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richpjr

macrumors 68040
Original poster
May 9, 2006
3,498
2,196
I am toying with picking up an Apple TV to eliminate the DVD disk shuffle. I'd like to rip all my DVDs and store them on my computer. How big is an average ripped movie? Obviously some will be bigger than others, but I'd like a rough idea on how much stored I'll need for my movie collection.
 

TEG

macrumors 604
Jan 21, 2002
6,618
165
Langley, Washington
I've only ripped one movie, Star Trek II, and it currently takes up 900MB on my hard drive, mainly because movies for iPod/iPhone can't be as compressed as those for the Apple TV. If my other 'ripped' content is any indicator I'd expect ATV formatted files to be between 60-80% of my movie.

TEG
 

samh004

macrumors 68020
Mar 1, 2004
2,222
141
Australia
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

Between 900 and 1200MB in my case.
 

roland.g

macrumors 604
Apr 11, 2005
7,409
3,134
At the correct setting expect about 1.5-2GB on avg. However also remember that movies in your iTunes library do not show up like the rentals with a poster style grid, instead the appear as a long list to scroll through which can become cumbersome at large amounts, unless you specifically sync just the movie your want. There are no movies playlists, or genre subfoldering in the Apple TV menu.
 

EvilRob

macrumors member
Jan 22, 2008
33
0
I thought maybe some practical examples might help. From our library here:

  • The Shawshank Redemption, 2h16m, produces a 2.75GB file. Two pass encode into Handbrake's AppleTV profile, which is ~2500kbps MPEG-4 Main profile. This movie has 6ch sound, encoded directly from the original AC3 5.1 into six discrete AAC-LC channels.
  • Gosford Park, 2h11m, produces an 897MB file. One pass encode into Handbrake's iPod Highres profile, which is ~1500kbps MPEG-4 Basic profile. This movie has a Dolby ProLogic II surround soundtrack, mixed from the original AC3 5.1 soundtrack, stored in two AAC-LC channels.
These two examples are probably the top and bottom ends of the scale for SD material from your own DVDs. The first encode produces an output file of exceptional quality, almost indistinguishable from the DVD original. The second encode produces a small, iPod-compatible file at the minimum quality I would consider watchable on a large format display.

Both of these files include about 100kb of metadata atoms, including cover art. In the future, it's likely that these numbers will go up as we work out how to produce the MPEG-4 files used by the AppleTV to provide AC3 5.1 sound.
 

roland.g

macrumors 604
Apr 11, 2005
7,409
3,134
I thought maybe some practical examples might help. From our library here:

  • The Shawshank Redemption, 2h16m, produces a 2.75GB file. Two pass encode into Handbrake's AppleTV profile, which is ~2500kbps MPEG-4 Main profile. This movie has 6ch sound, encoded directly from the original AC3 5.1 into six discrete AAC-LC channels.
  • Gosford Park, 2h11m, produces an 897MB file. One pass encode into Handbrake's iPod Highres profile, which is ~1500kbps MPEG-4 Basic profile. This movie has a Dolby ProLogic II surround soundtrack, mixed from the original AC3 5.1 soundtrack, stored in two AAC-LC channels.
These two examples are probably the top and bottom ends of the scale for SD material from your own DVDs. The first encode produces an output file of exceptional quality, almost indistinguishable from the DVD original. The second encode produces a small, iPod-compatible file at the minimum quality I would consider watchable on a large format display.

Both of these files include about 100kb of metadata atoms, including cover art. In the future, it's likely that these numbers will go up as we work out how to produce the MPEG-4 files used by the AppleTV to provide AC3 5.1 sound.

I would concur with this. However I have not done any research into the audio settings and what the Apple TV can or cannot pass-through at this point in time. The only thing I would point out is that at 720 or 853 anamorphic Apple TV presets, then lowering the bitrate to 1500 or even 2000 provides indistinguishable results from the 2500 bitrate, at least in my experience, and saves HDD space.
 
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