a Popcorn upgrade not a new product.
I purchased Popcorn so that I could make a copy of one of my DVD's that was being difficult and would not copy with Handbrake. But the quality of Popcorn's rip to one file was not as good as Handbrake. So I used the feature of Popcorn that lets you rip the DVD main feature to another DVD without compression. That worked. I then used Handbrake to to rip that file to mp4. That worked... well sort of. The video was in excellent quality but there was no sound. So I went back to Popcorn, ripped the DVD to mp4, used Quicktime to extract the Audio into AIFF format and then used iMovie to put the Video and Audio together. It was not easy but it worked and now I have a really good quality H.264 encoded copy of a video that I could previously not copy.
So based on my experience with Popcorn's quality I am in no rush to buy another Roxio product that might have poor video conversion abilities. I am very happy with Handbrake for most ripping and if I really need to I now have a method for those hard to copy disks. Yay.
Apple tv and iTunes/Quicktime formats are Apple's way of standardizing video for the web. Apple wants to own and be synonymous with digital content on the web. ... And it is working... The bigger Apple tv, iPod, iTunes and iPhone become, the more we will see native support for Quicktime formats from third parties and websites with digital content.
The problem is that AppleTV and iPod do NOT really support QuickTime. They only support a very, very limited subset of QuickTime codecs. I can see this for the iPod, which in it's current form factor may not be flexible or powerful enough to play all QT codecs. But there is NO EXCUSE for AppleTV to not support all of the Quicktime formats (ie, it should be able to play any format iTunes can play). For example, all of those video clips from my digital camera. You are telling me that I can show my photos from my vacation, but not the videos taken on the same camera? Pretty lame. If FrontRow can play it, AppleTV should play it!
It'd be nice if torrents would start using itunes compatible formats instead of xvid and stuff, then conversions wouldn't be necessary. Looks like a nice program thou, mac the ripper plus this can do pretty much everything I'd need.
I'll reiterate (in case it hasn't been said enough) VisualHub is most likely a better/quicker,cheaper product.
Those are not Apple or Quicktime codecs, they are official standards that any media player besides Quicktime can use. So no lock-in. The Apple TV could play more of the older codecs like DivX (then again: this is a device without a power brick and without any fans, pretty lean), but it's a lot like the first iMac that only supported USB and nothing else. Apple is forcing out old standards.
Regarding this product from Roxio I'm quite skeptical as well. Roxio's software doesn't really have useful interfaces. That red bumper in the lower right corner alone is enough to turn me away. If you want to fill your Apple TV I still think EyeTV is your best choice as long as we don't have DVD ripping functionality in iTunes (which still might come).
Comments
VisualHub is by far the best product out there. It does everything you would ever want.
I totally agree, I just bought it after using iSquint, it's free little brother, for some time now.
I purchased Popcorn so that I could make a copy of one of my DVD's that was being difficult and would not copy with Handbrake. But the quality of Popcorn's rip to one file was not as good as Handbrake. So I used the feature of Popcorn that lets you rip the DVD main feature to another DVD without compression. That worked. I then used Handbrake to to rip that file to mp4. That worked... well sort of. The video was in excellent quality but there was no sound. So I went back to Popcorn, ripped the DVD to mp4, used Quicktime to extract the Audio into AIFF format and then used iMovie to put the Video and Audio together. It was not easy but it worked and now I have a really good quality H.264 encoded copy of a video that I could previously not copy.
So based on my experience with Popcorn's quality I am in no rush to buy another Roxio product that might have poor video conversion abilities. I am very happy with Handbrake for most ripping and if I really need to I now have a method for those hard to copy disks. Yay.
Apple tv and iTunes/Quicktime formats are Apple's way of standardizing video for the web. Apple wants to own and be synonymous with digital content on the web. ... And it is working... The bigger Apple tv, iPod, iTunes and iPhone become, the more we will see native support for Quicktime formats from third parties and websites with digital content.
The problem is that AppleTV and iPod do NOT really support QuickTime. They only support a very, very limited subset of QuickTime codecs. I can see this for the iPod, which in it's current form factor may not be flexible or powerful enough to play all QT codecs. But there is NO EXCUSE for AppleTV to not support all of the Quicktime formats (ie, it should be able to play any format iTunes can play). For example, all of those video clips from my digital camera. You are telling me that I can show my photos from my vacation, but not the videos taken on the same camera? Pretty lame. If FrontRow can play it, AppleTV should play it!
It'd be nice if torrents would start using itunes compatible formats instead of xvid and stuff, then conversions wouldn't be necessary. Looks like a nice program thou, mac the ripper plus this can do pretty much everything I'd need.
I'll reiterate (in case it hasn't been said enough) VisualHub is most likely a better/quicker,cheaper product.
Regarding this product from Roxio I'm quite skeptical as well. Roxio's software doesn't really have useful interfaces. That red bumper in the lower right corner alone is enough to turn me away. If you want to fill your Apple TV I still think EyeTV is your best choice as long as we don't have DVD ripping functionality in iTunes (which still might come).