Take Control of Apple TV, Chapter 6: Apple TV at the Movies
In this chapter, you’ll find tips for controlling video playback, buying and watching videos from the iTunes Store, and playing local video. Author Josh Centers also provides instructions for ripping your DVDs with HandBrake, adding metadata with iFlicks, and importing into iTunes. Bonus topics include merging multi-disc movies, ripping Blu-ray discs, and managing all this data on an external hard disk.
The section on Handbrake alone is worth the price of the book. I have never been able figure out Handbrake. I'm not sure I need it anymore though since I can just play the DVD's and capture them with the EyeTV-HD. I wonder if Handbrake will work on homemade DVD-Rs of TV shows? Are Handbrake M4V files the correct format to play on an iPad?
Thanks John! It might. Yes, the M4V files that Handbrake exports should work fine on the iPad. (I tried one on a Nexus 7 for kicks and giggles and it worked fine.)
Handbrake 0.9.9 prevents Mac from sleeping while ripping, so Caffeine is no longer required.
Another shareware tool for editing movie metadata is Identify. A paid version automatically moves movie into iTunes library.
Thanks for the info, Peter. My Mac actually fell asleep on me during testing for this chapter, and that was with HandBrake 0.9.9, so I'm not sure what happened there. In any case, Caffeine is free insurance. :-)
If I were to keep ripped movies and TV shows on an external drive, how fast a drive (and how fast a wired connection to my Mac) would I need to play them without interruptions or skips on my Apple TV? Or are they wirelessly transferred to the Apple TV before they're played? I've never been clear on whether the Apple TV has its own storage.
That's tough to say, as it's a bit of voodoo. My setup isn't particularly great. I use a bus-powered 5400 RPM Western Digital USB 2 drive. My Mac is connected through a humble AirPort Express with only a 100 Mbps connection. The Mac is connected by Ethernet, but my living room Apple TV is on Wi-Fi (I have a second Apple TV in my office for book testing).
With this mediocre setup, even my Blu-ray rips play fine, with no stutters, but your mileage may vary.
As for the Apple TV's storage, it features 8 GB of on-board storage, with most of that believed to be used for buffering. So while it doesn't necessarily copy the entire movie over before playback, it seems to buffer quite a bit of it. It's the smoothest network streaming device I've ever used.
That said, I do find it interesting how the Apple TV can degrade quality with streamed video from Netflix when my Internet connection is presumably being slow - it keeps going, but the picture gets fuzzy. Usually it recovers, but that suggests to me that it could buffer even more of streamed video.
The ATV can only buffer what Netflix streams. If Netflix switches to sending out a lower-quality stream for whatever reason, that is what the ATV will buffer.
I'm sure that's true, but I saw the same phenomenon Adam mentions when I was using a less robust wireless setup. The picture would degrade from HD to SD (or maybe worse than SD), apparently in response to a slow signal. It's very unlikely to have been Netflix adjusting the quality of their stream in the middle of the program.
It's not just Netflix at one end and the ATV at the other with an open pipe between them: there are a number of possible choke points between Netflix and the ATV, and any one of those can affect the quality of the stream. Cf. "bandwidth throttling"
Thanks for a terrific chapter.
Is there any way to make "sub-sections" of movies for displaying on ATV2 or 3 menu? I have lots of movies ripped and scrolling the list can be painful - with kids in the house, it's frustrating to go through dozens of kid vids to reach a movie I want to watch... I've wondered if personalized descriptions in Metadata would work.. Instead of Home movies Movies, adding Animation, Cartoon, or Kid-Vid to that field.
Thanks for the kind words, David! Sadly, I don't know of any way to do that. However, the final chapter talks about third-party media managers that can do that sort of thing.
I 'downgrade' to stereo with HandBrake. My system is only stereo and it saves 'a little' file space!
I am THROUGHLY enjoying your book - can't wait for the finished product.
Thank you, Stan! I use a stereo setup myself, but rip 5.1 audio to keep my options open.
One 'weakness' that I have not figured out. I want to use airplay to stream movie to a projector and also to a separate airport express for audio. (the projector is ceiling mounted; the stereo system is on the other side of the room). Unfortunately audio only devices (arport express) do NOT show up from video apps on my iPad or MBPr.
Have you seen this or do you have a work-around? Might be worth commenting.
I don't know of any way to split an AirPlay signal. You would need to wire the audio output from the projector to the stereo system. In a couple of chapters, I discuss using the ATV with projectors, and you might get some more ideas there.
You do not indicate that Blu-ray sub titles are graphical and cannot be extracted to be viewed optionally like on DVDs - it''s all or nothing. Subtitles can be downloaded from many free sources on the internet as text files and can be added to your rips using 'subler' freeware (I'm sure there's other apps). This can be done at any later point
It seems that some Blu-rays are encoded with different methods, but as you say, it seems many only let you hardcode subs in a rip. I'll dig into this some more and see if I can find a good Mac tool to extract graphical subs and convert them to SRT.
