June 23 2007 General Meeting: AppleTV
© Lawrence Charters
Washington Apple Pi Journal, Vol. 29, no. 5, September-October 2007, pp. 30-31.
June is one of those months that, thunderstorms and heat advisories aside, people tend to associate with the outdoors. But the Pi is a computer group, so we thought about: television. And telephones. And computers, too.
During the opening Question and Answer session, there were a number of questions about the iPhone, due a week after the meeting. A show of hands indicated quite a few people were interested in the iPhone, though some privately admitted they weren’t sure why beyond “it looks cool.” Many of the questions and answers concerned photography, a logical carryover from the May meeting, and upgrades. Only one person admitted to running something other than Mac OS X.
As a prelude to the main event, Travis Good gave an excellent overview of Apple’s Digital Hub strategy. Since Steve Jobs first announced this strategy several years ago, he has left millions of computer users, computer consultants, and journalists scratching their heads. Travis managed to give the most sensible briefing on the topic yet presented, showing how iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie have sparked a massive industry migration, moving photos, music, and video to computers. This migration has triggered astonishing growth in the market for very large hard drives, the near-death of the photo film industry, and iPod ownership that may soon reach every man, woman, child, and pet on the planet.
With this terrific lead, Pat Fauquet stepped in to talk about AppleTV. Armed with an inexpensive HD TV screen, a formidable collection of data and TV cables, and a MacBook Pro laptop, Pat described how all the pieces came together. Gremlins presented some of the pieces from coming together (for reasons never clear, the AppleTV never did show the slightest interest in seeing Pat’s high-definition TV), but it was still somewhat startling to see the tiny AppleTV stream video over WiFi from Pat’s laptop and then project it on the movie screen at the front of the room.
Though she didn’t mention it, many in the audience were fascinated that all of this was possible using just the small, simple Apple Remote, a fraction of the size and with about a fifth of the buttons found on a “normal” TV remote. “Why can’t regular TV be this simple?” one person asked rhetorically, as Pat flipped from podcasts to music to movies to TV programs. She also lavished praise on AppleTV for showing photos, pointing out that even snapshots look amazing when blasted up on the big screen.
Hal Cauthen closed with a demonstration of how to save content – iMovie videos and slideshows created with iPhoto – for presentation on AppleTV. Hal didn’t yet own an AppleTV, but discovered the process was simple: support for AppleTV is, implicitly and explicitly, built-in to iMovie, iPhoto, and QuickTime Pro. Hal’s notes:
First, we opened iPhoto, selected a few slides of Pat’s grandson in the bath, then clicked on the Slideshow icon, and iPhoto obliged by instantly creating a new slideshow. After briefly showing the features of iPhoto — the effects tab, how to change transitions between slides, how to choose a song from iTunes as a soundtrack for your slideshow, and, after a bit of a search, how to set and turn on/off the Ken Burns effect — we choose File>Export>Large. This creates a 640 X 480 QuickTime version of your slideshow. Import it into iTunes, and if it will play in iTunes it will play via Apple TV. According to the Apple Discussion Forum for iPhoto, this is the highest quality you can now achieve via iPhoto. If you want a smaller file, with minimum loss of quality, open this file in Quicktime Pro, and choose File>Export>Movie to Apple TV. This will create a file roughly half the size, with minimal loss of quality.
With iMovie, you have more options, and can export at higher quality. First, create your slideshow/movie. From within iMovie, choose the Media button, then Photos. This accesses your iPhoto Library. Choose the images you want to import, first be careful to decide whether you want the Ken Burns effect on or off at this stage. If you have the Ken Burns effect on, all images you bring in from iPhoto will come in with the current Ken Burns setting — if it’s a pan from “in to out,” all will be from “in to out.” If you want more control, turn on the Ken Burns effect, be sure to check that it’s set to import the full frame, then import your slides into iMovie. At this point you can add the Ken Burns effect to each slide individually, zooming in on some, out on others, panning or zooming as it fits the picture. Once you are satisfied with your slideshow, click on Media, then choose Audio, and select a song or songs for your soundtrack. Create opening and closing titles, and you’re done.
Then choose File>Export>Expert Setting. (This assumes you have QuickTime Pro). A dialogue will open, which allows you to name the file, and pick where you want to save it. Choose Export>Movie to Apple TV, and your movie will be saved automatically using codecs optimized for Apple TV.
With the Export to Apple TV setting in QuickTime Pro, Apple has provided a simple, elegant, and inexpensive way to optimize your slideshows or movies for viewing via Apple TV.