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High Definition Review and Approval with Apple TV

Image courtesy Apple

My production company, like many of yours, has jumped with both feet into the HD waters.  Production is easier than ever with great tapeless acquisition formats.  Post keeps getting simpler with powerful desktop solutions and great breakout boxes.  Seems like the only place it really falls apart is the client review stage.

Sure, you can compress HD clips for web delivery.  Problem is most clients don’t have the monitor resolution, RAM, etc. to view HD (and don’t even get me started on color and contrast issues with the average PC monitor).  You could burn a Blu-ray disc, except at $12 a pop (plus rush courier) that gets pretty expensive (and time consuming). So what’s a discerning post company to do? No the answer is not VHS… it’s Apple TV.

What is Apple TV

Right now your either nodding your head in agreement or shaking it in disbelief.  The Apple TV seems to be one of only a few products to come out of Apple that didn’t achieve rave reviews and mass success. Steve Jobs even referred to Apple TV as a “hobby” but don’t let that fool you.  This under-performer is more like the Cube and less like the ROKR.

Apple shipped the Apple TV in March of 2007.  The product received fair reviews, but not widespread adoption.  Fortunately the product received a major overhaul the following year (called Take Two) with tons of new features and stability added.  The product is designed from the ground up to be a media lover’s dream:

• 40 or 160 GB hard drive
• HDMI or Component Video connections (DVI with adapter)
• WiFi connection (G & N speed)
• HD playback (up to 1280 X 720)

image by David Kidd

We’ll explore the tech specs in greater detail in a moment.  First though… why should you care? Let’s take a look at 3 scenarios we employ that make the $229 or $329 price tag a no-brainer.

Within the Edit Facility

A typical scenario is the need to review an edit.  This might be an internal review with a producer or with the client present.  While there are certainly times to pull everyone into the edit suite, that approach often leads to your money generating rooms being tied up for long meetings. An easier approach that we employ is to drop an Apple TV into your conference room or producer bullpen.

What makes this approach work is Wi-Fi and Ethernet.  You can connect up to 6 machines right through iTunes to the Apple TV. One library is Paired (and supports syncing) and the other five are Shared (which allows for streaming or progressive download). The only requirement is that you have iTunes up to date and the computers on the same network (connection types can be either Wi-Fi or Ethernet).  When you launch iTunes you can choose to connect to the Apple TV and just enter the code you are given to pair the devices.

Once they’re paired, it’s a snap.  You can browse the shared machines iTunes library right through the Apple TV.  All this means is that you need to export a MPEG-4 file using an Apple TV preset and drop it in your iTunes library.  We simply hook up our edit suites right to the Apple TV so the editor can just drop review copies into their library.  This process is fast too, just add an Elgato Turbo.264 HD and your movies are ready in faster than real-time (more later on this cool device).

Back in the conference room, you can browse the connected libraries and look for clips to watch.  The editor can even make a playlist with multiple items queued up for your session.  While it may seem like extra work, we find its more profitable to let the edit suites edit and to review rough cuts and screeners in the conference room.  You should reserve the edit suite reviews for color-critical viewing and listening to the final mix.

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