iPod Can't Change Artwork on Ripped Movies

[mashinhead]

I'm one of those anal people who has to have everything in my itunes as labeled as possible. Anyway, i rip some of my dvds and put them in itunes, i can change all the data except the artwork. I know where to go to chang it but it won't let me.

This bothers me when i want to use coverflow. Anyone else have this problem?

 

[vkxonline]

I'm one of those anal people who has to have everything in my itunes as labeled as possible. Anyway, i rip some of my dvds and put them in itunes, i can change all the data except the artwork. I know where to go to chang it but it won't let me.

This bothers me when i want to use coverflow. Anyone else have this problem?

Yep - iTunes can't modify files over 4GB. This means when you tag a 4GB+ file, it stores the metadata in a separate file instead of attaching it to your video file as usual. This iTunes metadata can't handle artwork, and so your 4GB+ file remains naked. If you make sure all your movies are a max of 3.99GB you should be good.

AppleTV looks like it's going to support a top bitrate of 6000 mbps. On a movie under an hour and twenty minutes, this should probably create a file under the 4GB limit. Otherwise, just set your max limit. I've found that twopass files usually clock in under 4GB with a max limit of 4290 mbps.

If you REALLY want to push the limits, you can crop of beginning titles and end credits in quicktime using your ripping software or in quicktime after your file's converted.

 

[wwooden]

Are you ripping with handbrake, or something similar? When I rip with handbrake, most of the files I make are around 1 gig and I can change the Artwork without a problem. I usually just google the movie and look for a DVD cover image or a poster image, then open the info on the movie and drag the image to the artwork area.

 

[Krevnik]

Another thing I noticed not mentioned in this thread is that when you import a movie into iTunes, it will actually 'create' artwork from a poster frame. You need to delete this poster frame artwork from the movie's metadata before it will let you add your own artwork.

 

[roland.g]

Along this subject:

1.) I have been using handbrake at avg bitrate 2000 with 2 pass (not H.264 but MPEG-4), which usually produces a 1.5-2 GB file. What is the advantage of going to the 4000-6000 bitrate? Will it get rid of the blockiness to predominately black scenes? Everything else looks great. Does it take more or less time to encode?

2.) I have my movies organized on my external in a movies folder, subfoldered by genre, ie. Comedy, Action, Drama, LOTR, TV Series (for ones I own, not iTunes), Suspense, etc. I then put alias to each of those in my user Movies folder so that when I go into Front Row I can go into each genre. Of course, as I scroll through each genre, I see the movies names with the Paramount or Universal or whatever in the picture box (it is just playing the beginning of the movie).

My concern with putting my movies into iTunes is that I lose that genre classification. But I also don't know how tv will work with all that.

 

[Krevnik]

Along this subject:

1.) I have been using handbrake at avg bitrate 2000 with 2 pass (not H.264 but MPEG-4), which usually produces a 1.5-2 GB file. What is the advantage of going to the 4000-6000 bitrate? Will it get rid of the blockiness to predominately black scenes? Everything else looks great. Does it take more or less time to encode?

It should take about the same time to encode, but I am not sure it will get rid of the blockyness. That is a problem that exists with MPEG-2 as well, and so it could be the DVD you ripped it from, or it could be your encode introducing the macroblocking artifacts.

2.) I have my movies organized on my external in a movies folder, subfoldered by genre, ie. Comedy, Action, Drama, LOTR, TV Series (for ones I own, not iTunes), Suspense, etc. I then put alias to each of those in my user Movies folder so that when I go into Front Row I can go into each genre. Of course, as I scroll through each genre, I see the movies names with the Paramount or Universal or whatever in the picture box (it is just playing the beginning of the movie).

My concern with putting my movies into iTunes is that I lose that genre classification. But I also don't know how tv will work with all that.

Front Row is pretty much a semi-polished Apple TV interface... but Apple TV will require that iTunes is sharing your library (since it syncs/streams like an iPod or another copy of iTunes). The good news is that if you turn off 'Organize my Library for me' and/or 'Make a copy when I add my items to iTunes'... then you can organize the movies on your own.

I am not sure how Apple TV will let you browse your collection, however. The demos on Apple's site should cover it, but I haven't watched them in awhile.

 

[roland.g]

It should take about the same time to encode, but I am not sure it will get rid of the blockyness. That is a problem that exists with MPEG-2 as well, and so it could be the DVD you ripped it from, or it could be your encode introducing the macroblocking artifacts.



Front Row is pretty much a semi-polished Apple TV interface... but Apple TV will require that iTunes is sharing your library (since it syncs/streams like an iPod or another copy of iTunes). The good news is that if you turn off 'Organize my Library for me' and/or 'Make a copy when I add my items to iTunes'... then you can organize the movies on your own.

