Superbasic: How do I watch my ripped DVDs on Apple TV

[Jaze]

I have a large collection of DVDs, and divide my time between two cities. I have an Apple TV in each apartment. I've started to rip my DVDs, but what's the best way for me to watch them? I know I can Airplay them to my ATVs, but do most people... add them to iTunes? Somehow transfer them to the ATV on an as-needed basis? Can I plug the external hard drive with my library into the USB port on the ATV?

I'm sure this is a supersimple question, so appreciate your patience.

 

[BODYBUILDERPAUL]

I'm lucky in that I live in a different city on a weekend and one in the week plus I travel now for 6-8 months of the year. I've got the best case scenario in that I buy my films from either iTunes or Vimeo so wherever I am, I can watch them in beautiful 4K Dolby Vision or HD upscaled to 4K as the minimum. I decided to do this 100% way back in 2010 after falling in love with iTunes for my music - everything is in one place! Same with Apple TV 2 way back in 2010 - just great. It works amazing for me.

IF you must rip DVDs, I guess the easiest way is to keep the ones that you plan on watching either on your iPhone or iPad (synced from your iTunes library on your Mac) if you have one and simply AirPlay to the Apple TV. That would be my choice and I do that frequently with HD surfing videos that I keep on my iPhone. It's flawless.

Maybe in time, you may want to purchase favourite DVDs from iTunes in 4K as the quality difference will be pretty huge compared to 480p low res DVD.

ALSO put your favourite DVD titles on a wish list in your iTunes account, then you can check weekly if any are on offer. It's amazing how sometimes a HD/4K film will go on offer for 1 week or two at £3.99/£4.99.

 

[Christoffee]

Put them on a hard drive, get a Roku, plug the hard drive into he Roku and use the media browser.

I’ve tried it, so I know it works. But it’s not something I use regularly.
[doublepost=1530448259][/doublepost]Or get Plex. Use remote streaming, or if your internet connection isn’t up to it, cloud sync.

 

[BODYBUILDERPAUL]

Put them on a hard drive, get a Roku, plug the hard drive into he Roku and use the media browser.

I’ve tried it, so I know it works. But it’s not something I use regularly.
[doublepost=1530448259][/doublepost]Or get Plex. Use remote streaming, or if your internet connection isn’t up to it, cloud sync.

Doesn't make sense to buy a RoKu when the guy already has two Apple TVs. In all fairness, a RoKu is nowhere near as good as the Apple TV - it just can't compete in terms of quality, UI, OS etc. Seems crazy when the Apple TV is simply the best streamer out there by a long shot. It's internal components are of a pro quality, something the Roku is not.

May work out cheaper to buy the films direct from iTunes rather than buy hard drives and NAS drives. I guess 20 favourite HD iTunes films at £5.99 comes in at less than £120.
Also, DVD is going to look pretty nasty on larger TVs now.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Assuming you have a laptop always going back and forth with you or maybe a computer at both destinations...

1. Hook up the hard drive that holds the ripped movies to your computer.
2. Open iTunes.
3. iTunes Preferences.
4. "Advanced" tab.
5. (temporarily) uncheck "Copy Files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library".
6. Open a Finder window on the laptop.
7. Navigate to the folder in which all of these ripped moves are stored.
8. Select all.
9. Drag and drop them into iTunes.
10. As soon as they are there. Reverse step 5 so that any music you rip in the future will be stored on the internal drive.

FYI: Step 5 basically tells iTunes to index the movies AS IF they are stored on the laptop's internal drive while leaving the actual files on the external. If you don't do step 5, you may quickly fill up your laptop's drive with those large movie files. And yes, this means you need to connect the external to the laptop when you want to watch movies stored on it.

Then, when you travel, take the laptop and external hard drive (if you didn't copy the movies to the laptop's internal drive) with you. Hook it up and wifi connect laptop & TV. Enjoy your movies.

Tip: if the laptop's drive is too small to hold them all (and you want them all with you), there are plenty of cheap, small & light-weight portable hard and SSD drives on the market. Pick up one of those to lighten the (external hard drive) load.

If you have a pretty fat SSD in that laptop and don't care about storage space (or you don't really have many DVDs to store), you can just execute 1, 2, 6-9 (this WILL copy them to the laptop's internal drive so be sure you have enough spare space for them).

If you have ANY iTunes-runnable computer (even an old one otherwise retired) at both locations, you can do the above with BOTH computers and then you'll only need to bring along that external (movies) drive with you when you travel. Connect it to the computer at the location where you are, open iTunes and stream your movies. When you head back to the other location, shut things down, disconnect that external drive, take it with you, hook it to the other location's computer, open iTunes and your movies are there (too).

