Comments on: DVD to iPad: Part Deux

Question: DVD to iPad: Part Deux

allkindsoftime — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 07:55:04 -0800

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.

By: supercres

supercres — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:00:24 -0800

There should be a "Title" drop down menu. Each episode is a separate "title" on the DVD.

By: Brockles

Brockles — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:06:01 -0800

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.

By: owtytrof

owtytrof — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:14:37 -0800

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.

By: nightwood

nightwood — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:40:23 -0800

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...

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:46:20 -0800

You can also (at least on the OSX client) click the Preview button to be sure the title you selected is the one you want to rip.

All of the different programs on a DVD are represented as titles, then further broken into chapters. So, a DVD with three episodes and two behind-the-scenes clips may show up as:

Title 1
Title 2
Title 3
Title 4
Title 5

You can use the length of each title to get an idea that what you're about to rip is the correct thing.

By: Fred Mars

Fred Mars — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:24:46 -0800

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.

By: davextreme

davextreme — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:14:12 -0800

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.

By: Skwirl

Skwirl — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:14:26 -0800

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.