I am not sure how Apple TV will let you browse your collection, however. The demos on Apple's site should cover it, but I haven't watched them in awhile.

I don't remember anything about macroblocking, will have to look into it. But I have done this with many DVDs and so it is not the DVD itself. I know other people has reported the same thing as one of the side effects of compression. Like I said action looks great, everything does, except dark scenes, and even that is not bad, but you can see it.

Any advantage to raising the bitrate though?

Yeah I know about turning the organize and copy on and off. I haven't added any movies to iTunes because of the way I use it through Front Row. And I don't really watch on my computer, I just started ripping my library so I could get ready for tv, but I haven't done too many yet so it won't be hard to redo do it in the right format or bitrate.

Do you use MPEG-4 or H.264?

 

[FleurDuMal]

I don't remember anything about macroblocking, will have to look into it. But I have done this with many DVDs and so it is not the DVD itself. I know other people has reported the same thing as one of the side effects of compression. Like I said action looks great, everything does, except dark scenes, and even that is not bad, but you can see it.

Any advantage to raising the bitrate though?

Yeah I know about turning the organize and copy on and off. I haven't added any movies to iTunes because of the way I use it through Front Row. And I don't really watch on my computer, I just started ripping my library so I could get ready for tv, but I haven't done too many yet so it won't be hard to redo do it in the right format or bitrate.

Do you use MPEG-4 or H.264?

Raising the bitrate doesn't remove the blockiness entirely, but the higher your bitrate, the smaller the blocks will be (and hence less noticable). At a certain level they will be all but eliminated.

I advise that you use the 'Quality' slider in Handbrake instead of setting a specific bitrate. I set mine from anywhere inbetween 60% and 70% - most frequently leaving it around the 62%-64% line. The result is that more bits will be dedicated to the darker or more complicated scenes, and less to the easier to encode scenes. If you set a specific bits per second number, the figure is arbitrary and a lot of information can be dedicated to scenes that don't need it, space that could be allocated to those that do.

Anyway, when I get a Mac Pro with its ridiculous capacity for storage, I'm hoping to rip into VIDEO_TS and hope that FrontRow 2.0 will recognise such files.

 

[Krevnik]

Anyway, when I get a Mac Pro with its ridiculous capacity for storage, I'm hoping to rip into VIDEO_TS and hope that FrontRow 2.0 will recognise such files.

Somehow, I doubt it. It isn't where the average-user market is going.

 

[FleurDuMal]

Somehow, I doubt it. It isn't where the average-user market is going.

Yeah, I know. But I think ripping DVDs will become common place by the end of this decade, as common as ripping CD's. The biggest obstace is copyright issues. I sincerely believe without this we would have seen Handbrake-like ripping features integrated into iTunes by now.

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

I have the same problem with not being able to change the art. I use handbrake to create an h.264 rip of the movie, then I use Metadata Hootenany to copy the chapter break info from the DVD and put them in the quicktime movie. Metadata Hootenany then outputs the movie with a .mov extension and not a .mp4 extension. The result a quicktime movie that has chapter breaks identical to the dvd with I can skip through in front row. The problem is itunes does not see this file as a type that I can modify the art on.

To solve the problem of not being able to set art on these movies in itunes, I just open the movie in itunes, scrub to the title frame, pause the movie, right click (ctrl-click) on the frame and select set as poster frame. My itunes movie library has the title frame of my movies as their poster frames, but I feel it is a fair tradeoff for having chapterized movies, and better than having the studio logo as the poster frame

 

[Krevnik]

Yeah, I know. But I think ripping DVDs will become common place by the end of this decade, as common as ripping CD's. The biggest obstace is copyright issues. I sincerely believe without this we would have seen Handbrake-like ripping features integrated into iTunes by now.

I agree, but the key term is "Handbrake-like". You won't see an integrated Mac The Ripper which produces a 'lossless' copy for a long time. Storage just isn't that far along yet. And by the time it is, people will likely want the content in HD, making the value of the feature to people like me pretty pointless.

Right now, I have about 150GB of video, which amounts to about 30 movies, and at least 150 episodes of TV (I have a lot of box sets). All my live action content is in MPEG-4 (x264 isn't quite mature yet, and 'blurs' edges and details), and all my animated content is in H.264 (where blurring effects are actually welcome).

That same library in MPEG-2 + AC3 would be well over 600-700GB. Considering the cost for a 750GB HDD, and the consumer-centric drive of Apple... raw rips are a ways off. H.264 Rips I could see happening as you say.

 

[Krevnik]

I have the same problem with not being able to change the art. I use handbrake to create an h.264 rip of the movie, then I use Metadata Hootenany to copy the chapter break info from the DVD and put them in the quicktime movie. Metadata Hootenany then outputs the movie with a .mov extension and not a .mp4 extension. The result a quicktime movie that has chapter breaks identical to the dvd with I can skip through in front row. The problem is itunes does not see this file as a type that I can modify the art on.

