just got apple tv for xmas questions

[Raidersmojo]

got TV for christmas and want to rip all my DVDs of course to my harddrive and stream them to my TV. its a zenith 52 inch LCD.

someone direct me to some threads where I can figure out what to download to make it work better, programs that are sweet for it, handbrake settings. it'd help!

 

[Cave Man]

Handbrake Apple TV setting is about the best you can do. Congrats on the gift - ours has been wonderful.

 

[WildPalms]

Mac the Ripper for removing CSS from your original DVD's. I've found it far more stable and reliable than handbrake.

 

[NightStorm]

Mac the Ripper for removing CSS from your original DVD's. I've found it far more stable and reliable than handbrake.

Yep, the HandBrake dev team has been recommending using a 3rd party utility to rip the DVD for some time now. I wouldn't be surprised if the ripping functionality was taken out of the Mac version here in the near future.

 

[Nadav]

got TV for christmas and want to rip all my DVDs of course to my harddrive and stream them to my TV. its a zenith 52 inch LCD.

someone direct me to some threads where I can figure out what to download to make it work better, programs that are sweet for it, handbrake settings. it'd help!

I'm assuming you have a DVD player since you have DVD's, so why would you go through the whole process of ripping DVD's on your computer and transferring them to your tv when you can just pop it into your DVD player?

 

[JimmyDreams]

I'm assuming you have a DVD player since you have DVD's, so why would you go through the whole process of ripping DVD's on your computer and transferring them to your tv when you can just pop it into your DVD player?

For ME, the inconvenience of looking through 300+ boxes to find the DVD that I want, taking OUT the DVD that's still in the machine (and finding the box for THAT one) and then putting in the new DVD and grabbing the remote and hitting play.

OR, grab the TV remote, scroll through the 300+ listings, find the one I want. Hit play.

No brainer.

And yes, while it takes a lot of time to digitize all my movies, I can just as easily toss one onto my iPhone and take it with me. I haven't figured out a way to cram a DVD into my iPhone yet without breaking something!

 

[julianps]

No Brainer

For ME, the inconvenience of looking through 300+ boxes to find the DVD that I want, taking OUT the DVD that's still in the machine (and finding the box for THAT one) and then putting in the new DVD and grabbing the remote and hitting play.

OR, grab the TV remote, scroll through the 300+ listings, find the one I want. Hit play.

No brainer.

And yes, while it takes a lot of time to digitize all my movies, I can just as easily toss one onto my iPhone and take it with me. I haven't figured out a way to cram a DVD into my iPhone yet without breaking something!

My observations on this would be that if you simply want to rip dvd's for your own use then use Fairmount to create an encryption-free disc image and have Handbrake rip from that, using the default AppleTV settings.

That having been said ripping does not happen in real-time (on most Macs) and then there's the issue of (occasionally) having to play with zero length files and missing off the the first vob file (etc, etc); assuming 300 dvd's at 0:30 per disc for setup and 4.5 hours a dvd that's close-on 1,500's of ripping time (btw most Europeans only work 1,200 hours per annum on their day-jobs....;-)

And at 750mb per rip that's 225gb which is outside the scope of the 160gb aTV model.

Is this plan realistic..

JiF

BTW; Elgato sell a "turbo.264" to substantially reduce ripping times. As I've never used it I cannot comment on either using the '264 with Fairmount nor on the size of the files generated.

 

[ronainsworth68]

I use Handbrake's AppleTV setting, select two pass encoding and deinterlace. It takes longer and is a larger file, but looks a lot better.

 

[NightStorm]

I use Handbrake's AppleTV setting, select two pass encoding and deinterlace. It takes longer and is a larger file, but looks a lot better.

Deinterlacing is unnecessary for the majority of DVD content out today. You're likely increasing encoding time and decreasing quality by deinterlacing an already progressive image.

That said, you may be encoding TV shows and/or anime, or something else and need it, just thought I'd throw it out in case you don't need it.

 

[ronainsworth68]

I use the started using the deinterlacing because of image quality problems, it did the trick for me, the difference was very obvious. That being said it was when I was doing the encoding on a PPC MacMini that had 512MB of Ram, maybe that had something to do with it.

 

[andypress]

And at 750mb per rip that's 225gb which is outside the scope of the 160gb aTV model.

Is this plan realistic..

