NOTE: As of 4/18/2010 Developer Snapshots have been replaced by the Nightly Builds.
So, while the latest HandBrake public release 0.9.4 is now coming up on its 5 month anniversary it is worth mentioning that the HandBrake project is … less than regular or even prompt with public releases. This is obvious to any regular HandBrake users. Part of this is due to the fact that in true OSS fashion HandBrake is developed by volunteer developers on their own free time … time which is pretty much limited to whenever they can find it which can be sporadic at best. It is also further complicated by trying to coordinate three Graphical User Interfaces (gui’s) … ie Mac, Linux, Windows and one Command Line Interface as well as the associated documentation that is expected of a “Public Release”. Coordinating all of this is rather monumental for a project with limited resources like HandBrake however what most people do not realize is that there are things going on “behind the scenes” that the average HandBrake user might not be aware of.
The HandBrake Trac: I suspect that most users are not aware of the Trac which is available for anyone to read. This documents everything that is changed in the HandBrake codebase. As you can plainly see by viewing the trac link above, HandBrake developers are actually quite busy advancing the software …. sometimes contrary to popular opinion.
Developer Snapshots: While anyone is welcome to compile the latest HandBrake svn revision (would be the most recent Trac commit) from source, it was recognized that A.) many users do not know how to compile code and B.) really do not want to. So the HandBrake Devs decided to create Developer Snapshots and announce them on the HandBrake forums . These are ready to download binaries of HandBrake in all of its flavors sans up to date documentation. The idea was that these might be unstable but were quicker to put out than public releases and would give developers valuable feedback for bugs … etc. ( though in common practice tend to be more stable than the last public release but as usual your mileage may vary). These “Developer Snapshots” are svn revisions decided by the HandBrake Devs to be pretty much stable and having general UI parity so deemed stable enough to release to the users. This also means however that some developer agreement and coordination is necessary to produce these.
Nightly Builds: As of late it was realized that the very cutting edge of HandBrake code was still not available to those wishing to run HandBrake on the “ragged edge” of development. So, in response the HandBrake project now has nightly builds available to the public. Now these builds are computer generated by the HandBrake servers each night from the latest code committed to the svn. This is as close to current HandBrake as you can get without actually compiling the code for yourself. It’s exciting but also can be risky as it will have the latest code with all of its improvements but also with all of its faults ( usually corrected in the next nightly).
I can tell you that I do all of my personal video encoding using the latest HandBrake svn ( which is pretty much mirrored in the nightlies) and rarely if ever have trouble. Having said that as it says in the nightly post … do not expect support for nightlies. They are computer generated at a given time (4 am. in France) and may or may not contain errors, issues or whatnot.
My Point: Given the rather large time spans between “Official Public Releases” of HandBrake do not draw the conclusion that the project is languishing or dead … in fact far from it as is evidenced by the Trac Timeline. If you wish to play it safe then use the latest public release. However if you wish to “walk on the wild side” the HandBrake project aims to offer what you want … Good, Bad or Otherwise!
AtvCloner 0.1.4 is now available which is compatible with Snow Leopard ( OS X 10.6) . You can find it here .
AtvCloner 0.1.4b is NOT Snow Leopard Compatible. I am currently testing a new version that is compatible with both Leopard and Snow Leopard. I will update here when it is released.
This AtvCloner update addresses the dreaded error:
newfs_hfs: /dev/rdisk2s4: partition size not a multiple of 4K.
accompanied by a failure to properly format the media partition error which is typically seen on drives > 500GB (though may be experienced on smaller drives depending on firmware). You will notice a checkbox next to the “Prepare New Drive” Button for “Large Drive Formatting” ( sue me, I didn’t know what else to call it ). This uses an alternate method of drive formatting which cures my problem child and has worked on a couple other drives with this issue. The caveat is that it creates a media partition approximately 300 mb smaller than the standard AtvCloner method due to diskutil creating 128 mb of free space before and after the media partition. On the other hand it works ( so far ) for those problem drives. I will try to elaborate more later. You can get AtvCloner 0.1.4b here.
Edit: This problem has been solved with AtvCloner 0.1.4b ! Am happily using the problem child and it works perfectly!
Of the six or so drives I have tested and used AtvCloner on, one drive is indeed my problem child. My Western Digital 750GB Studio Edition external triple interface drive has never worked quite right when attached to my atv whether using the old manual command line method or using AtvCloner. Now AtvCloner actually uses the same system utilities that the command line uses so it makes sense that the problem exists with either method. This issue has been experienced by others, I also heard about it in a response to
my eSata AppleTV Mod on the HandBrake forums.
The issue is that the last step of formatting the Media partition in hfs+ and the volume name “Media” fails with this error (note, it shows up manually in terminal with that method as well as in the activity window in AtvCloner) :
newfs_hfs: /dev/rdisk2s4: partition size not a multiple of 4K.
which means that step has failed. This results in a diskutil list like this:
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *698.6 Gi disk2
1: EFI 34.0 Mi disk2s1
2: Apple_Recovery 400.0 Mi disk2s2
3: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 Mi disk2s3
4: Apple_HFS 697.3 Gi disk2s4
Note that partition index 4 is indeed Apple_HFS but is not correctly named “Media”. The resulting behavior when attached to the Atv is that the drive boots up just fine, works fine and in fact can update its atv software just fine, however a Factory Restore will fail. I have run this drive just fine, but it bugs me that it’s “not quite right” so using a bit of google-fu I found a few items of interest that point to the problem, however nothing as a workaround yet for these problem drives.
Update: A new version of AtvCloner is in testing, it seems to fix this problem as I have successfully restored my problem child and updated it successfully. Its a bit of a kludge but works. More to come …..
Another quick minor update to AtvCloner which adds preferences to scan all disks at launch as well as alert you with a system beep and alert window when it is finished. This update also makes it easier to use as it remembers the last browsed directories instead of always defaulting to the DeskTop. AtvCloner 0.1.3 can be downloaded here.
AtvCloner updated to version 0.1.2.
This minor update just adds “AtvCloner Website” and “AtvCloner User Guide” to the help menu so you can access these resources from within the app. See the change log to review changes.
So, since there have been a few requests trickling in I figured I better put up some kind of a user guide for AtvCloner. It needs some work but should give the basics for anyone that is at all familiar with the old school command line methods for prepping a new drive for use with the AppleTV.
The guide is here but be sure to read the main AtvCloner page if you haven’t and intend to use it since it has a few things about it which are not in the user guide. As well I figured I should post a change log to help keep track of what I changed from rev to rev, even if it’s only for my own benefit.
Note: You can also access any pages via the pages bar at the top of the site.
Okay, so having used several different drives with the AppleTV (both internal and eSata external) I got tired of constantly using terminal to image the original drive and then format the new drive. I can use the cli terminal commands just fine, but as I said I am lazy. So I wrote a small gui utility that does it for me called AtvCloner. You can read about and download it here.
Now, I have had good success with it on five different drives on a vanilla install of 10.5.7 Mac OSX Leopard but I make no warranties it will work for you. However, feel free to give it a try and if it works drop me a line. Be sure to read the guarantee part because like anything free … there isn’t one of any sort.
Currently it is at version 0.1.1 which of course indicates it isn’t even alpha yet (and maybe never will be). Hopefully it works for you and saves a lot of headache.
Cheers.