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eddyg

macrumors 6502
Sep 5, 2003
331
0
Christchurch, New Zealand
I don't use anything really. I get my posters from google and the description from a movie rental website and use doug's scripts to input them. I would use metax but everytime I try and tag a movie it just deletes it. I have lost about 5 movies through metax.

There was a bug to do with losing files when the disk filled, which has been fixed. I've also seen one caused by a crash which resulted in a lost file as well.

That said, I've tagged 400 movies with MetaX and lost 2, one of them to a bug that's been fixed.

Cheers, Ed.
 

billabong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 7, 2004
397
0
here another shot... try and concentrate on the itunes collection... haha
 

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motownflip

macrumors regular
Oct 24, 2007
136
0
those are some sweet collections you guys have. Are you guys all using apple tv? Can't I get the same results with a simple external hard drive?
 

nlivo

macrumors 6502a
Jun 18, 2007
914
3
Ballarat, Australia
those are some sweet collections you guys have. Are you guys all using apple tv? Can't I get the same results with a simple external hard drive?

yep. i have a 300gb external hard drive that filled up a while ago and all my files have slowly been taking up my internal hard drive (i have about 10gb left). i have ordered a 750gb external from ebay, it'll be coming soon. I'll then use my 300gb external for time machine. yay!
 

peeaanuut

macrumors 65816
Sep 10, 2007
1,048
1
Southern California
I have a 500gb external for music and movies. (I only have a few movies and dont plan on adding many). I also have a 250gb drive just for TV shows. All that feeds into iTunes and streams to my aTV.
 

Blazer5913

macrumors 6502
Jan 20, 2004
386
14
So let me ask you guys who have the the HD 720p .mkv rips (only reason I'm asking is bc i am just like you, but i have about 750gb worth of these things, that i absolutely love, sitting on my external). anyways, after everything is all converted, assuming everyone here used visual hub (apple tv, quality go nuts, and h.264?), and tagged everything, do you think it was worth it... I've been off and on with an appletv for about a year now and just can't make up my mind. Its gotta be so nice to have that friend user interface to browse through tv shows, movies, and music... to have your whole digital lifestyle right there. But I just wish I could keep my .mkv files the way they are and have them in itunes, with my 5.1 sound! but i guess thats just not gonna happen... so what do you guys think?
 

rev316

macrumors regular
Nov 7, 2004
156
0
metaX is pretty cool, and probably the best solution.

Be warned, whenever using large amounts of editing... it likes to "Freak Out".
 

billabong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 7, 2004
397
0
So let me ask you guys who have the the HD 720p .mkv rips (only reason I'm asking is bc i am just like you, but i have about 750gb worth of these things, that i absolutely love, sitting on my external). anyways, after everything is all converted, assuming everyone here used visual hub (apple tv, quality go nuts, and h.264?), and tagged everything, do you think it was worth it... I've been off and on with an appletv for about a year now and just can't make up my mind. Its gotta be so nice to have that friend user interface to browse through tv shows, movies, and music... to have your whole digital lifestyle right there. But I just wish I could keep my .mkv files the way they are and have them in itunes, with my 5.1 sound! but i guess thats just not gonna happen... so what do you guys think?

It is worth all the time spent converting. It's the convenience of all those movies at the touch of a button or two. They look great, and yeah you might lose a little bit of quality going from the mkv to mp4 but on the TV it looks amazing. I can deal without the 5.1 sound for now, but yeah it would be cool if it was included in the future of appleTV. I still purchase movies, and many of the HD one I own on HD DVD too, so if I want the best of the best, I watch the original disc. After having my AppleTV since release, it has been one of the best thing I've purchased this year. All my movies, music, and TV in a slick easy to use interface. It beats disc, tapes, it really just works. Plus the price now for a refurb one is only $229 for the 40GB that is big enough, you sync over recent TV and a maybe 5 or so movies, then just stream the rest there is no difference in quality.

those are some sweet collections you guys have. Are you guys all using apple tv? Can't I get the same results with a simple external hard drive?

Yes I am using it for AppleTV, but I don't think an external hard drive replace an AppleTV... Now sure what you mean?


I'm sure this is what the average guy is seeing when he looked at my collection shot :eek:... haha
 

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cookieme

macrumors regular
Aug 22, 2005
156
1
Those are some awesome collections. I have quite a few movies around 100, most of them are downloaded and are in various formats. I use Perian, so that they play in Quicktime, but I was wondering how to organise them in iTunes, so that I don't need to use the Finder when searching for movies etc. Much cooler and more organised if I could deal with my movies through iTunes, just like I do with my music. Do I need to convert these movies to a different format? What's the best practice for importing them into iTunes and tagging them with artwork etc.

Thanks
 

dugs022

macrumors newbie
Nov 8, 2007
20
0
Do I need to convert these movies to a different format? What's the best practice for importing them into iTunes and tagging them with artwork etc.

I will try to answer this with what I do with downloaded movies.

Downloaded movies usually is in .avi or .mkv format. I use VisualHub to convert it to .mp4 with H.264 encoding at standard quality. The result usually is a file with about the same size (around 700MB). I then use metaX to tag them. Then add them to iTunes.

For movies ripped from DVD, I use Handbrake with AppleTV preset. Then I use metaX to tag them before adding to iTunes.

Hope this helps.
 

cookieme

macrumors regular
Aug 22, 2005
156
1
I will try to answer this with what I do with downloaded movies.

Downloaded movies usually is in .avi or .mkv format. I use VisualHub to convert it to .mp4 with H.264 encoding at standard quality. The result usually is a file with about the same size (around 700MB). I then use metaX to tag them. Then add them to iTunes.

For movies ripped from DVD, I use Handbrake with AppleTV preset. Then I use metaX to tag them before adding to iTunes.

Hope this helps.

Thanks dugs022. Don't you lose some quality converting from one format to another if the starting format has already lost some quality from the real source?
 

wmealer

macrumors regular
May 7, 2006
173
0
Anyone else get their artwork from here?

http://www.impawards.com

I have yet to search for a movie they didn't have a high-res poster for...

I only have about 60 gigs free on my MyBook Terabyte drive, full of 720p mp4s (just about time to buy more space). I only add meta tags to TV shows. I leave the tags off the movies so the poster art remains as large as possible when I'm browsing on the :apple:tv. I suppose one day I may add tags to the movies, but that's becoming less and less likely as my collection grows.

I started out with the intention of only storing major movie releases, that I'd want to watch multiple times. But I've found that the selection of available movies is so vast, I can't help but accumulate even the minor flicks, just because having 720p content at my fingertips with a few clicks of the Apple Remote is so dang sexy! I'd recommend this setup to anyone. The only drawback is all the hours of conversion from mkv->mp4, which is extremely slow on my 1.83 GHz Core Duo iMac.

Funny story, I went on vacation this Spring, and before leaving for 6 days I set up VisualHub to convert 30 mkv files while I was away. Click start, drive to the beach and stay for nearly a week, drive home, wake up my iMac's display. VisualHub is still chugging along strong, still working on 29 of 30. LOL. I almost had the timing down perfect.
 

billabong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 7, 2004
397
0
Yeah I use impa alot. Another great site is http://www.outnow.ch it's not in english but they have even higher quality than impa...


Does nobody out there have a comment on the screen shot from Transformers? Guess some of you aren't attracted to women...
 

kjr39

macrumors 6502
Nov 26, 2004
374
3
I noticed that some of you guys have HD rips? How are you ripping and converting from an HD-DVD/Blu-ray disk?
 
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