I had considered a section on Subler, but I felt that the chapter was overly long already. In retrospect, adding a section on adding subtitles later with Subtler would be a good thing. I'll look into that for the final edition.
I'm aware of places where you can download subtitles, but I don't want to mention those in the book for two reasons: 1) sometimes they're wrong and 2) it's a gray legal area, and entertainment companies have went after sites that host them.
I'm trying to strike a careful balance. On one hand, I want to help people enjoy the media they paid for on the device of their choice. On the other, I don't want to encourage copyright infringement.
Nice. I've been using Handbrake and iDentify to convert video and add MetaData, but I am intrigued by the ability to convert non iTunes friendly video containers without re-encoding using iFlicks.
Thanks for the great article, I'll definitely check iFlicks out.
Thank you, Chris!
Please define the TLA "SDH" in text and fig. 6. I don't recall it being used in prior chapters.
Your example in fig 17. did not reflect the your renaming of "…S4D1" to S4E1" episodes. confusing.
In the screen shots of HandBrake, the icons you reference are not obvious in the graphic. Could you throw a circle around the icon being discussed?
As a future cord-cutter, I have been researching where I can get my current favorites inexpensively. Sadly iTunes and Amazon are too expensive. But I can get 80%-90% from Tivo via an OTA antenna (I can build one for $10). This SourceForge site-http://sourceforge.net/p/kmttg/wiki/Home/ - provides a Mac Terminal graphical interface tool for extracting, decrypting Tivo, stripping commercials, and re-encoding said shows. I haven't decoded the "km" part of "kmttg" but "ttg" is for "Tivo to Go". Nice tool.
Hi Mike, thanks for supporting TidBITS. SDH in that instance stands for "subtitles for the deaf and Hard of hearing." As for the screenshots, I'll make a note to clean that up for the final text.
That's an interesting tip about Tivo. I don't own a Tivo myself, but I will be covering something similar in a later chapter.
Josh,
Awesome chapter. It alone justifies my annual TidBITS membership. (Reminder to self: renew membership & help keep Adam solvent:-)
Your guidance on ripping videos, and migrating one's iTunes library to an external drive is exceedingly useful. Thanks!
Wow, thanks David! Yes, please keep supporting TidBITS so I can stay on the payroll! ;-)
Can you provide some guidance on ripping DVDs from which Handbrake can't easily find the right Title to rip from? Famously, Disney disks have 99 titles on them and there always seems to be some trick to find the correct one to rip. Even if the Apple DVD Player yields its title number, some disks are seemingly impossible to backup with Handbrake.
Thanks for making this single chapter more than worth the membership $.
Thank you Michael, that's very kind!
Disney has to be a pain about everything, doesn't it? The best advice is probably what I lay out in the TV section — you have to make an educated guess and check it with previews.
It's a bit tedious, but the best way I have found to do this is to launch Apple's DVD Player application.
Load the DVD you intend to convert and then play the main feature (or episode in the case of a TV Series DVD).
Once you have the appropriate video playing, choose the 'Go' menu and select the 'Title' submenu. This will show you the correct Title to rip from to get the video you want.
That's a good tip, Chris, thanks!
I find there is there is a number of DVDs that HandBrake can't rip. I use RipIt for these, then HandBrake can work with the resulting VIDEO_TS extract to do the conversion required.
I had originally planned a section on RipIt as an alternative to Handbrake. Maybe I should reconsider.
Interesting as ever, Josh. You might find the utility Tunespan interesting.
http://tunespan.com/
It permits spanning your iTunes library across multiple drives. There are some limits, it can't move rented movies for example, but it might be useful for readers with large iTunes libraries.
I started writing a section on Tunespan, but in my tests it didn't work consistently. And it doesn't seem to accomplish anything that Option-dragging doesn't do for free.
This was a great chapter. I have been using RipIt and Elgato Turbo 264 iDentify to get my digital content into iTunes, but I was unable to solve the problem of subtitled movies and I would sometimes get corrupted content when converting avi to mpeg 4.
Handbrake has helped me convert foreign language movies with burned-in subtitles to iTunes compatible movies and iFlicks has solved the corruption problem with converting from avi to mpeg 4.
I still have some problems with subtitles. While I can burn them in, "soft" subtitles don't appear to work with Quicktime, iTunes, or AppleTV, while they do work with VLC. Am I doing something wrong?
I still also prefer iDentify for adding metadata. It is much slower than iFlicks and I really like how iFlicks allows you troubleshoot misidentified movies; however, the metadata that iDentify adds appears to be more informative and more compatible with iTunes and AppleTV.