[bluewooster]

MaestroDD,
Thanks for the information. I'm glad to see that others notice the difference as well. Does altering the value for skiploopfilter improve quality (I'm guessing the lower the better?) or do I need to delete the entire skiploopfilter line? Has anyone else had success altering this value?
Blue

[MaestroDD]

Possible values for skiploopfilter can be found here (values in enum AVDiscard).
0 disables it (best quality, slowest), 48 discards most (worst quality, fastest). IIRC this is not documented in the wiki yet :/

[bluewooster]

Thanks MaestroDD, I changed the setting to zero and there is an improvement. If pressed, I'd still say the appletv looks better (less pixelated and smoother) playing the mp4 than xbmc but the difference is certainly less noticeable. I think I'll try using alternative settings to see if I can get it even closer.
Blue

[jeparkinson]

I also I'm having the same issue. Blocky and very rough looking to the trained eye. My video look very smooth running them though the Main Apple TV Menu. I also have Boxee running and it looked very smooth until this weekend when I reloaded my ATV update ATVFLASH 3.3.4 and then setup Boxee again. Now it looks like XBMC does. Very blocky. I changed the value from 48 to 0 in the advancedsetting.xml but very little change. Something else must need set different? Again my video are nowhere close to the quaility of the ATV Main Menu. Please help with a solution? I'm encoding my video's to H.264 (.m4v) with file sizes between 1.8g-2.6g and a bit rate of 2300+. Thanks!

Example - When the movie starts with the DreamWorks SGK opening with the boy in the clouds and then the Paramount Logo in the sky you can clearly see the blocky artifacts .... That goes on though out the movie in mostly solid areas. Like all I play in XBMC/BOXEE. It is definitely the rendering (decoding) of the movie in XBMC/BOXEE because when played back from the ATV Main Menu the movie looks smooth and sharp. It looks like Hi-Def per-say next to XBMC/BOXEE. Please let me know how to fix this. Unless its just something that can't be fix? I enjoy using XBMC and hope it just gets better. Thank you!

[davilla]

advancedsetting.xml changes require quitting and restarting XBMC to take effect.

I would need to get a sample of the video content to see if it's a user setting issue or some other problem.

[Seagoon]

Did anyone else with this issue have to adjust the screen size due to overscan? I know I did on my Apple TV on a 720P LCD screen.

I just wonder if this makes the issue worse.

[jeparkinson]

advancedsetting.xml ......I did quit and restart XBMC. That did little changed like I noted. I can encode 1 chapter or something if you would like to see my video file. I haven't really tried playing them on my macs to see what they look like because I use XBMC mainly on my ATV for what I need. I will try it on my macs and let you know. Also how do I send you the video file or do you want me to post it on my iDisk page for you to download? Thanks for your help. Hopefully we can get this figured out because XBMC is a very awesome program if not the best in my opinion. Thanks again!

[jeparkinson]

To change video quality on ATV. I have found that the correct setting in the advancedsetting.xml file should be changed from 48 to 8 . Not 0. That will not fix the quality of playback. Again change setting from 48 to 8 and see the light. Hope that helps everyone. XBMC ROCKS!!!

I figure this out after reading the ffmeg setting page. Thanks for the link XBMC TEAM. Without that I would be lost figuring it out.

Enjoy! and Please update the ATV XBMC download to have this value set at 8 for future users. Thanks again guys!

Guarantee Night and Day from your current viewing on ATV.

[Seagoon]

Thanks, I'll give it a go tonight.

[Seagoon]

Thanks jeparkinson - changing the value to 8 worked like a charm.

[Greenid]

Does the skiploopfilter setting also work on XBMC for mac (MacMini in my case) or is it only for the AppleTV?

[jeparkinson]

It will also fix it on your mac computers. On the MacBook and MacBook Pro's it hard to see but it does fix it. The only reason it does is because XBMC's player is built-in. It does not use quicktime player for anything. From what I read they use ffmeg to handle video. Trust me at first I was going nuts with the rough video quality until i was told about the skiploopfilter. In other post they were telling people to try setting it from 48 to 0 to fix issue. That did not work. After reading over the the setting ffmeg allows which is 4 different ones. The answer was to go with 8 not 0. 0 over looks some things needed for playback. So give it a try and you will see the difference. Enjoy!

[rcrh]

Well, I too have had problems with higher res x.264 files.

I've tried making this change and have had no success.

The files I'm having problems with were encoded with mediacoder using the AppleTV profile. This should give me files that the aTV can play natively (other then my use of MKV container). But, I get studdering from dropped frames.

Its looking like I'm going to have to give up on the aTV and move on to a mac mini.

There goes a couple of hundred bucks!

[jeparkinson]

I'm only encoding standard DVD's using MacTheRipper and Handbrake to encode H.264.
Changing the skiploopfilter to 8 will make a difference on the playback. I have some HD DVD's and BlueRay Rips but at 720p mkv I've always had alittle problem with playback being jumpy. So I only worry about DVD's for now.

My encode settings for HandBrake are....
Format : MP4 File using H.264 (x264) Framerate : Same as source (23.976) Target Size : Between 1800-2600 Check : 2-pass filter

Audio: Track1 AC3 5.1 Track2 Dolby Pro Logic II +AC3 Bitrate : 160 Sample Rate: 48

Ref Frames: 3 Motion Est. Method: Uneven Multi-Hexagon Motion Est Range: 24 Subpixel Motion Est: 7 B-Frames: 7 Analysis:All Deblocking: -1 -1
No Fast-P-Skip: check Bidirectional Refinement: check

Picture Size - Anamorphic - Strict

This is what I use for standard DVD's and the video is very sharp. Again with the skiploopfilter at anything but 8 you get blocky look throughout video. I'm using a 32"lcd and 50"Plasma so you can see the difference like night and day. On a 24" imac down.. I'll agree it can be hard to see difference usless you look closely. I've also tried other formats from avi to mkv and it does make a difference. But again I encode everything with MP4 H.264 because it looks better I think. Enjoy!!!

[rodstrod]

I'm going to try the skip loop filter on my mac mini....just to see if smooths things out....i get some blocking on animations, "Incredibles" for example at 720p....I know I need to create the advancedsettings.xml, whats the settings I need to put in there <skiploopfilter>8<skiploopfilter/>?

thanks for any help