Roxio Crunch fills Apple TV DivX gap

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 09 May 2007 08:23

Business IT - Technology

Crunch, a new Mac utility from Toast developer Roxio, claims to provide a quick and easy way of preparing videos for playback via an Apple TV.

While various techniques have been devised for adding extra codecs to the Apple TV (eg Loader), the job entails messing with the device's hardware at least once, so it's not for the faint-hearted.

For Mr and Ms Public, it currently makes more sense to use a computer to transcode the videos into a format playable by the Apple TV. And that's where Crunch comes in.

It takes content in a range of formats including DV, AVI, MOV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and DivX (plus non-encrypted DVD-Video, either directly from a disc, a disc image file, or a VIDEO_TS folder) and outputs MPEG-4 or H.264 files with quality settings to suit the Apple TV, iPod or iPhone. Those files are automatically added to the iTunes library so they can be synced to the external device.

Usefully, the program lets the user queue up a list of files to be processed in one batch.

"Apple TV, iPod and iPhone are part of a new wave of devices that provide consumers with a broader range of options for how and where they enjoy their personal entertainment" said Vito Salvaggio, vice president, Mac Business Unit, Sonic Solutions. "We are pleased to offer consumers an easy way for enjoying all their video content on these exciting new Apple devices."

Crunch for Mac OS X is available for download at the introductory price of $US39.95. Minimum requirements include a G4 or Intel CPU (it's a universal binary), Mac OS X 10.4.9, QuickTime 7.1.5 and iTunes 7.1.1.

The boxed product - due by the end of June - will be a dual-platform version for Mac and Windows.