tomacintosh.com

If you are like me and want your Movies and TV Shows to look good on your AppleTV, but also want them to play on your iPod or iPhone, then here is a guide to how I rip my DVD’s. Since the latest version of Handbrake you can also include 5.1 surround sound in your files and they will still play on your iPod or iPhone! Now I will show you how to get great rips, but still maintain compatability.

1. Download and install Handbrake software.
2. Insert your chosen DVD, if Apple DVD Player opens, just wait for it to load the film then quit.
3. Start Handbrake, it will ask you to choose a Source, choose your newly mounted DVD
4. Handbrake will now scan the DVD and nine times out of ten it will find the film for you, just check the ‘Title’ section to make sure it has picked up the film. You will be able to tell from the time.
   

   Make sure you choose the correct Title

    

5. Once you have done that now you need to choose a preset from the panel on the right hand side. If you can see the panel click the ‘Toggle Presets’ button in the top right of the app.
6. Now you need to choose iPod High-Rez, this will produce the highest quality file the iPod and iPhone can play.  
   

   Choose iPod High-Rez

    

7. Notice how Handbrake automatically puts a tick in the ‘Insert iPod Atom’ this ensures compatibility with the 5G and 5.5G iPod’s if the horizontal resolution exceeds 320 pixels.
8. Next you need to tweak the rip a bit by choosing ’2-pass encoding’. This will make the encode take roughly twice as long but it is well worth it for the detail it retains, and also helps colour reproduction slightly.
9. If you want the film to play in 5.1 through your AppleTV and Amp then select ‘AVC/H.264 Video / AAC + AC3 Audio’    
   

   Get 5.1 audio in your Handbrake rips

    

10. Now all that’s left to do is to hit the Start button and wait for your film to be encoded.
11. Once done, drag it from the Desktop and into iTunes, iTunes will make a copy of it so you can then delete it off the Desktop. Once iTunes has processed it you can then rename it and add details such as Name, Year, Genre and now thanks to iTunes 8.0, you can add a Description.

Related posts:

1. New iPod Nano an object of great desire. Something hit me when I watched the ‘Let’s Rock’ keynote...
2. AppleTV 2.2 update out – Genius support! At last Apple have updated the AppleTV to bring it...
3. Apple introduce the new iPod Shuffle.. iTunes 8.1 to follow. As I reported earlier, the Apple Store was down this...

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 12:46 pm and is filed under uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.