Tip: As you rip new movies to that portable drive, they'll need to be indexed in iTunes too. Follow the same steps except you only need to select the new movies you've added since last time to drag & drop into iTunes.

Tip: Use tools to properly tag and maybe put a movie poster in each movie file so that display nicely in TV. There are many such tools available for tagging ripped movies.

 

[Jaze]

Thank you all - and particularly @HobeSoundDarryl (nice part of the world, btw! I have friends who live there.)

I have something like 700 DVDs, so this is going to be a slow project. Many of them are somewhat obscure or old titles and may not be available via iTunes. Rather than spend thousands more dollars to watch things I already own, I'd rather just watch my own. A minor hit in visual quality is OK with me.

I see what you're saying about indexing my DVDs in iTunes, Darryl, but the part I don't understand is "Hook it up and wifi connect laptop & TV." - do you mean AirPlay them from the laptop to the ATV?

Hmm. I'm suddenly remembering that the ATV home screen has a Computers app/symbol/whatever... Time to do a little exploration.
[doublepost=1530455691][/doublepost]Aha! OK, I see that the computer "app" lets me stream from iTunes to the ATV. I HAVE LEARNED SOMETHING. Although it says I need to turn on Home Sharing to access that feature, and I'm pretty sure I have it on - I mean my Music is all available through the ATV...

 

[kiranmk2]

Several options which will suit you. For all these, I'm assuming you're in the US and that you have at least an Apple TV 4

Highest cost, lowest time - VUDU disc to digital program. $2 let's you get a digital copy of supported films in the same quality you own (e.g. DVD-->SD or Blu Ray-->HDX) or $5 to upgrade (DVD-->HDX). Lots of films will transfer to your iTunes account via Movies Anyway or you can download the VUDU app and play them from there.

Low cost, medium time - Rip your DVDs to ISO files and use a TvOS app such as InFuse to play them back from a hard drive (no need to import them into iTunes)

Low cost, long time - Compress your DVDs using Handbrake to either h264 (faster to encode, but larger filesize) or HEVC (slower to encode, but smaller filesize). These can be imported into iTunes or again run directly from the ATV using InFuse.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Yes, “computers app” is THE fundamental way from itunes to TV.

As to the long process, rip several at a time, then batch handbrake encode them for TV (even) while you sleep. It WILL take a good while to do 700+,but 7 per day would be only 100 days or 10 per day would take only a little more than 2 months.

If you have a good computer at both destinations, use both to do batches and maybe cut a target time in half?

 

[Tech198]

I have a large collection of DVDs, and divide my time between two cities. I have an Apple TV in each apartment. I've started to rip my DVDs, but what's the best way for me to watch them? I know I can Airplay them to my ATVs, but do most people... add them to iTunes? Somehow transfer them to the ATV on an as-needed basis? Can I plug the external hard drive with my library into the USB port on the ATV?

I'm sure this is a supersimple question, so appreciate your patience.

If in the correct format: .m4v, import them to iTunes & turn on Home Sharing (File >>Home Sharing.) Some .mp4's formats have trouble depends how they were encoded. But usually if they can be played in Quicktime, they'll be able to be imported to iTunes

 

[BODYBUILDERPAUL]

WOW 700 that's a hell of a lot of stress to put on a computer. And a lot of life's precious time.
Do you really have to have them all in both places and will you really watch all of them in the long term?

I had this question to ask myself and in the end, I ripped 5-6 DVDs that where not available to buy on iTunes and decided to buy the 20 or so in HD from iTunes.

Each to their own, but huge disc libraries like yours are better just left on disc and replaced over time. Again, just my experience - the iCloud with Apple TV just works and has been headache free for me 99% of the time. However, I own far less than 100 films and probably only use 15-20 once a week.

 

[Jaze]

Again, thanks everyone. I've been ripping them as .m4v . I don't think it really puts much stress on my computer, but I doubt that the external disc drive really loves it. I understand what you're saying about how often one watches old videos, but as I mentioned, I live in two places and travel frequently, and being able to upload a couple of movies to my Macbook Air (or whatever we're calling them now) would be a boon.

I will keep them on the external hard drive, and back that up to a second hard drive, rather than straight importing them to iTunes - the memory-saving indexing would be the right thing for me. And it shouldn't be a real problem, getting confused about the iTunes Media folder, because my main iTunes Media folder is on my Mac Mini, so I never import music on my laptop.

Thanks again! I'm underway with my project - today, Hitchcock, with a focus on the early silent films.

