Ripping my movie library

Handbrake. Google and read all about it!

Ditto to above. For blueray check out MakeMKV.

Bhunt said:

Can I start this on a windows machine and just move it over WHEN I buy my Mac mini?

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Yes, if you use HandBrake and VLC Player there, you can definitely start on Windows.

Bhunt said:

Ok, So i have been using handbrake, but the movies are taking a LONG time to encode. "I love you man" took about 1.75 hrs but the Saving Private Ryan took almost 6. And now Independence Day is on track to take about 6. any ideas. I'm setting ATV3 preset.

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Those times are typical for the aTV3 setting, which is optimized for highest quality/lowest file size. If you can live with lower quality and/or large file sizes you can reduce you're encode times.

Bhunt said:

Ok, So i have been using handbrake, but the movies are taking a LONG time to encode. "I love you man" took about 1.75 hrs but the Saving Private Ryan took almost 6. And now Independence Day is on track to take about 6. any ideas. I'm setting ATV3 preset.

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One suggestion. RomCom's/dramas I encode at 720p because the detail of 1080p isn't really necessary to enjoy the film. For action/sci-fi though I do 1080p for the high quality.

I have a Mac, and use iVi Pro, great app I think, easy to use.

Obviously the speed/power of your computer reflects how long it will take to complete the encode. My iMac is an older one, 2007, and so it does take a while to encode a movie

I rip with MakeMKV -> Covert with Handbrake -> Tag with MetaX -> Import into iTunes

Are those Bluray encode times, or regular dvd? I just upgraded my PC to the AMD FX8150, and on regular DVD it crushes, Handbrake going at 150-180 frames a second. Bluray, it does about real time, around 20 frames a second for 1080p, but much faster for 720p.

Bottom line, Handbrake is multicore aware, so it will use just about everything you can throw at it hardware wise. This latest upgrade cost only around 250 bucks for a CPU/Mobo/DDR3. The only reason I have a windows machine is crunching movies..

Bhunt said:

Hey everyone, Mac noob here so excuse my inexperience.

My wife and I have had iPhones for just over a year now, and iPad for about 6 mos, and ATV3 for about 3 months, and am currently waiting to see if the mac mini gets updated before i pull the trigger. (If it isn't updated on Oct 17, then I'm just going to buy it). My question is how to rip my DVD/Bluray library to an ext hdd so I can stream it house-wide. Thanks for all the help.

Brad

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Use a Mac. Trust me it is better.

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Bhunt said:

Ok, So i have been using handbrake, but the movies are taking a LONG time to encode. "I love you man" took about 1.75 hrs but the Saving Private Ryan took almost 6. And now Independence Day is on track to take about 6. any ideas. I'm setting ATV3 preset.

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I own a mid 2011 I-5 quad core I-Mac and it only takes me 21 minutes to rip a "DVD" movie using Handbrake. I have a buddy who has a hackentosh (pc converted into a Mac with an I-7 quad core running a 4.7ghz) and he can rip a movie in 12 minutes flat. See, having a fast proceccor is the key to ripping a movie fast. If you are going to rip your library, just make sure you select strict in the picture settings. This will make you movie display on your tv properly.

Bhunt said:

Why is that. Because the ATV3 setting is loose?

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There are three different ways of doing anamorphic in HandBrake: strictly, loosely, and custom. In strict mode, the full resolution of the DVD is preserved exactly. As a result, the picture dimensions will be locked and the "Keep aspect ratio" box will be dimmed out. Loose mode will tweak the dimensions slightly so they divide evenly by 16, and allows scaling the width of the stored video. Custom mode is just that -- all settings are configurable by the user. When it is enabled, extra controls appear in the inspector.

Hey Bhunt, I was in your shoes about six months back, so I understand how potentially confusing and frustrating this can be (and, depending on the size of your library, how long it will take).

I first ripped the DVDs with MacDVD Ripper Pro. It's a paid program, but I swear by it. It was able to get around pretty much any copy protection and there was only one DVD it was unable to rip (The Color of Money, for some bizarre reason, which was an earlier release DVD and didn't even seem to have copy protection). And despite the program's claims to the contrary, it was even able to rip discs from other regions. On average, it took under fifteen minutes to rip a DVD.

After that, I encoded them with Handbrake, using the ATV2 preset (this was before the update that included the ATV3 preset). And then I tagged the files with iFlicks.

It did take two or more hours for Handbrake to encode the files on my 2011 MacBook Air. I would rip a whole bunch of DVDs then set up a queue and have it run overnight.

It's a long process, took me about a month or so to put my entire library into iTunes. But totally worth it. Now if only Apple would release a better UI for Home Sharing...

I rip and convert with Handbrake, tag with iFlicks or Meta X, then move to iTunes. It doesnt take hours for my computer to rip or convert 30 minutes tops for anything.

Bhunt said:

So what's the best? If I just want to be able to stream the movies through my house

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Doesn't really matter. You can take an older computer (Mac Mini?) put iTunes on it and stream from there. That's what I do. I have 700 GB of movies and TV shows ripped with the "Universal" setting in Handbrake. I stream to two original Apple TVs, but I want to move up to ATV3 soon.

Your encode times are almost certainly related to,your processor speed. Older computers will kill you on that. Sorry. I can do a typical movie in about an hour with my (now) mid-range computer. I don't do Bluray though - that will take even longer.

Good luck!

I started to rip my 500+ DVD collection back in January of this year and it took me about 3 months to get everything ripped, encoded, and tagged. I used RipIt, HandBrake with ATV2 pre-set, and iDentify. The ripping took approximately 20-25 minutes on my 2008 iMac with 4GB of RAM. Encoding took about 30-50 minutes depending on the length of the movie/tv show. Then I dragged everything in iDentify, tagged it and dropped it in iTunes. Was a very long process but in the end I think it was worth it for the convenience. Now if I wanna watch something on my ATV2 I can use an iPhone/iPad/iPod to flip through my movie collection without having to get up and go hunting in my closet pouring through Amaray cases. I definitely need some bigger hard drives though to accommodate everything. 2TB isn't cutting it anymore for me

DVDs are a pain in the arse, because they're MP2 containers there is no simple way to convert to MP4 without going through the process of reencoding at least with a blu-ray you can create an MKV and then transmux that into an MP4 container. The good news is that the highest image size on a DVD should be 576p so you don't need to encode at a ridiculously high encoding setting. If you set it to ATV3 6 hours will be about normal. If you can live with something lower then your reencodes will be quicker.

It will take many days to encode a small DVD library of about 40 movies or so, rip the MP2 VOB folders first and then set handrake up on a secondary computer and forget about it. A small DVD collection will take at least a week. If your DVD collection is in the hundreds it may take months.

You can begin to see why some of the less crazy out there choose things like the WD TV Live, or jailbreak there ATV2s so they can play MP2 folders. The good news is that the pain you endure is only once and then you can live without sorting through a shelf packed with DVDs. Now my DVDs stay in their boxes making the room look pretty.

My 2011 Imac I5 has 12gb of ram, and it takes about 25 min for a DVD, and a couple of Hours for a blu ray if I use the ATV3 setting.

I also have an i5 MacBook Pro @2.3ghz, but I was also using my computer with the reencoding happening in the background. I guess I could have set my G5 up to do it but I figured it would take substantially longer.

Lance-AR said:

I rip with MakeMKV -> Covert with Handbrake -> Tag with MetaX -> Import into iTunes

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Exact same workflow here.... very satisfied with the way things look.