JiF

BTW; Elgato sell a "turbo.264" to substantially reduce ripping times. As I've never used it I cannot comment on either using the '264 with Fairmount nor on the size of the files generated.

Why would it matter if it was "outside the scope" of a 160gb aTV? Streaming works very well; my library is over 1TB.

 

[MovieCutter]

Why would it matter if it was "outside the scope" of a 160gb aTV? Streaming works very well; my library is over 1TB.

I just hooked my 1TB drive to my hacked AppleTV. I used to stream, but if I want to use my laptop on the couch, I don't want to be hooked to my drives. I've also noticed that since I hooked it up directly to my AppleTV, fast forwarding, accessing, skipping, and rewinding is MUCH, MUCH quicker.

 

[JimmyDreams]

Is this plan realistic..

JiF

For me, yes, it is. I spend a few minutes setting up Handbrake, turn it loose and then go about my other business....surfing, cutting the grass, whatever. My iMac seems to be able to use Handbrake and still do other things, so it's not like all that time spent ripping will be spent with me sitting at the computer completely idle.

And after I'm all caught up, any new additions to my movie catalog will eventually be simply downloaded via iTunes. Same concept...minimal time spent on my part, maximum benefit when it comes to searching for something specific.

YMMV.

 

[ethernet76]

My observations on this would be that if you simply want to rip dvd's for your own use then use Fairmount to create an encryption-free disc image and have Handbrake rip from that, using the default AppleTV settings.

That having been said ripping does not happen in real-time (on most Macs) and then there's the issue of (occasionally) having to play with zero length files and missing off the the first vob file (etc, etc); assuming 300 dvd's at 0:30 per disc for setup and 4.5 hours a dvd that's close-on 1,500's of ripping time (btw most Europeans only work 1,200 hours per annum on their day-jobs....;-)

And at 750mb per rip that's 225gb which is outside the scope of the 160gb aTV model.

Is this plan realistic..

JiF

BTW; Elgato sell a "turbo.264" to substantially reduce ripping times. As I've never used it I cannot comment on either using the '264 with Fairmount nor on the size of the files generated.

Of course it is. Handbrake has a queue. Why would you rip one dvd, then handbreak, rip a dvd, then handbrake, etc.

It's much easier to rip multiple DVDs then create a queue.

 

[JimmyDreams]

Of course it is. Handbrake has a queue. Why would you rip one dvd, then handbreak, rip a dvd, then handbrake, etc.

It's much easier to rip multiple DVDs then create a queue.

Having never done multiple DVD's with Handbrake....does it copy the DVD's to the HD and rip 'em later or does it do one at a time and prompt you for the next DVD like a large software installation??

 

[Cromulent]

Having never done multiple DVD's with Handbrake....does it copy the DVD's to the HD and rip 'em later or does it do one at a time and prompt you for the next DVD like a large software installation??

Never rip with Handbrake. Rip them all in advance with Mac the Ripper then just set the queue up in Handbrake to encode.

 

[JimmyDreams]

Never rip with Handbrake. Rip them all in advance with Mac the Ripper then just set the queue up in Handbrake to encode.

I'll check into Mac the ripper. Right now, I've only used Handbreak (twice) and I thought that was ripping AND converting...? My nomenclature is still a bit rusty on this!!

 

[Cromulent]

I'll check into Mac the ripper. Right now, I've only used Handbreak (twice) and I thought that was ripping AND converting...? My nomenclature is still a bit rusty on this!!

Yes Handbrake does rip and encode. But Mac the Ripper is a better ripper.

Using Mac the Ripper you can rip multiple DVDs in advance and encode them in one long stretch in Handbrake otherwise if you just used Handbrake not only are you putting unnecessary wear and tear on your DVD drive you also need to change DVDs at the end of every encode which is a waste of time.

 

[JimmyDreams]

Yes Handbrake does rip and encode. But Mac the Ripper is a better ripper.

Using Mac the Ripper you can rip multiple DVDs in advance and encode them in one long stretch in Handbrake otherwise if you just used Handbrake not only are you putting unnecessary wear and tear on your DVD drive you also need to change DVDs at the end of every encode which is a waste of time.

Gotcha. Mac the ripper rips only, doesn't encode the video for iPhone or TV. Handbrake DOES do both, but is more intensive if used as a stand alone.

You're saying use MTR, rip a couple 5 or 10 movies to the HD, then use Handbrake to encode them all for my iPhone or TV using the que.

