Handbrake With MBA - Any Tips?

[criticalb]

I'm going through the process of digitizing my DVD library by ripping with ripit, then converting using the ATV2 preset in Handbrake. I'm ripping the DVDs by day, converting by night using my 2012 MBA i7 ultimate. It's currently taking about an hour per 90 minute movie to convert in handbrake. I know the Air isn't a processing powerhouse and this certainly isn't the kind of work I had in mind when I bought it, but can anyone else confirm whether this is on par? If so, are there any modifications I could make to the presets to speed up conversion without noticeably sacrificing quality? I realize that sounds like a dumb question, but maybe the preset is including extra audio tracks or other data I don't need or don't know about.

[JohnLT13]

When ripping DVDs i use Handbrake to rip and convert to mp4 in one session. takes about 30min for a 90min movie on my MBA i5

[criticalb]

Originally Posted by JohnLT13

When ripping DVDs i use Handbrake to rip and convert to mp4 in one session. takes about 30min for a 90min movie on my MBA i5

See, I felt like I must be doing something wrong. Do you use a preset? What's your magic?

[JohnLT13]

Originally Posted by criticalb

See, I felt like I must be doing something wrong. Do you use a preset? What's your magic?

http://www.macworld.com/article/1157...handbrake.html

[utazdevl]

I rip using Ripit and encode using Handbrake on the the "iPod Legacy" on my i5 Mid-2011 iMac. Ripit takes about 25 mins and Handbrake takes about 17 minutes per film.

[Michael CM1]

How fast is the latest-gen MBA at ripping DVDs using Handbrake? My iMac rips DVDs just a little bit faster than the video's time. It's much better than the C2D MacBook Pro I owned.

[Pyromonkey83]

Removed for being stupid.

[mic j]

Originally Posted by Pyromonkey83

Just an FYI, if you are looking for a quicker way of doing things, you can remux instead of re-encode. I have no idea what Ripit rips DVD files to (video_ts?) but you can instead use MakeMKV (free while in beta) to rip your DVDs to MKV files, then remux the files using Subler (also free) to be compatible with your Apple TV.

Remuxing is essentially just a container change rather than a full re-encode of video. This maintains the exact quality of your DVD and takes more like 5-10 minutes per movie rather than an hour or more. The benefit of Handbrake is that you can change the bit rate of the files and get smaller file sizes, but if you don't mind having a DVD take up 1-4GB (depending on the movie) remuxing is a major timesaver.

Unfortunately, there are no DVD's using the aTV required h.264 codec, only MPEG2. Only Blu-ray uses the h.264 codec (and not 100% of those). As mentioned, just remuxing can result in a very high bitrate file which stream fine over ethernet but may choke on using wifi. So remuxing, although an option for BR's, will not be the best choice in all situation.

[Pyromonkey83]

Originally Posted by mic j

Unfortunately, there are no DVD's using the aTV required h.264 codec, only MPEG2. Only Blu-ray uses the h.264 codec (and not 100% of those).

Herp da derp... I'm being dumb and apparently replied to this post while exceptionally tired. Long story short, don't listen to me because my way wont work. =]

[mic j]

Originally Posted by Pyromonkey83

Herp da derp... I'm being dumb and apparently replied to this post while exceptionally tired. Long story short, don't listen to me because my way wont work. =]

Cumon dude!!! Get some sleep!!

I was just trying to make sure the OP had complete info before going that route.

[criticalb]

Thanks for the tips. Remuxing is definitely out mostly for file size reasons. I don't mind the quality of what the ATV2 preset puts out in handbrake when the file size is usually only 1 - 1.5 gb.

I'm going to try ripping and encoding in one step with handbrake tonight and see if that saves any time. After encoding several DVDs last night it does seem like the longer conversions are resulting from rips from dual layer disks with 8gb video_ts files, which, because, derp. I did see a few full conversions in about 30 minutes.

I was excited to read about the tagging software in the Macworld tutorial, but I can't seem to get it to work. In iTunes 11 in ML, it claims to write the tags, but they don't show up on Import to iTunes. If I try to import to iTunes to automagically, the software just stops responding.

Any suggestions for batch tagging software?


UPDATE: Okay, so I actually did some reading on my own and found metaz, which pretty much seems to pickup where metax left off. I'm still open to suggestions if there's anything better out there, but this is way better than the manual editing I was doing.

[Pyromonkey83]

Originally Posted by criticalb

Any suggestions for batch tagging software?


UPDATE: Okay, so I actually did some reading on my own and found metaz, which pretty much seems to pickup where metax left off. I'm still open to suggestions if there's anything better out there, but this is way better than the manual editing I was doing.

MetX/Z, iFlicks, and Subler are the popular ones. Personally I use Subler, which is updated semi-consitently and always works very well for adding metadata. It does take an extra step or two than some others but it allows the full range of tagging and metadata options to be used. Plus, its free, so thats always nice too.