 

[Fancuku]

I would go in a different direction which is easier in my opinion. There is an app called MrMC. It is a spinoff of Kodi (previously XBMC). Best app in my opinion if you have a lot of ripped Bluray and DVDs.

 

[Boyd01]

WOW 700 that's a hell of a lot of stress to put on a computer. And a lot of life's precious time.

I ripped about 1200 DVD's over a period of a couple years. Initially I used my old 2008 MBP since it has an internal DVD drive and isn't used for anything else. But after awhile I realized what a dog Handbrake is with an old Core2Duo machine on MacOSX 10.5.9. So I switched to ripping them on my 2013 i7 MacBook Air. A DVD that took over an hour to rip on the old MBP only took 15 to 20 minutes on the newer computer.

My library is on a 4tb USB 3.0 hard drive connected to a bottom of the line 2014 Mac Mini that runs iTunes 24/7 with homesharing. This works really well with my two Apple TV's, iPad, MacBook Air and iPhone. But I only have one house. You could do something similar with a mac in each city as an iTunes server - can really be any old Mac or even a PC as long as it runs a relatively new version of iTunes.

If you don't want to invest in duplicate equipment, you could use your laptop with an external disk and take it between both cities. If you need to move an iTunes library between machines, see this article, I found it very helpful: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

 

[FriendlyMackle]

Doesn't make sense to buy a RoKu when the guy already has two Apple TVs. In all fairness, a RoKu is nowhere near as good as the Apple TV - it just can't compete in terms of quality, UI, OS etc. Seems crazy when the Apple TV is simply the best streamer out there by a long shot. It's internal components are of a pro quality, something the Roku is not.

May work out cheaper to buy the films direct from iTunes rather than buy hard drives and NAS drives. I guess 20 favourite HD iTunes films at £5.99 comes in at less than £120.
Also, DVD is going to look pretty nasty on larger TVs now.

Ok, I'm going off tangent here — but why do you say Apple TV is better than a Roku?
Until recently you could not even watch Amazon Prime Video via an App on the ATV, whereas Roku has had all of the streaming Apps for years.
That was what originally led me to purchase the Roku vs. an Apple TV.

So, now very recently, Apple is playing nice with Amazon and vice versa. But, once Apple launches it's own video streaming service, who is say that Apple won't decide Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Marvel, YouTubeTV, Amazon Prime Video (and probably more services to come!) are not competitors and they decide to disallow their apps at some point? Would it surprise any of you?

I am an Apple fan—the thought of ever needing to switch to a Windows computer nauseates me. But, in the home theater space, the Apple TV has been a disappointment when considered in contrast to the competition. Mostly because of the past lack of competitive mainstream apps for no other reason than Apple Corporate disliked them. That bothers me — if the ATV is supposed to provide a streaming functionality to purchasers, these artificial limitations (as to Apps) are a disservice to ATV consumers.

As to the technology inside the ATV vs. a comparative Roku 4K, I have not paid attention enough to notice any major differences. With one exception: Roku is now selling advertising on their platform...so we viewers are having paid advertising foisted on us via the home screen. And there's more of that to come—Roku just stepped up it's promotion to advertising agencies of the platform's reach because they see a nice new increasing revenue stream. So they will definitely work to intrude further into the experience and bring advertising to the Roku.

I find this entirely objectionable, so I am now considering the ATV for my next upgrade. Which is due soon, as my Roku is 3 years old.

I also watch a good amount of dvd and bluray discs which I have ripped to mp4 files on my Roku (via attached USB drive). Which is not something the ATV likes to do (play your own library). And there's no USB consumer-facing input for files etc.

 

[Jaze]

If you don't want to invest in duplicate equipment, you could use your laptop with an external disk and take it between both cities. If you need to move an iTunes library between machines, see this article, I found it very helpful: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

Thanks, Boyd. I think I'm going to be carrying my USB drive with me as I travel between my homes and elsewhere. I took a peek at that article, and while it looked good, it's 7 years old - at least one iTunes menu photo was out of date. Do you recommend it now in 2018?

I'm going to try using the technique that @HobeSoundDarryl mentioned above - indexing my movie files in iTunes without adding them physically to the iTunes Media library on my MBA.

 

[Boyd01]

I took a peek at that article, and while it looked good, it's 7 years old - at least one iTunes menu photo was out of date. Do you recommend it now in 2018?

I have not reviewed it in depth recently, but think all the principles are still the same (although Apple loves to change the iTunes user interface ).

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I'm going to try using the technique that @HobeSoundDarryl mentioned above - indexing my movie files in iTunes without adding them physically to the iTunes Media library on my MBA.

