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Organising ripped movie DVDs in iTunes to include special features

E

elfy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 26, 2011
336
6
Glasgow, Scotland
Hi all. I have about 500 movie DVDs I hoped to rip and add to my Apple TV library. I'd like to retain the special features too. I know how to rip them but how would you go about organising them in iTunes so that each special feature from one DVD is grouped as one movie, the way each episode in a season of a TV show does. I don't like the idea of each one appearing in my Apple TV menu as a separate movie. Does that make sense? Sorry if there's a really obvious solution! :D
 
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So u manipulate the video files metadata. Give everything that's related into the same "album" then each file will have a unique name under the same album, or something like it.
 
I use RipIt to retain all features including bonus sections and language subtitles (I watch a lot of foreign langauge films and need the subtitles and even English is useful), it creates a single file. Downside is size, eg 7-8gb per movie. Typically I then process with Handbrake to a 1gb file to allow transfer to iTunes/apple tv/iPad - this does mean having to select any language subtitles and burn them in.
 
Thanks for the input guys but it appears what I want to do isn't possible. Altering the album name for each file (or any other fields) in iTunes has no effect and each one still appears as a seperate movie in the Apple TV menu. The only way to do it seems to be to change them to TV shows and list them as different episodes of a season but I'm not going to do that. I want to keep them as movies. Quite surprised that this isn't possible.
 
What you are asking for is called iTunes Extras. Unfortunately, you would have to remaster whole content for every single movie.
Oh, and yes, iTunes Extras will only play in iTunes on PC or on the original AppleTV, not on the iOS devices.
 
I would use a playlist to do what you want. Create a play list folder named for the film. Inside that you can use a smart playlist to include the files you want. Not a perfect solution but with some tinkering it should work.

You could also set them up as TV shows and treat the movie and each extra as a seperate episode
 
Filling in the 'Album' meta data used to work on the ATV 1. Even at this point it didn't work in iTunes (special features were listed as separate films). At the time I couldn't live with this so didn't bother. Given the ATV2 & 3 seem to format even TV series in a different way to the ATV 1 I'm not surprised this doesn't work. Don't know what Apple are playing at not enabling iTunes Extras support on ATV. If it was more widespread there may be some more 3rd party iTunes Extra tools out there.
 
From A Buick 8 said:
I would use a playlist to do what you want. Create a play list folder named for the film. Inside that you can use a smart playlist to include the files you want. Not a perfect solution but with some tinkering it should work.
Click to expand...
The main problem I see with this approach is that iOS-based aTV doesn't care for playlists in the Movie view of Home Sharing at all!
Ony place I can use my playlists set up in iTunes, is under Music.
 
An A6-or A7-based ATV should be able to handle HEVC/h.265 which should mean higher quality or (more likely) smaller filesizes. If I had to guess why the ATV hadn't been opened up to apps it's because Apple has realised the current 8 GB isn't enough.
 
priitv8 said:
The main problem I see with this approach is that iOS-based aTV doesn't care for playlists in the Movie view of Home Sharing at all!
Ony place I can use my playlists set up in iTunes, is under Music.
Click to expand...

You just need to turn them on for movies and tv shows in settings. I use playlist all the time with my two ATV's for listing TV shows the way i want and for grouping movies by actor or sequels
 
Assuming the special features are the same aspect ratio as the movie, I just append the special features to the end of the main movie using mkvtoolnix.
Editing the chapter titles in Subler gives you a quick way to know what's what and allow easy access.
 
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