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iTunes & Apple TV & Large Media Library

zhenya said:
Mine is a 2008 iMac, core2duo.

It handles any 1080p content that I have tried, but I'll admit that it's far from the highest bitrate files available - ie. blu-ray rips. Of course if you are that concerned about quality, you would be better served by another solution than an AppleTV that is always going to need some kind of lossy conversion.
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Hmmm, interesting. That's good to know, thanks for sharing.

I think I misspoke when I said "quality". I meant more of the quality of the stream (pauses, crashes, etc.) rather than the quality of the picture. Many of the problems I've had with other streaming solutions is failing to stream properly at some point, rather than the picture quality. I'm not too picky on picture quality. My eyes aren't good enough to tell the difference between Blu-Ray and my 1080p handbrake rips with the Apple TV 3 setting. Although I think I can tell between that and the 720p rips I have made (might just be my imagination though).

Anyway, thanks for the info, I'm always interested in looking into new streaming ideas, even if I don't mind taking the time to convert all my videos. I do it mostly for the smaller file sizes as I'm starting to run out of space again.
 
orestes1984 said:
iFlicks saves a lot of time and it's a good piece of software, I don't understand the hate poured on payware by this forum. Sometimes there is a simple solution to doing everything you want. iFlicks will transmux, or transcode and place it into iTunes for you with all the metadata, or you can rip all your DVDs and then put them through handbrake and then taf them which takes longer.

I confess to doing it manually, but after encoding and tagging a whole bunch of MP2 folders I wish I would have just done it with iFlicks instead. People will reinvent the wheel rather than paying $20 for a straight forward solution, that's a choice I guess...
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Please notice in post #6 where all I say is if you want to pay for an app...fine. But you should do it on trial and and compare it's output to HB (which is widely recognized as being one, if not, the best transcoder out there). If you are satisfied with the quality of the output and want to buy it...fine. It's your money.

And I just find it interesting that when a "free" approach is recommended, post after post starts to appear for "paid" approaches. Just an observation.

By the way, I have tried all of the paid apps and have even purchased a couple. But I rarely use them. So maybe I am just trying to keep people from wasting their money...like I did. :D
 
If you're planning to share files across devices, i'd highly recommend not to get avi's anymore. it's not worth the hassle, and additionally the codec will be defunct in a couple years.

For the avi's you do have, just handbrake the lot over a weekend. I would highly recommend iFlicks for two reasons: 1) as a remux sollution for all mkv and mp4 files (anything up to about 12Gb) and 2) metadata manager (fantastic in that respect).

For Bluray rips, i'd think about 'Remux' or 'subler' which are free, and convert faster than iFlicks. A paid program I like to use is MP4tools, which has some great options. I would never use Handbrake for bluray rips simply because it cannot remux files; i'm narchy when it comes to anything less than the best video quality.
 
Ace1024 said:
If you're planning to share files across devices, i'd highly recommend not to get avi's anymore. it's not worth the hassle, and additionally the codec will be defunct in a couple years.

For the avi's you do have, just handbrake the lot over a weekend. I would highly recommend iFlicks for two reasons: 1) as a remux sollution for all mkv and mp4 files (anything up to about 12Gb) and 2) metadata manager (fantastic in that respect).

For Bluray rips, i'd think about 'Remux' or 'subler' which are free, and convert faster than iFlicks. A paid program I like to use is MP4tools, which has some great options. I would never use Handbrake for bluray rips simply because it cannot remux files; i'm narchy when it comes to anything less than the best video quality.
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Yeah, I didn't even realize that I was downloading a lot of mp4's now. A lot of my older stuff is .avi, but I think i'm going to just delete most of my movies and all i'll keep are my favorites and my TV show series.

Thanks to everyone in this thread for all the help. I really appreciate it!
 
AppleDApp said:
Have you had a chance to try some of the software suggested?
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I have been using Handbrake and iDentify and they both work amazingly.

I did download iFlicks, but it wasn't working correctly and iDentify worked immediately. So I have since purchased the app and have used it daily.

The only show it's had trouble with so far is Grey's Anatomy, but i'm not terribly worried about that, since i'll be deleting it once I watch it anyway. I mostly just watch the show, because I have watched it for so long, haha

Thanks so much to all of you who gave suggestions and helped.

Using the Apple TV and iTunes for my movie and TV show collection seems much better than the way I was using it when it was jailbroken. I'm happy with the transition and the change :)

I also gave one of my extra ATV2's to a friend of mine and suggested the same set of tools to her, so she has been using them as well.
 
That's because a Jailbreak are mostly just a lazy answer. When you actually bother to tag your media properly the Apple TV works pretty much flawlesly.
 
panda bear said:
I have been using Handbrake and iDentify and they both work amazingly.

I did download iFlicks, but it wasn't working correctly and iDentify worked immediately. So I have since purchased the app and have used it daily.

The only show it's had trouble with so far is Grey's Anatomy, but i'm not terribly worried about that, since i'll be deleting it once I watch it anyway. I mostly just watch the show, because I have watched it for so long, haha

Thanks so much to all of you who gave suggestions and helped.

Using the Apple TV and iTunes for my movie and TV show collection seems much better than the way I was using it when it was jailbroken. I'm happy with the transition and the change :)

I also gave one of my extra ATV2's to a friend of mine and suggested the same set of tools to her, so she has been using them as well.
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Glad it worked out for you.
 
One more question, though..

Is there a good way to add movies that are split into two parts in to your library? I looked into using something to merge the files, but it takes a long time to do that.

Is there a specific way I can name the file or something so that iDentify still recognizes it, but I can still tell part 1 from part 2.
 
panda bear said:
One more question, though..

Is there a good way to add movies that are split into two parts in to your library? I looked into using something to merge the files, but it takes a long time to do that.

Is there a specific way I can name the file or something so that iDentify still recognizes it, but I can still tell part 1 from part 2.
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Have you tried using the part of a compilation checkbox in the get info menu?
 
AppleDApp said:
Have you tried using the part of a compilation checkbox in the get info menu?
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I haven't thought of that, but that's when it's in iTunes.

I'm asking about when I put it into iDentify.

This is my situation right now:

I have The Dark Knight Rises in 2 parts.

So I have:
The Dark Knight Rises (Part 1)
The Dark Knight Rises (Part 2)

I want to put them into iDentify. It doesn't recognize the files, because of the (Part x) i'm assuming.

I can't just name them both The Dark Knight Rises, because they will be duplicates.

angelsguardian said:
Just join them with iVI or similar, far too annoying otherwise.
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I have Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate. There's an option to merge the files, but it says it is going to take over an hour. Is this common?
 
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