help me with the final piece of my home theater
June 13, 2010 12:45 PM Subscribe
I need software recommendations for converting my hard copy DVDs into a full res digital library accessible from the couch and portable on our iPhones. MacMini and/or Xbox360+Windows7 desktop.
At this time I prefer to use a Macbook Pro and a soon-to-be-purchased Mac Mini connected to the TV. Alternatively I am interested in getting it to work with a Xbox360 connected to the TV and a Windows 7 desktop machine in another room.
1. I want to be able to have all of my movies available in a list or preferably a virtual bookshelf; able to be called up on demand by remote and watched in HD on my TV. Storage space is not important, I will upgrade as required.
2. I want to be able to dump the soft copy onto a burned DVD for the kids to use in their room on their DVD player without damaging the original.
3. I want to be able to convert the soft copy full res HD into a file viewable on our iPhones.
Please, no Fair Use or Piracy comments.
At this time I prefer to use a Macbook Pro and a soon-to-be-purchased Mac Mini connected to the TV. Alternatively I am interested in getting it to work with a Xbox360 connected to the TV and a Windows 7 desktop machine in another room.
1. I want to be able to have all of my movies available in a list or preferably a virtual bookshelf; able to be called up on demand by remote and watched in HD on my TV. Storage space is not important, I will upgrade as required.
2. I want to be able to dump the soft copy onto a burned DVD for the kids to use in their room on their DVD player without damaging the original.
3. I want to be able to convert the soft copy full res HD into a file viewable on our iPhones.
Please, no Fair Use or Piracy comments.
I want to be able to dump the soft copy onto a burned DVD for the kids to use in their room on their DVD player without damaging the original.
What's the specs on that player? Most DVD players don't play the formats most convenient for digital archiving and use on an HPTC.
I want to be able to convert the soft copy full res HD into a file viewable on our iPhones.
DVDs are not High Definition.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 2:01 PM on June 13, 2010
What's the specs on that player? Most DVD players don't play the formats most convenient for digital archiving and use on an HPTC.
I want to be able to convert the soft copy full res HD into a file viewable on our iPhones.
DVDs are not High Definition.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 2:01 PM on June 13, 2010
Response by poster: What's the specs on that player? Most DVD players don't play the formats most convenient for digital archiving and use on an HPTC.
I don't want it to matter; I want to burn a DVD that the players would see as nearly a clone of the original.
DVDs are not High Definition.
Right. I meant I don't want to watch ipod quality video on the TV. And I am hoping the upcoming Mini refresh includes a bluray drive - then I would be ripping HD.
posted by phritosan at 3:35 PM on June 13, 2010
I don't want it to matter; I want to burn a DVD that the players would see as nearly a clone of the original.
DVDs are not High Definition.
Right. I meant I don't want to watch ipod quality video on the TV. And I am hoping the upcoming Mini refresh includes a bluray drive - then I would be ripping HD.
posted by phritosan at 3:35 PM on June 13, 2010
I want to burn a DVD that the players would see as nearly a clone of the original.
Then your options are basically down to ripping the disc and burning a copy to DVD-9 or DVD-5 or running it through a compression program (DVD Shrink, DVD Rebuilder, CloneDVD) that will allow you to fit even originally DVD-9 discs on a DVD-5. Needless to say, this doesn't work with the 360 and makes remote sharing difficult unless you remove the region coding from the ripped copy (at least on Windows). It also won't play on an i-device.
Sounds like you need either multiple libaries of files or a good transcoding setup and some planning before you decide to watch something on a device.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:16 PM on June 13, 2010
Then your options are basically down to ripping the disc and burning a copy to DVD-9 or DVD-5 or running it through a compression program (DVD Shrink, DVD Rebuilder, CloneDVD) that will allow you to fit even originally DVD-9 discs on a DVD-5. Needless to say, this doesn't work with the 360 and makes remote sharing difficult unless you remove the region coding from the ripped copy (at least on Windows). It also won't play on an i-device.
Sounds like you need either multiple libaries of files or a good transcoding setup and some planning before you decide to watch something on a device.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:16 PM on June 13, 2010
Handbrake is good, but doesn't preserve the menu structure. It also creates separate files for each chapter, which kind of sucks when the content is episodic or you want to preserve all those extra features on DVDs.
Here's some ripping software for mac that will produce the standard VIDEO_TS that can be burned onto backup discs:
MacTheRipper - It used to be good in it's hay-day, but the free version isn't compatible with 10.6+ and the developer makes you do all kinds of crazy, shady things to buy the new version.
RipIt - Solid and easy to use. Costs $20.
Fairmount - Uses VLC as the underlying engine, but I believe it preserves the menu structure. Can't deal with certain types of content protection.
Mac DVDRipper Pro - Costs $10, don't know how well it works.
