Here's how I've chosen to manage my 1TB of movies - but is it the best?

[ss957916]

I have a 40GB ATV, Airport Extreme and MacBook Pro. I have a 1TB drive plugged into my Extreme and mount it on my MBP as Airport Disk.

I HandBrake a movie, transfer it to the 1TB drive and then drag it into iTunes (ensuring "Copy files to iTunes" is not selected).

Whenever watching anything, I mount the airport disk and then stream it to my MBP and then to the ATV.

This usually works (and certainly better since the recent Airport update to 7.5.1) but I want to know if there's a better way of arranging my set-up? Having to mount the disk before opening iTunes is a pain, and clicking 'Get info' in iTunes gives me the spinning wheel for about a minute before opening the Info window - which I don't understand as the library file is right there on my MBP.

Am I doing the right thing with just dragging movies into my iTunes?

 

[AppleNewton]

similar to what i used to do, im slowly changing it up from streaming from my time capsule to actually putting them locally on my internal drive.
and have a second source on the TimeCapsule to stream if need be.

One thing i did was it to have the local TimeCapsule (or AirDisk Drive) mount upon log in and have the icon on the desktop like a local disk.
then all you do is click that and it activates its a bit easier.

until they make streaming from AirPort Disks or TimeCapsules similar in essence to ATV streaming its gonna be a bit of a work around to get everything the way you really want it.
So it seems like you have a straight forward simple set up.

 

[VTMac]

I HandBrake a movie, transfer it to the 1TB drive and then drag it into iTunes (ensuring "Copy files to iTunes" is not selected).

As a tip, instead of unchecking "Copy files to iTunes", you can just hold the option key while dragging new handbrake rips to iTunes. This allows you to add without copying on a case by case basis. I do this on all my movies, and then do the normal copy to iTunes for music.

 

[dynaflash]

Well, except for the fact that presuming your atv is wirelessly connected you are effectively streaming the movie bandwidth x 2. The movie has to be streamed to your mac from the aeb, then streamed back to the atv. Not the most efficient setup but hey, if its working .....

 

[ss957916]

As a tip, instead of unchecking "Copy files to iTunes", you can just hold the option key while dragging new handbrake rips to iTunes. This allows you to add without copying on a case by case basis. I do this on all my movies, and then do the normal copy to iTunes for music.

That's an excellent tip - thanks.

 

[ss957916]

Actually, having now tried it, holding down Option makes no difference (I've tried 'cmd' and 'alt' button - I'm assuming one of those is the option key?).

Why doesn't it work??

 

[bottsjw]

I HandBrake a movie, transfer it to the 1TB drive and then drag it into iTunes (ensuring "Copy files to iTunes" is not selected).

Are you using the "Normal" preset for Handbreak or one specific for ATV?