DVD to iPad: Part Deux
December 7, 2011 7:55 AM   Subscribe

Problem with ripping TV-series DVD's to iTunes via Handbrake.

Buddy of mine uses Handbrake to rip his DVDs to iTunes, for watching on his iPad.

The downfall to the software is that Handbrake only recognizes the first episode on a the disc when ripping a TV-series dvd. He is looking for solutions to this glitch. Everything else seems to work fine (i.e. can rip a normal feature-length movie and get it onto the iPad with no issues).

(Asking for a friend, both he and I live in a non-US country with no applicable laws on DRM and such so legality is a non-issue here, and yes, we saw this question.)

TIA.
posted by allkindsoftime to Technology (7 answers total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
There should be a "Title" drop down menu. Each episode is a separate "title" on the DVD.
posted by supercres at 8:00 AM on December 7, 2011


Best answer: Yes, I found this out the other day. Select each title/chapter on the source disk from the drop down, rename each one and 'add to queue' rather than 'start' for each chapter/title. When you've done them all, then press 'process queue'.

It's a bit confusing as it doesn't look like you are making a new file but each 'add to queue' will stick and you can see the queue before you start.
posted by Brockles at 8:06 AM on December 7, 2011 [2 favorites]


Although it's been quite a while, I have ripped a significant number of TV shows in the past - Brockles' advice sounds spot-on. The hardest part is keeping track of episode numbers after the first disc. Also, watch out for extra features that aren't actually episodes! If I remember correctly, you can see the length of each title so you can weed out non-episode titles fairly easily.
posted by owtytrof at 9:14 AM on December 7, 2011


Best answer: check out this excellent tutorial and set of scripts for automating a workflow for ripping and encoding both movies and TV shows:

How-To: Automating DVD & Blu-Ray (Backup, Encoding & Tagging) for Mac OS X

And thanks for making me look this up again - it looks like it's been updated since I last installed all this. Now, need to go home and update my scripts...
posted by nightwood at 9:40 AM on December 7, 2011 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Another tip: if the duration of the titles doesn't give you enough information to distinguish episodes from special features, etc, try playing your DVD in VLC. While an episode is playing, click Title under the Playback menu to see its title number. I often do this anyway, because title numbers are not always in the same sequence as the episodes on a disc.
posted by Fred Mars at 10:24 AM on December 7, 2011 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Fred Mars's tip is excellent. I do that myself when I can't work out which episode corresponds to which title.

I highly recommend iDentify, a $10 app from the Mac App Store that will look up titles, artwork, actors, etc. for you once you've ripped the video. Very handy and much simpler than metax.

Also, RipIt is a great automated frontend to Handbrake. You can achieve more fine grained controls using Handbrake and rig it to do all the stuff on its own using scripts, but for $30 RipIt saves you all of that.
posted by davextreme at 11:14 AM on December 7, 2011 [1 favorite]


For a while they were developing Instant Handbrake, which had a more simple interface and a checkbox list of titles so all you had to do was check a few boxes, select your playback device from a drop down menu and hit "Go." You can certainly still find an installation package, but I dunno if there's been any updates in the iPad era.
posted by Skwirl at 11:14 AM on December 7, 2011


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