To play the VOB files, you'll something that can read them. XMBC on your xbox should work nicely.
posted by Jambi at 5:13 PM on June 13, 2010
Here's some ripping software for mac that will produce the standard VIDEO_TS that can be burned onto backup discs:
MacTheRipper - It used to be good in it's hay-day, but the free version isn't compatible with 10.6+ and the developer makes you do all kinds of crazy, shady things to buy the new version.
RipIt - Solid and easy to use. Costs $20.
Fairmount - Uses VLC as the underlying engine, but I believe it preserves the menu structure. Can't deal with certain types of content protection.
Mac DVDRipper Pro - Costs $10, don't know how well it works.
To play the VOB files, you'll something that can read them. XMBC on your xbox should work nicely.
posted by Jambi at 5:13 PM on June 13, 2010
Where will the content mainly be stored? On your Mac mini? Why are you thinking of buying the mini? Do you envision browsing the web and doing other desktop computer type things with it?
What computer do you sync your iPods / iPhones with?
For 1 & 2, as above, you'll want to get software to rip the DVD as-is to your computer. I don't use a Mac, so I can't make specific recommendations. Once ripped, you can then burn the files to a blank DVD as needed. If you have only a single-layer DVD burner though, you'll need to reduce the quality on the files a bit since many commercial DVDs contain more material. I never (well, almost) use the "extra content" on DVDs and just rip the main move. On Windows I use DVD HD Decrypter.
For 3, I recommend Handbrake, as above.
The XBOX 360 can access media via either Windows Media Center or a UPNP sever (like Twonky, Playon, or TVersity). As you probably know, they are loud and power-hungry.
Perhaps though, you should move away from physical discs for your kids? An AppleTV, SageTV HD Theater, Popcorn Hour, or WD Theater sound like they would work well for your situation in the kids' rooms. You can point them to only the content that you want your kids to be able to access.
I think the way to go (and the way I have gone) is to designate 1 computer as your media server machine. I prefer to access my media through the same interface across my devices (as much as possible). And instead of having a computer connected to each TV, I think that having a low power-usage, fully capable extender device (like the SageTV HD Theater) makes a lot of sense.
SageTV is a cross-platform Media Center software. It can act as a DVR, but that's not required. It also provides access to videos (such as ripped DVDs), music, photos, and online content. They sell hardware and software extenders. The user community is really active on the SageTV forums. Check it out at sagetv.com. There are many user-created plugins which add a whole host of functionality. For the money, it's a really great deal. It can even play / stream ripped Blueray DVDs.
However, it does not directly interoperate with iTunes at all. When I transcode video for my portable devices, I put them in a directory separate from the main one where the full resolution videos live. However, with photos and music, Sage and iTunes read from the same place and don't conflict at all. I believe there are plugins for Sage which would allow you to start the transcoding process manually, but I have not investigated that yet.
posted by reddot at 7:13 PM on June 13, 2010
What computer do you sync your iPods / iPhones with?
For 1 & 2, as above, you'll want to get software to rip the DVD as-is to your computer. I don't use a Mac, so I can't make specific recommendations. Once ripped, you can then burn the files to a blank DVD as needed. If you have only a single-layer DVD burner though, you'll need to reduce the quality on the files a bit since many commercial DVDs contain more material. I never (well, almost) use the "extra content" on DVDs and just rip the main move. On Windows I use DVD HD Decrypter.
For 3, I recommend Handbrake, as above.
The XBOX 360 can access media via either Windows Media Center or a UPNP sever (like Twonky, Playon, or TVersity). As you probably know, they are loud and power-hungry.
Perhaps though, you should move away from physical discs for your kids? An AppleTV, SageTV HD Theater, Popcorn Hour, or WD Theater sound like they would work well for your situation in the kids' rooms. You can point them to only the content that you want your kids to be able to access.
I think the way to go (and the way I have gone) is to designate 1 computer as your media server machine. I prefer to access my media through the same interface across my devices (as much as possible). And instead of having a computer connected to each TV, I think that having a low power-usage, fully capable extender device (like the SageTV HD Theater) makes a lot of sense.
SageTV is a cross-platform Media Center software. It can act as a DVR, but that's not required. It also provides access to videos (such as ripped DVDs), music, photos, and online content. They sell hardware and software extenders. The user community is really active on the SageTV forums. Check it out at sagetv.com. There are many user-created plugins which add a whole host of functionality. For the money, it's a really great deal. It can even play / stream ripped Blueray DVDs.
However, it does not directly interoperate with iTunes at all. When I transcode video for my portable devices, I put them in a directory separate from the main one where the full resolution videos live. However, with photos and music, Sage and iTunes read from the same place and don't conflict at all. I believe there are plugins for Sage which would allow you to start the transcoding process manually, but I have not investigated that yet.
posted by reddot at 7:13 PM on June 13, 2010
I have a setup not unlike this. I use a Mac Mini to store the media assets, Rivet to turn the Mac into an XBox 360 compatible media server, and Air Video to stream the same video library to the iPhone and iPad.
