Best way to get DVD's, and TV Series into ITunes with Subtitles

Conanius

Conanius

Conanius

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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12,752
Hi All,

I've recently done a bit of an overhaul of our home IT to have the following setup

Mac Mini 2011 i7 in the Lounge with an external Superdrive

3TB Time Capsule for storage and network access

1TB External Drive plugged into the Time Capsule to offer 'mirror' of key Time Capsule folders (Documents and Photos)

Apple TV 2 in the Bedroom to stream iTunes purchases and library

32GB iPad2 with camera kit for mobile downloads off our SLR and for watching films/whatever when we go anywhere.

Macbook Pro for all other stuffs.

The Apple TV 2 is currently patched to the latest level, and I'm trying to work out the best way to deal with our close to 400 DVD's.

Ideally, we would like to put them all, importantly with subtitles due to my wife's hearing (or rather lack of at times!), onto the time capsule in some sort of method so that when we go away we can chuck them on the iPad2, and when we are at home, watch on the ATV2.

In my eyes, the best option is to chuck them therefore into itunes.

Is there a way to do this that will keep all the film details (dvd cover, synopsis etc)? Importantly, we have a fair few TV boxsets like 24 which we also want to put on there...

Is the best option to just use Handbrake and do it that way (How will itunes deal with the importing of the TV Shows? Will it know which is episode 1/2/3 or series 1/2/3 etc?

I know my other option is XBMC, so I'd be interested to know if I do this what my options for software would be on the iPad to watch these when we go anywhere...

Thanks in advance !
 
Best way to covert your dvd collection is to run then through handbrake ( which is a free application0 which will convert them to the apple tv 2 format & it will take the subtitles as well.

Once you have the converted file then use identify (free app again) to tag them and add all the cover art & info etc to the file.

Handbrake will enable you to convert 1 tv show at a time from your tv series dvds.

Then add the finished file into itunes.

Cheers
 
So.

Ripped the first disc, identified, perfect.

When I ripped it, I added subtitles, but on both iTunes on the mac mini and on the apple tv there doesn't appear to be any way to turn the subtitles on (I didn't select forced) .... Any ideas ?
 
So with handbrake these days are you still required to remove the DVD copy protection with another util before running it through and setting output to Apple TV?
 
Handbrake will work on some DVDs, but for the more modern ones it will fail with the copy protection. AnyDVD is what I use and I have yet to find a DVD that it cannot bypass.

I have been under the impression that apples ecosystem cannot deal with soft subtitles very easily. In handbrake, you can either only have the subtitles forced on all the time or off. There is not a way to embed them. The only way to do it is to search for the films subtitles and download the file, then use another programme to marry up the subtitles with your handbrake file. This is far too much work for me so I don't bother. I Only have forced subtitles when it's a foreign film or there a places where they speak a different language.
 
If you use something like Subler, soft subtitles (embedded as SRT format) work perfectly in iTunes, ATV, and basically anything else that fully supports MP4/M4V.
 
The subs are there (they show in VLC) but iTunes doesn't want to know.

TBH I'm still in awe I've got a season of 24 imported, working on the atv2, and its in an easy way to achieve. Would be more epic if I could do it all through 1 click and folder monitoring, but I believe identify3 will do a lot of that.
 
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