"HELP"Best way to organize movies on mac

[macness]

Basically any help would be appreciated. I have Quite a few movies on my mac and would like to know the best way to organize them. I would prefer to use iTunes because i have an apple tv... but if theres any better ideas.

I also just downloaded plea on my mac and got the app on my phone, only problem is that without the jailbreak for the apple tv 3, its kind of difficult + plus i try and stay away from 3rd party applications as much as possible ( it just simplifies thing plus i don't have to worry about something better coming along and be having to transfer a llllll my media over again)

Does anybody have success just using an organized iTunes library?


Also another thing i don't really understand:
when i down load HD movies, how do i maintain the quality when converting them to work on iTunes? i usually just use VLC player to watch them, but now i wanna use my apple TV.
> i know i know .. IM A NOOOOB<

Please HElP

 

[ideal.dreams]

It's mainly your preference, there's really no good or bad way to organize movies. Personally, I keep all my movies and TV series on an external hard drive. Movies are in their own folder, all named correctly. They are sorted in alphabetical order. TV series each have their own folder, then their own season subfolder, and all episodes per season are numbered in order, along with the episode's title.

I would not use iTunes to organize your movies -- I only have movies in iTunes so they sync to my iPhone & iPad. I don't like watching them through iTunes and I don't like how iTunes organizes them.

That's just me though, it's really all your preference.

 

[macness]

what about as far as viewing them. I love the apple ecosystem and i would like to watch my movies on my TV

And that would also mean i have to convert them all.... do u sacrifice quality by converting ??

 

[Mak47]

If you want to watch them on Apple TV, you really don't have a choice but to use iTunes. Fortunately, that's not a bad thing. iTunes organizes things really well and is easy to use.

Do you lose quality when you convert? That depends. What are you converting? If they're full quality .mkv files ripped from Blu Ray discs, yes, you'll likely lose a bit of quality. If done right, you probably won't notice though, and you'll save a ton of space. You'll also be able to watch the movies on your TV easily, so you essentially lose some technical quality, but gain playability quality. It's a tradeoff.

 

[flatfoot]

what about as far as viewing them. I love the apple ecosystem and i would like to watch my movies on my TV

And that would also mean i have to convert them all.... do u sacrifice quality by converting ??

You could always connect your MBP directly to your TV to watch movies – no conversion necessary.

I have a vast collection of DVB-T recorded, HandBrake encoded movies and TV shows (2800+ movies alone). They're all added to iTunes, but stored in folders the way I want. I have the "organize iTunes Library" checkbox unchecked.

 

[ideal.dreams]

what about as far as viewing them. I love the apple ecosystem and i would like to watch my movies on my TV

And that would also mean i have to convert them all.... do u sacrifice quality by converting ??

I use VLC to view all my movies on my MacBook -- it reads EVERY file format and actually lets you go in full screen on an external monitor (unlike Quicktime). I don't have an Apple TV so I can't tell you much about quality loss. When I do convert movies, it's to watch them on my iPhone or iPad, so there's already quality loss in reducing the video resolution.

 

[jamin00]

I keep all mine on an eternal drive too. In separate folders etc etc

I use MPlayerX to view them and if I want to watch on the TV I plug in my MBP to the TV using a lead I brought

 

[macness]

Thanks a lo to for the help. Makes sense

 

[Spikeuk76]

This is what I do,

change movie/TV episode/clip format using Handbreak to m4v/mp4 (I use the Regular High Profile in handbreak).

Once converted, use MetaZ to Tag the film/TV episode. This works really well, tagging TV episodes works best when searching by episode name, not number.

File away wherever you like and drag into iTunes. Everything streams without a hitch to the apple TV and all the descriptions/artwork are present