The system works really well, and I don't have any complaints. Air Video in particular is neat - it can convert videos to iPhone or iPad resolution either as a batch operation or on the fly when you want to watch something, leaving te source material in high res for playback on the 360 via Rivet.
posted by verb at 11:33 AM on June 15, 2010
The system works really well, and I don't have any complaints. Air Video in particular is neat - it can convert videos to iPhone or iPad resolution either as a batch operation or on the fly when you want to watch something, leaving te source material in high res for playback on the 360 via Rivet.
posted by verb at 11:33 AM on June 15, 2010
Full-resolution: If menus are important to you, MacTheRipper (MTR) or RipIt are both good options. RipIt produces a package file that, when double-clicked, opens Apple's DVD player and plays just like the disc. Slick. Alternately, if you don't want menus, MakeMKV will package the original MPEG-2/AC3 audio in an MKV file that VLC will happily play. There's no conversion involved, so it's fast and full-quality. I use this all the time, since I have no use for the way TV shows split episodes between discs. If I have all 22 episodes in one folder, I'd rather just browse the folder. If you buy an external Blu-ray drive, MakeMKV can use it to rip those discs as well.
iPhone: Handbrake is the way to go. I do full-res transcodes, setting the quality slider around 21. File sizes are a little bigger (250-280MB for a 22min episode), but I'm really not interested in ripping at 480x320, ripping again at 640x480, 720x480, anamorphic 848x480 or whatever. So if I'm going to try to just choose once, I'll go with standard def.
Any way you go about this, it's a rather painful process because it needs lots of time and attention, experimenting, ambivalence, and credit card swipes. I love the idea of a Mac Mini as HTPC, but our trial of it failed. Granted it was a G4 and there wasn't much video to stream off the internet at the time. If your collection's very big, Front Row scrolling gets really tiresome, and using a mouse on the couch was much more frustrating than slick. Plex looks great, especially if you get on board with its naming conventions and structures from the get-go. Test drive it with your MBP first.
I ended up getting a Western Digital WDTV player. It plays MakeMKV's files without complaint from a hard drive or flash drive. The "Live" version streams off the network--nice unless you don't have/want a NAS/server or don't want the kids to have the entire library available. It has a basic on-screen folder structure for organization, nothing real slick or smart, but it is functional (hacking GUIs available). I have no plans to move to something else, though lots of similar players will work equally well, especially if you're creating the files yourself to all use the same codecs/containers.
The best advice I read when I was setting out to purchase a stereo system was to look at the ways you use media now. If you mostly listen to music, don't put lots of extra cash into a surround sound system. For you I'd ask, do your kids watch on a HDTV set with surround sound? If not, try your iPhone transcode, which might well look just as good. Copying a smaller file to a flash drive takes a lot less planning and time than burning a double-layer disc. Find solutions that cover 80% of your usage and you'll be much better set to take up (or ignore) the other 20%. 99% solutions are just more trouble than they're worth.
posted by fishpatrol at 7:48 AM on June 18, 2010
iPhone: Handbrake is the way to go. I do full-res transcodes, setting the quality slider around 21. File sizes are a little bigger (250-280MB for a 22min episode), but I'm really not interested in ripping at 480x320, ripping again at 640x480, 720x480, anamorphic 848x480 or whatever. So if I'm going to try to just choose once, I'll go with standard def.
Any way you go about this, it's a rather painful process because it needs lots of time and attention, experimenting, ambivalence, and credit card swipes. I love the idea of a Mac Mini as HTPC, but our trial of it failed. Granted it was a G4 and there wasn't much video to stream off the internet at the time. If your collection's very big, Front Row scrolling gets really tiresome, and using a mouse on the couch was much more frustrating than slick. Plex looks great, especially if you get on board with its naming conventions and structures from the get-go. Test drive it with your MBP first.
I ended up getting a Western Digital WDTV player. It plays MakeMKV's files without complaint from a hard drive or flash drive. The "Live" version streams off the network--nice unless you don't have/want a NAS/server or don't want the kids to have the entire library available. It has a basic on-screen folder structure for organization, nothing real slick or smart, but it is functional (hacking GUIs available). I have no plans to move to something else, though lots of similar players will work equally well, especially if you're creating the files yourself to all use the same codecs/containers.
The best advice I read when I was setting out to purchase a stereo system was to look at the ways you use media now. If you mostly listen to music, don't put lots of extra cash into a surround sound system. For you I'd ask, do your kids watch on a HDTV set with surround sound? If not, try your iPhone transcode, which might well look just as good. Copying a smaller file to a flash drive takes a lot less planning and time than burning a double-layer disc. Find solutions that cover 80% of your usage and you'll be much better set to take up (or ignore) the other 20%. 99% solutions are just more trouble than they're worth.
posted by fishpatrol at 7:48 AM on June 18, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
plex as the media centre
posted by moochoo at 1:43 PM on June 13, 2010