Well, iTunes only sees mp4 files as capable of receiving ID3 tags, so that is your problem. I agree that it is frustrating (to say the least) that you can't get QT to export an MP4 with a chapter track in it like you get from the iTMS.

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

Well, iTunes only sees mp4 files as capable of receiving ID3 tags, so that is your problem. I agree that it is frustrating (to say the least) that you can't get QT to export an MP4 with a chapter track in it like you get from the iTMS.

Yes, it is annoying. But I just thought of something that I haven't tried before. Say I have the original .mp4 rip of the movie without the chapter track, then I open the .mov version of the movie with the chapter track in QT and view movie properties, I might be able to copy the chapter track from the .mov verson and then paste it into the movie properties of the .mp4 version. This of course will not work if QT doesn't allow chapter tracks in .mp4 movies, even though ITMS movies are that way . . .

 

[Krevnik]

Yes, it is annoying. But I just thought of something that I haven't tried before. Say I have the original .mp4 rip of the movie without the chapter track, then I open the .mov version of the movie with the chapter track in QT and view movie properties, I might be able to copy the chapter track from the .mov verson and then paste it into the movie properties of the .mp4 version. This of course will not work if QT doesn't allow chapter tracks in .mp4 movies, even though ITMS movies are that way . . .

Well, what the real problem is, is that when you add the chapter track to the MP4 and try to save, it refuses to let you save into an MP4. It forces the MOV file format on you, even though the streams are all MPEG-4 compliant.

We really need a special tool written that can add these chapter tracks (like we have in Garageband for audio podcasts) to video.

 

[mashinhead]

Are you ripping with handbrake, or something similar? When I rip with handbrake, most of the files I make are around 1 gig and I can change the Artwork without a problem. I usually just google the movie and look for a DVD cover image or a poster image, then open the info on the movie and drag the image to the artwork area.

yeah they're all ripped in handbrake, some over or under a gig. in that area. But i can't change em. why would they limit that. I once put a 4gb one in there and it played really slow, a lot of lag, but then i'm on a MB with useing a 23 external. That 64mb graphics kills you. might have to upgrade.

 

[Krevnik]

yeah they're all ripped in handbrake, some over or under a gig. in that area. But i can't change em. why would they limit that. I once put a 4gb one in there and it played really slow, a lot of lag, but then i'm on a MB with useing a 23 external. That 64mb graphics kills you. might have to upgrade.

As posted earlier, make sure that in the artwork tab, you select the existing image, and delete it, then you should be able to add your artwork no problem.

 

[mashinhead]

As posted earlier, make sure that in the artwork tab, you select the existing image, and delete it, then you should be able to add your artwork no problem.

thanks i did that, mpegs i can change, quicktime movies i can't. but i have one other problem. I organize my movies by putting the name of the director in there (see image below) i put them in the album field. Problem is when a director has more than one movie, even though the artwork is the different in the info menu for each file, it wil display the same artwork for two different movies with the same director in cover flow.

for example the beach and trainspotting have the same director, and different art work in the individual info window, but in cover flow they both show the beach as the cover, this is happening with mutiple files, i know i can change the director field to something else, just saying its a pain.

 

[mashinhead]

one last issue. I've been encoding all my recent movies to make sure i CAN change the artwork. I encodeded two today as MPEG-4, (h.264) files. I limited the size to under 2gbs. I can change other movies' artwork in this format but not the two i encoded today. Anyone know why. The info is attatched in the images below. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks macrumorers.

EDIT. I tried changing the artwork now it shows a blank white screen. Thing is after i changed it, now the movies will not play in itunes, which they did before i changed it. GOD i'm really hating apples BS restrictions.!

 

[billabong]

Is there anyway around the 4GB rule? I have some 720P Movies I encoded, and am going crazy trying to swap the artwork until I found this forum that told me I can't.. But honestly, is there another way? A tagger? Or anything?

 

[dextertangocci]

Is there anyway around the 4GB rule? I have some 720P Movies I encoded, and am going crazy trying to swap the artwork until I found this forum that told me I can't.. But honestly, is there another way? A tagger? Or anything?

I havent used it before, but this might work:

http://lowellstewart.com/lostify/about/

 

[Krevnik]

I havent used it before, but this might work:

http://lowellstewart.com/lostify/about/

It doesn't. There is no app currently available that can tag a movie bigger than 4GB that I have found so far... Lostify tends to puke and/or crash on files larger than 4GB.

 

[iChan]

As posted earlier, make sure that in the artwork tab, you select the existing image, and delete it, then you should be able to add your artwork no problem.

yeah... that does work... but it takes AGES for itunes to add the artwork...

it there a way to force itunes to store the artowrk in a database... that way, it would be much quicker!