Ripping TV show season box sets to iTunes seasons?
July 16, 2010 12:02 PM Subscribe
I recently bought The Twilight Zone Season 2 box set on DVD. I'm wondering how to turn the set of DVDs into a nice TV show series in iTunes complete with episode titles and other information about each episode. I've tried using Handbrake, but all of the DVD chapters are of the same length and it looks really confusing. I have an iPad and would like it to look like other TV show seasons do that are purchased from the iTunes store. Anything super automated and created for this purpose?
You might want to give handbreak another try, I know the Mac version does batch processes so you can load a disk and just set it to go. You will need to do all the Meta data by hand unfortunately once you load it into itunes but its not like you are dealing with thousands of tracks of music, I did something similar with a season set of the simpsons and it took maybe 30 min to rename stuff to where I liked it (after an overnight handbreak session).
posted by Captain_Science at 12:47 PM on July 16, 2010
posted by Captain_Science at 12:47 PM on July 16, 2010
I agree with Capt. Science. Give handbrake another try. You might have to sort through all your files to see which episode is which. And, yeah, you have to enter your own data... but it doesn't take too long.
I've been using handbrake for a little while now. Aside from a few annoyances, it saves me from buying a digital copy of a movie/tv show I already own on DVD.
posted by hot_monster at 1:12 PM on July 16, 2010
I've been using handbrake for a little while now. Aside from a few annoyances, it saves me from buying a digital copy of a movie/tv show I already own on DVD.
posted by hot_monster at 1:12 PM on July 16, 2010
Check out MetaX for tagging your videos. I can't vouch for the quality of the automation, but it hooks into some services that have been getting built out to search for this info.
posted by mkultra at 1:33 PM on July 16, 2010
posted by mkultra at 1:33 PM on July 16, 2010
Yes, the Add to Queue button in handbrake is what you want. The files you output will have numbers appended to them so you can tell which episode is which.
Tagging an entire season should take all of 2 minutes. Be aware that in iTunes you can select multiple items at once to add things like show name, season number, artwork, etc. You can then select the first episode and use Command-I, type the episode name and number, and then command-N and P will get you to the next or previous episode in iTunes.
posted by ridogi at 1:38 PM on July 16, 2010
Tagging an entire season should take all of 2 minutes. Be aware that in iTunes you can select multiple items at once to add things like show name, season number, artwork, etc. You can then select the first episode and use Command-I, type the episode name and number, and then command-N and P will get you to the next or previous episode in iTunes.
posted by ridogi at 1:38 PM on July 16, 2010
Handbrake has a preset called "Apple Universal" that works nicely. It rips Dolby Digital (not that The Twilight Zone was in surround) for Apple TV and also stereo for iPod/pad/phone. There's a preference in Handbrake to send files to MetaX when finished. Sometimes it works okay, other times you have to manually copy in episode titles.
Nothing's as handy as ripping CDs is, where it looks up all the info for you. Real developed a product that was supposed to do it, but got sued and recently settled.
posted by davextreme at 1:39 PM on July 16, 2010
Nothing's as handy as ripping CDs is, where it looks up all the info for you. Real developed a product that was supposed to do it, but got sued and recently settled.
posted by davextreme at 1:39 PM on July 16, 2010
Re Handbrake settings, I second the Apple Universal preset. Looks great on all devices.
posted by markmillard at 2:43 PM on July 16, 2010
posted by markmillard at 2:43 PM on July 16, 2010
Response by poster: Okay. Handbrake seems to work well for me.
Any really good taggers out there??? Especially if there are any that just work.
posted by antgly at 3:40 PM on July 16, 2010
Any really good taggers out there??? Especially if there are any that just work.
posted by antgly at 3:40 PM on July 16, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
I don't know of any automated tagging service for television shows that work the way GraceNote does for mp3s, but if you tag them by hand in iTunes they will show up just like a purchased series. The only weird thing I ran into is that iTunes won't display the Episode Number as a column, so I put that into Episode ID instead.
posted by bcwinters at 12:45 PM on July 16, 2010