I guess ripping is a LOT faster than the actual encoding?? I now have MTR, but haven't ripped with it yet. (I'm at work right now).

Thanks for the info!!

 

[julianps]

Fairmount

Even though it cuts across the current consensus for batch processing (BTW you need MTRv3 to get past the latest zero-cell issues and to create usable rips from "certain" modern dvd pressings) ripping is still a slightly antiquated approach.

Fairmount can in under a minute decrypt a disc to a disc image and avoid all of the time consumed on getting a quality rip. VisualHub then allows you to select only the VOB's you need for the final version, and stitch them together.

For multi-Mac users VH also permits Xgrid encoding (though to be honest HB still/always produces better results for me).

JulesInFrance

 

[fluff]

Anybody know the best software to rip on a PC? Then I would presumably batch encode using Handbrake? Sounds like MTR is the best bet if I had a Mac...

 

[Scarpad]

For ME, the inconvenience of looking through 300+ boxes to find the DVD that I want, taking OUT the DVD that's still in the machine (and finding the box for THAT one) and then putting in the new DVD and grabbing the remote and hitting play.

OR, grab the TV remote, scroll through the 300+ listings, find the one I want. Hit play.

No brainer.

And yes, while it takes a lot of time to digitize all my movies, I can just as easily toss one onto my iPhone and take it with me. I haven't figured out a way to cram a DVD into my iPhone yet without breaking something!

I thought about doing that I archive TV Shows on my ATV because I rewatch alot of TV Episodes, but for the amount of times you watch a movie in one year how much is that? Is it enough that you cannot grab the movie off the shelf. Yeah there's a coolness factor, but there's also the expense of storage, also My HD-DVD and Blu Ray Players upconvert Standard DVD's that they look alot better than any mp4 encode.

What I do is I have my Apple TV Streaming from My Mac Mini and connected Drives. I have another setup of Itunes on a WinPC Box that I have a good size library of movies on, but these are encoded for my Touch, it makes sense to have a library of movies to watch on the go.

 

[SthrnCmfrtr]

By far the best solution, in my opinion, is to buy the Elgato Turbo 264 dongle.

Here's what your workflow will be like:

You use MacTheRipper to rip your DVDs. Here is an AppleScript that will work with any Mac you have lying around, if you have one with some big drives attached to it. You pop in the DVD, MTR will rip it, then eject it automatically when done, so you don't really have to supervise. Otherwise, you can just do it on your normal Mac and it'll ping at you when it finishes copying the DVD.

When you have a bunch of VIDEO_TS folders, just drag and drop them into the Elgato Turbo encoder window. It'll find all of the features in each VIDEO_TS folder. Some will be dinky and only a couple seconds long, like intro videos and stuff like that. Just click the little "X" for each one to remove it from the queue. Then press <start> and it'll start ripping.

The benefits over Handbrake are immense, in my opinion, since Handbrake still does not (at least, last time I used it) handle queues simply and efficiently, making it a pain in the neck to rip DVDs of TV shows. The dongle itself is very good, immensely reducing CPU usage while enhancing speed. The presets (iPod high, iPod low, Apple TV, iPhone, etc) all work flawlessly with the appropriate devices, and iPod high works perfectly with the iPhone and Apple TV. Also, it is available to Quicktime and will automatically assist in any other H264 encodes, even those not involving the Elgato GUI, so iMovie and other conversions will also work at an increased rate with less CPU consumption.

On a Mac mini with the files stored on a PMG4 RAID-5 Array connected over 100Mbps ethernet (until ReanimationLP sends me a new motherboard), I get anywhere from 20-30 FPS. I got 30FPS and sometimes more using the Mac mini internal drive. I have hopes that with a more powerful machine and gig-E, the encoding rate will jump, but it probably won't substantially.

Either way, it's $100 or so. It might seem a bit difficult to justify, but it depends on how much you value your time and frustration. If you have the necessary hard drive space to set up a full-time ripping/converting operation for a few days, I think the Elgato dongle will be worth purchasing. If you want to do things with more automation and freely, you can use the aforementioned script and the one in the comments to have an AppleScript run MacTheRipper to rip the DVDs and then use a cron script with the HandBrake CLI client (that I'm not sure is currently working) to have a fully-automated system that you don't have to mess with.

Just stuff to think about.

 

[ctakim]

Thanks SthrnCmfrtr for the very helpful post!