I recently ordered my self a couple of Blu-ray movies from play.com as they had a special “buy 1 get 1 free” offer on at the time. My choices were Valkyrie and I, Robot, both of which I have yet to see at the Cinema. They turned up today and I noticed Valkyrie also included a ‘Digital Copy’ of the film for you to load on your iPod/iPhone. This was the first time I’d come across this before and wondered how it worked. So I went ahead and popped the bonus DVD into my Mac mini and was greeted by this screen.

Once I’d double clicked the icon, iTunes opened and Valkyrie was mounted in the Devices section of the sidebar (much like an audio cd) I then selected that and got greeted with this screen.

The code is found on the inside of the Blu-ray case. Once entered, Apple authorises the movie and it becomes yours as if you’d bought it off the iTunes Store. The file is then copied over from the DVD into your Library.

Overall I’m fairly impressed with the whole process. Whenever I’ve bought a standard DVD lately I’ve always created a digital copy for use in Front Row or my Apple TV. With Blu-ray I’m limited as I don’t have a Blu-ray drive in any of my computers. I’m hoping this isn’t some Sony UMD fad and that more studios decide on including this with their movies.

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.

Amongst the updates to iTunes 8.0, Apple didn’t really advertise the fact they have now enabled us to use our own descriptions for Movies and TV Shows. This is a nice bonus for all those who like to add their personal dvd collections to their iTunes library. It previously needed a 3rd party script to enable the editing of descriptions.

Custom descriptions now possible in iTunes 8.0