That will work. I have about the same number of movies on an external drive, indexed (only) exactly as described. While I don't travel between 2 locations, I am CERTAIN that would work fine for you. And, all things considered, it seems like the smallest "load" to be hauling back & forth, especially if you have an iTunes-capable computer on both ends or are carting a laptop back & forth too.

Let's round up to 800 DVD movies ripped. That's about 800 times about 4GB (max, many DVD movies will compress at less than 4GB) each = 2.8TB. 4TB very light, very portable drives are less than $100. For example: WD Passport 4TB is $99.99 from B&H as I write this. About 1/2 LB and 4.3" X 3.2" X 0.8". 4TB would leave a LOT of room for other files and/or to grow the collection beyond the 700+ DVDs.

One more suggestion: BE SURE to have at least one backup of the collection. Lose that portable somewhere in the journeys, drop it (and damage it), etc and a backup will save you from starting the rip & HB process over from scratch. Possible option: buy TWO of those portable drives and rotate them as you travel: Take latest, up-to-date "A" drive to the location with "B" drive, update "B" to match "A", bring "B" back to the first location when you return. Repeat with "B" as the now most up-to-date drive.

 

[BODYBUILDERPAUL]

I ripped about 1200 DVD's over a period of a couple years. Initially I used my old 2008 MBP since it has an internal DVD drive and isn't used for anything else. But after awhile I realized what a dog Handbrake is with an old Core2Duo machine on MacOSX 10.5.9. So I switched to ripping them on my 2013 i7 MacBook Air. A DVD that took over an hour to rip on the old MBP only took 15 to 20 minutes on the newer computer.

My library is on a 4tb USB 3.0 hard drive connected to a bottom of the line 2014 Mac Mini that runs iTunes 24/7 with homesharing. This works really well with my two Apple TV's, iPad, MacBook Air and iPhone. But I only have one house. You could do something similar with a mac in each city as an iTunes server - can really be any old Mac or even a PC as long as it runs a relatively new version of iTunes.

If you don't want to invest in duplicate equipment, you could use your laptop with an external disk and take it between both cities. If you need to move an iTunes library between machines, see this article, I found it very helpful: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

Surely these portable spinning hard drives fail after 2 or 3 years. What happens then to all of those back ups? I'm really sceptical over anything with a spinning hard drive. They fail - BIG TIME! How does one back up a portable hard drive to another portable hard drive? Does that work?
I'm simply imagining this guy spending hundreds of hours of his free time ripping 700 DVDs to a portable hard drive only for it to completely fail like they do in a years time or 2 or 3 years from now? The whole thing sounds like a really old fashioned idea from the last decade. To me, it sounds crazy. Spending all of that time to back something up on a spinning hard drive.
Portable hard drives are cheap, they are cheaply built and they are really not long term investments.

 

[Boyd01]

Surely these portable spinning hard drives fail after 2 or 3 years. What happens then to all of those back ups?

Of course drives fail, that's why you need a good backup strategy for your important data. I have all my media on a cheap 4tb USB 3.0 hard drive. I also have two additional hard drives that I rotate for backups. Late every night, carbon copy mounts the backup disk, clones the media disk to it, then dismounts it. My primary media drive died after 3 years. I just replaced it with the clone, rebooted and was up and running again within under 5 minutes.

I have backblaze for two other computers, and will probably add my iTunes server for another layer of protection. If all my backups fail.... I still have my 1200 original DVD's in a floor to ceiling bookcase that I built. Can't quite bring myself to moving the disks to boxes up in the attic, although I have not watched a physical DVD since 2012.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

BBP: Of course it works. And guess what is supporting your one and only "everyone should do it my way" iCloud: spinning hard drives all packed together in hot raid devices.

Anyone that is not you can back up files from one to another (to another still if you like) just like saving one file to any kind of device or iCloud.

But sure, it's much better for the guy to just re-buy stuff he already owns again because the one and only way you tout in every single thread is the TV + stream-from-iTunes way. OP has ALREADY said he doesn't want to buy the same stuff again... that he'd rather go through the trouble of ripping movies he ALREADY owns to get almost every benefit you tout without having to give more money to Apple and the Studio to buy the same stuff again. PLUS, OP has already shared that he has a number of movies NOT available via iTunes.

And if OP doesn't want to risk it with portable spinning drives, he could spend much more for solid state SSD versions. But again, your one and only way for everyone is depending on spinning hard drives packed into RAID servers probably operating in oppressive heat right this minute.

