This isn’t normally something we talk about here at WOTC, but I wanted to throw it out here so Google can find it.
I had some friends in from out of town this weekend, and naturally conversation drifted to tech stuff. My friends each have an AppleTV. They use handbrake to convert their media into m4v format using the AppleTV preset. The problem they were having was that they couldn’t convert more than one file at a time using the gui. Turns out, there is a command-line version of handbrake.
Since all I do all day at work is automate things like this, I whipped up a script in VBS:
strSourceFolder = "c:source"
strDestFolder = "c:dest"
strHandBrake = """C:Program FilesHandbrakeHandbrakeCLI.exe"""
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set wshShell = WScript.CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" )
set objSourceFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(strSourceFolder)
For each objFile in objSourceFolder.files
strCommandLine = strHandBrake & " -i """ & objFile.path & _
""" -o """ & strDestFolder & "" & objFile.Name & ".m4v"" --preset=""AppleTV"""
wscript.echo strCommandLine
wshShell.run strCommandLine, 1, True
objFile.delete
next
Copy the above code into notepad and name the file something.vbs. Change the three variables at the top based on your situation, and double-click the .vbs file. What this does is scans the “C:Source” folder for files, then runs the handbrake conversion to m4v. It puts the completed file in “c:dest” and then deletes the original file. Then it moves to the next file in the folder and converts that one. It continues until all the files are finished.
Anyway, thought this might be useful to the three other AppleTV users out there.
Hey now… I resemble that remark.
With Boxee, AppleTV is just about the best media streamer there is; it’s TOTALLY the best media streamer you can get for under $250, or that doesn’t require a full OS install.
I have a PS3 that does the job on the fly without needing conversion.
So do I, but my PS3 doesnt work with Hulu, or iTunes.
It DOES work with Netflix, but not well.
Personally, I use XBMC on an original xbox that I bought for $50. It’ll play ANYTHING, but it’s starting to show it’s age. HD mkv files stutter.