Matt.

My VLC wasn’t up to date…I thought it was…always worth double checking!
I’m ripping my library now and loving it! You’re website is a great wealth of knowledge and I greatly appreciate it!

Ben

I am having a similar problem as drummerGirl…

I do have VLC installed, and I can copy the DVD’s using HandBrake, but it gives me macro-blocking/artifacts when I do this.

So I’m currently using MacTheRipper to decode then using HandBrake.
Do I need to update something to get the HandBrake rips to work on the copy-protected DVD’s?

Thanks,

Ben

I just purchased an Apple TV and I want to use HandBrake to rip my DVD library, however it won’t let me because HandBrake won’t rip copy-protected DVDs. Is there some software that you use to rip your DVDs before running it through HandBrake? (fyi, I’m on a Windows PC).

Also, when choosing the Apple Universal setting in HandBrake are you changing any of the settings other than the audio setting mentioned above or are you keeping the presets?

Thanks!! Love your blog.

Thanks for a great idea! I do have one question, though. When using HandBrake (latest version on OS X) I don’t seem to have the same set of presets that you are showing. For instance, mine are not organized into a “tree” as are yours. Although I do have an AppleTV preset, which seems to be creating the two different audio encodings you display, I am not sure I am going to get the same result you have written about.

Have you done some custom modification to your presets, or there something here I haven’t found out about yet?

Thanks!

Thanks for posting this on your blog. I too have an iMac with my media library in iTunes that I stream to AppleTV. I set this up about 2 years. I ripped most of movies using handbrake and added MetaX about 6 months ago into my process for the artwork, chapters, and other metadata. Most of my movies I ripped prior to support for surround 5.1 so I reripped the ones with cool surround sound since then. The one irritation for me as well is that I ripped all of mine using the handbrake AppleTV setting and have the same issue with not being able to play them on my IPods/iPhone. Thanks for the tip to use the universal setting.. Man I wish I had of known about that about a year ago (when I reripped a bunch of my movies for surround 5.1). The re-ripping will commence.

FYI… In my case, my Imac-24 (intel – 1st generation) has a 1 TB internal harddrive installed (installed be me… what a pain), and I have a 1.5 TB USB backup drive to ensure no loss of data. btw. I also am interested in hearing your opinion of Drobo. I am very close to purchasing one. (I used to use 3 drives as my backup drive via raid-concatenated and got tired of losing all the backup data when a single drive would fail).. Drobo seems like the answer to my dreams… Note: I have about 210 movies and 130 TV show episodes in my library.

One more thing. With my setup streaming all the media from the internal 1TB harddrive in the iMac, I have noticed that I wear out the hard drives pretty fast. I am on my 3rd harddrive in about 2 1/2 years….

As far as my results with this setup, i love it and the family does too. I have young kids that abuse and lose dvds and now that issue is a distant memory. Also, my two kids also have an old Imac (g5) in their bedroom and via iTunes or Frontrow can watch the movies from my media library from their room as well as from the AppleTV in the living room.

One other note…We also have migrated from the purchase of DVD’s to almost exclusively purchasing new movies via AppleTv/iTunes…

BTW, do you have your AppleTv and Imac connected via WIFI or Ethernet ? In my case I have had much better luck with Ethernet…. even though it is limited to 100Mb, it works better in my case than the WIFI (even N-Spec).

Nevertheless… Good luck with the project and again thanks for the Universal Setting tip on Handbrake..

Bob aka Midijamman

Note that iTunes does not have all artwork. They seem to only have artwork for things they sell. Granted, that is a lot, but no AC/DC or Tool (so far as I have found).