Filed under: Hacks, How-tos, Mods, Apple TV
How to: Rip DVDs to Apple TV
Not that we condone illegal activity, but... Apple TV Hacker (yet another blog that has sprung up about Apple's latest gizmo) adds to the list of Apple TV Hacks (naturally) with this step-by-step How To: Rip DVDs to the Apple TV with MediaFork. It's very detailed and illustrated with screenshots every step of the way. It's going to take a long time, so you can judge if it's worth it to you. Either way, the Apple TV is certainly the "IT" toy this week.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeremiah said 11:51AM on 3-26-2007
If only I could get surround sound going in conjunction with this i'd have a Apple TV like , yesterday. Come'on apple turn on the good ol' 5.1!
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Jimmy said 12:18PM on 3-26-2007
I ripped a DVD using Handbrake just the other day on my MacBook Core Duo 2.0GHz 2GBs RAM, took an hour...used H.264 at 720p.
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AppleTVHacker said 1:22PM on 3-26-2007
Wow, that was amazingly complicated. It's really, really simple. This is the 5 step tutorial I used, there's no need for QT Pro.
http://www.codenameitv.com/index.php/topic,24.0.html
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Xo said 2:15PM on 3-26-2007
i use mactheripper (free) sprinkled with visualhub (not so free)- which coverts and adds stuff to your itunes for you pretty easily.
not as long as handbrake method ... but not as cheap either.
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James said 2:41PM on 3-26-2007
All the complication in this guide is due to extracting anamorphic video. I know there is some quality benefit to doing this, but if you don't care and just let handbrake/mediafork set the aspect ratio the process becomes incredibly simple.
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Jeff said 3:51PM on 3-26-2007
MediaFork has forked back into Handbrake.
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Paul said 4:28PM on 3-26-2007
They're right. This tutorial makes it seem much more complicated than it actually is.
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Josh said 4:56PM on 3-26-2007
yeah... that tutorial was intense. if you are already ripping your dvds onto your computer you probably have less of a moral standard anyway... so pirating a copy of visualhub wouldn't be beyond your conscience. just use mactheripper and visualhub... simple as pie.
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Michael Rogers said 9:01PM on 3-26-2007
Something else, he failed to mention how to get the chapters back onto the media file. I use MetaData Hootenanny. It's a great program to quickly get chapters on the file. Downside is that it converts it to a MOV file, which Apple TV still reads, but then I can't add a cover to the file and it looks stupid have the Universal logo (or some other studio) as the cover on Apple TV.
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Bob said 10:50PM on 3-26-2007
Instead of saving the file after the changes in Quicktime, do an export.../Movie to MPEG-4 and set it to "Pass Through". You can now edit the metadata in iTunes, including the cover art.
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Bob said 10:52PM on 3-26-2007
BTW: There is definitely a difference in video quality between the anamorphic and non-anamorphic settings in Mediafork/Handbrake. I ran several versions of the same scene from a movie and this one came out the best by far.
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Dan Woods said 12:50AM on 3-27-2007
@Josh
Some people see Pirating software as Wrong, while Pirating DVDs as not-quite-so-wrong.
Converting your Personally Owned DVD's to a Digital Format is actually Legal in most countries, unless you violate some other law (such as the DMCA in the US).
Yes, the Tutorial is needlessly complicated, even for a Pedant like myself, although still very informative.
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Kichigai Mentat said 2:08PM on 3-27-2007
Say, I wonder, can the Apple TV play back 720p/1080p trailers from Apple's Website?
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David said 5:47PM on 3-31-2007
@Jimmy: Why would you rip a DVD at 720p? The source material is only 480p. Is there a difference that you can see?
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mrxxg said 5:16AM on 4-09-2007
See this [url=http://www.dvdtoappletv.org]DVD and Videos to Apple TV site(Mac/Windows)[/url] for help...the windows converter works great for me.
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Rob said 11:40AM on 4-09-2007
The above commenter (mrxxg) owns, works for, or has an interest at stake in the link he posted.
He's been Digg-ing his own site like crazy. I can't say whether or not his software works, but I'd avoid out of principle.
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