A typical spinning hard drive lasts for many years with no issues (for this kind of non-daily, non-continuous R/W use, I've got drives still functional after 8 years). If a person is smart enough to back up to at least ONE other drive, it doesn't matter if, after those many years pass, one of the drives conks: the backup is there with all of their data, they buy a new "backup" drive and duplicate to it and they are immediately able to access their media and are freshly backed up to cover the old backup drive conking at some other point.

And if all of your thinking is about "investments", renting access to any data via a for-profit cloud where you have to trust strangers as caretakers of (not) your videos is a terrible "investment." A consumer doesn't buy a hard drive to be an investment.

 

[cobracnvt]

That's quite an investment, both time and money.

 

[Jaze]

I'm not sure which investment cobracnvt was referring to, but I'm OK with this. It's a really slow project - I'm in no real hurry. I'll back up two or three a day - one in the morning, one when I get home from work. At the moment, I'm still just figuring out the Handbrake settings.

But @HobeSoundDarryl is right - I'll be backing up my portable drive (the Seagate Backup Plus Slim, the current recommendation from thewirecutter) to another drive in my home, so I'll always have it secured, plus I won't get rid of my original DVDs, filed away in drawers.

I'm finding, btw, that the dozen or so DVDs I've ripped so far have been fairly small files, but they were old Academy ratio B&W silents. Now I'm moving onto full length B&W films (sorry, I've started by digitizing my Hitchcock collection) and bumpbed up the resolution to SuperHQ 1080 30, and finding I'm getting a rip of 3GB for a 2 hour movie. I'm currently ripping the first color film in this series; we'll see how large the file is, but I'm expecting about 4GB. The drive I've started with is only 2TB, which I realize now won't be large enough, but it was only $65, so a 4TB for $100 isn't the end of the world. (Kind of crazy the storage sizes nowadays - my first computer was a tiny little Sinclair, with a whopping 16 K of RAM...

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

New suggestions: HB at native (DVD) quality and native frame rates and let your respective TVs do the upscaling. You aren't actually creating real HD versions by choosing resolutions greater than DVD. You're simply asking HB to do the "making up" of pixels instead of letting your TV's probably better upscaler do it. Generally, the goal in this situation should be to create as near to a perfect copy at the native resolution as possible. Then, let the TVs dynamically fit them to a screen resolution. Ideally, this results in much smaller files that look about the same as playing them right off of the DVDs themselves.

And again, HB can do these in batches. So you can rip 5-10+ and then set up HB to do them one after another while you sleep or are at work or traveling. Most of mine were converted while I slept. Instead of 3 per day, you could do many more that way and get the whole project done sooner. Your computer won't care- give it plenty of work to do rather than having it sit idle much of the time.

And yes, many DVDs are going to compress their movies via HB down to 2GB or smaller. All 700+ might ultimately be able to fit on that 2TB or you can always buy another when it is nearly full. They'll likely be even cheaper then.

 

[Boyd01]

Now I'm moving onto full length B&W films (sorry, I've started by digitizing my Hitchcock collection) and bumpbed up the resolution to SuperHQ 1080 30, and finding I'm getting a rip of 3GB for a 2 hour movie.

If you are talking about DVD's, they are standard definition 480x720 pixels. It's a big waste of space and ripping time to use SuperHQ 1080 for those files. Use the SuperHQ 480p setting and you will get the best possible quality from that source. But if you do some tests, I think you'll find that you can't usually tell the difference between SuperHQ and one of the lower quality settings.

IIRC, most of my movies (also ripped from DVD) are in the 1.5 to 2gb file size range.

 

[HDFan]

And again, HB can do these in batches. So you can rip 5-10+ and then set up HB to do them one after another while you sleep or are at work or traveling. Most of mine were converted while I slept. Instead of 3 per day, you could do many more that way and get the whole project done sooner. Your computer won't care- give it plenty of work to do rather than having it sit idle much of the time.

If you separate the ripping from the encoding as HobeSoundDarryl mentions you can speed things up. Your optical drive ripping can be a real time or partial real time option depending on drive speed. If your computer is relatively fast then it is limited by the optical drive speed, not the encoding speed. The optical drive read rate is the limitation. You want to push the drives and your computer cpu(s) to 100% of capacity.

When you are at your computer just rip the disks. If you have the option of running multiple optical drives run several rips at the same time. If you get, say, 4 drives then you can go through those 500 disks in not that long a time. As you complete the rips put the ripped ISOs into Handbrake and start the encoding. So while you're at the computer ripping from the disks, Handbrake will be encoding from the ISO disk images at its maximum throughput. When you go to bed the Handbrake queue will still be there and will continue encoding through the night.