2tb of .AVI Video Help

[spacedoutmoomin]

Hey Guys/Girls, could do with some of your advice..

I have 2TB of Video - Movies/Tv Shows/Sports on one external drive... It is all non tagged and not titled correctly. I would like to start the mamouth task of sorting it all out and would like some advice on how to go about this so I can have it all organized by iTunes and stream to my apple tv, but still stored on my external drive..

(My itunes library is stored locally on both of my MBP and iMac, the same music)


I Know of a few options..

Creating a .MOV file referance and importing it that way.

Using a program to convert it all, although im pretty sure this is a process that will take months/years... but I am open to suggestions on good programs?!

Is there a program to Tag/Sort my media thats actually on the external drive before I take it into itunes/apple tv

Whats the trick with MetaX.. just seems to crash all of the time?!

and Lastly, what is the best place to get artwork from?

Any help/advice/ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance
Joe

 

[tom1971]

Why don't you patch your ATV, attach it to aTV via USB and use Sapphire to categorize your movies ?

 

[paulinhadrp]

I´ve recently done a similar set-up to what you´re looking for.
I have 1TB of media on a Western Digital External Hard drive and am streaming it to my Apple TV via my Macbook iTunes library.

I had to go through some trial and error to get there though, and still am not exactly where I wanted to be in terms of this set up.
In a perfect world, it would all work seamlessly if I could hook the External Drive to my Time Capsule (which is also used as a router), and load my iTunes library wirelessly from that drive. However, this has proven me to be VERY problematic, especially now that I´m adding all of my movies, tagging them, and streaming them to my AppleTV. It seems to be way more activity than a wireless setup of this kind can handle (either that, or my Time Capsule sucks), and it caused my iTunes to crash constantly, but theoretically it would be a perfect setup. I am planning to try that out again later, after I´m done with all of the adding and tagging. This setup, if it works, would be ideal for you, since I assume you want to be able to use your iTunes library from both your computers; However, I recommend that you first try the wired route.

Hook your external drive directly to one of the computers and in your iTunes preferences, change the location of your iTunes Library. (Instructions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449)

Then, if you don´t want to hack your Apple TV, you will have to convert your files to .m4v or mp4. I'm sorry, it is kind of a hassle, but you will find it is easier than you think, since you can leave a few videos running every morning when you go to work and also some others when you go to sleep (that's what I do... in 2 weeks, I´ve done more than 150 movies already). I´m using QuickTime Pro to convert them, but I know a lot of people use Handbrake.

I use Metax for tagging and haven´t experienced many errors when using .mp4 or m4v files. It adds artwork, title, description, and any other information you might want on your files. It also sends the files straight to iTunes when it's done tagging, so I know they are all set and tagged once the files are in my iTunes library.

You then set your Apple TV for streaming from iTunes. This setup has been working well for me right now.
However, once you have all of your library set and you don't plan on making too many modifications to it, you can try hooking your External Hard Drive to your router and consolidate the second computer's library as well. Hopefully it works for you...

And hopefully I haven't confused the heck out of you with this huge post!