Hi Techies,

I was hoping for some advice on how best to rip my DVD collection to a NAS device and have it reliably accessible around the house. The movies would mainly be viewed in the front room on the big TV but i'd also like them accessible on other screens around the house (mainly bedrooms, perhaps kitchen also). All TV's have HDMI input and are Full HD if its revevant. We have a surround sound receiver in the front room so ripping with the digital surround sound formats in tact is important to me.

The main reason for wanting to do this is simply to free up the space that my DVD collection is taking up in the home - some eight shelves and a free standing racks worth! Id also like the flexibility and ease of running from a centrally stored, secure storage device. I also now have a decent number of Blurays but im guessing ripping, storing and streaming these would be on a whole new level of complicated?

I have a Mac mini to utilise for this project (its compact, quiet, capable of this, apparently and available with no further expediture available!) as well as a Synology DS211J NAS box with 2 x 1TB drives. I have a pretty good wireless network running throughout the house and part of it is also wired. For this application im guessing id rather be running over cables to provide a better experience?

Any advice on what software id use and generally how to set this up would be greatlfully received. I guess I need the ripping software and the front end software and im totally unsure of whats good and whats not in this area of things. Using the mac Mini, would I then simply be able to add an Apple TV box to other TV's around the house to recieve the movies?

Thanks in advance.

RipIt

Handbrake

Plex

360 DVDs and over 30 TV Series, and going strong

I have a Mac Mini connected to the TV, with storage wired (not a NAS though). The Plex Server runs on the Mac, but they do have a few NAS versions of the server too - check the site to see if you can install it on the Synology.

I rip the DVD with RipIt and encode just the Main Feature with Handbrake as an MP4 vid (to save space - you don't have to compress). Plex will then stream to any Mac/iPhone/iPod on the network. There's a beta client for AppleTV but you need to jailbreak it for that to work. So there's not an easy/cheap way to attach a client to another TV unless you have a spare mac unfortunately (or a new LG tv).

Plex happily streams 720p content over my 'g' wifi. For HD content you'll probably want a wired connection though.

Boxee is quite good if you're not sure about Plex? You can then buy a Boxee box to connect to any other TVs in the house.

One thing i'd advise, before you start, is purchasing a bluray burner (<£50 for a 3.5" jobbie, <£100 for laptop ones), and some media (~£1 for brand name media).

I've done something similar, and as i was ripping everything, it got burnt to bluray, as i found the ripping/encoding process quite time consuming. If the HDD in my NAS dies, i don't want to waste hundreds of hours re-encoding all my DVDs again.

Thats for the advice guys.

The Synology NAS ...

Synology DS211J NAS

has USB ports to allow the connection of an external drive for back up purposes. I also have a Windows Home Server running for my audio streaming system (Sonos) and at a pinch I could set that to back up the NAS also.

Ripit, Handbrake and Plex? Brilliant, thats what I needed, thanks. Time for some reading up on these....

I've just done about 230 DVDs to my WHS Box, I used My Movies and it was simply a case of shovelling the disks in one by one, not even a single mouse click was required once it was set up.

Think about 9 DVDs failed to rip for whatever reason.

www.mymovies.dk

Handbrake FTW There are very few discs that it cannot rip.

Hmmm, also been reading about 'Mac the Ripper' software and FrontRow.

I guess my issue now is that I want to find the format offering the best compromise between quality and storage capacity and also be able to access these files on the NAS from another screen in the house. As I understand it now, a standard Mac TV unit wont do 1080p or certain formats. :( Having said that, I would be happy with 720p quality given the difference in storage requirments. Thanks for the pointers so far guys.

MtR is very over complicated for what it is. I've ripped with that and found the RipIt/Handbrake combo far easier (though a slower process).

A new AppleTV will do up to 720p, but will only play MP4/M4V - Handbrake has an AppleTV MP4 (H.264) encoding preset which is pretty much spot on for size vs quality. Though, obviously, encoding each film takes time depending on your hardware. I think, in theory, the hardware is capable of 1080p - and there's rumours that the new iOS5 might allow the latest AppleTV's to do it without having to Jailbreak.

I've got most of my films between 900Mb-1.2Gb (standard def - using tweaked settings in Handbrake), and that's fine for me, but I'm not a videophile.

In theory if you just encode all your movies as MP4/M4V and drop them in iTunes on the Mini, then you can stream them to an AppleTV on the same network. Not sure what the UI is like, I've not used an AppleTV. But it'd be the simplest/cheapest way to get content to any TV in the house. But you'll have to encode each rip to MP4 first.

I use the following on windows based HTPC which is attached to the TV downstairs.

Handbrake http://handbrake.fr/ - to encode everything in h264 mp4 format. I use the AppleTV preset. It does change videos from 1080 to 720 but you can tell it not too. I use to use 1080 but on are Bravia 40inch you cant tell the difference between 720 and 1080 so I've since changed to 720 to save space.

Media Centre Master http://www.mediacentermaster.com/ - to download all the meta data for movies and tv shows. However XBMC can do this as well, I just like the fredom of managing it seperatly. on Apple I think you can use MetaX http://www.kerstetter.net/index.php/projects/software/metax

XBMC - use this as the front end. It'll play most formats and has a great tool for matching the refress rate of the video to the TV. Great for 24P HD films as XBMC will change the output so it plays 24P on the Bravia. http://xbmc.org/

Itunes - As I encode everything in h264 mp4 I'm able to import it all into itunes. Handy for the iphones. However recently purchased a AppleTV while in the US. So that in the bedroom streaming from the PC downstairs. I do find playing the videos through itunes on the Pc gives a poor quality video.

AppleTV - This is in the bedroom and streams from the PC downstairs. Nice simple interface and when combind with the iphone as the remote its great. It will play 1080 files but downscaled to 720. You can install XBMC on the AppleTV if you wanted to play other formats.

Edited 15 September, 201114 yr by faboka vrs

Well I set up the mac mini last night and downloaded RipIt, Handbrake and Plex simply to give it a run through. Created a M4V file using the compressed encode method within Ripit. Nice result BUT so sloooooow! Im going to try another format to see if its any quicker. The next thing I need to do is borrow/buy an Apple TV unit for the bedroom and see how the streaming is. Its two floors up so Im not going to hold my breath for the wireless performance to be adequate. If it proves the theory but doesnt perform as such then I'll utilise a cable. Once proven I'll then go about setting up the NAS and start on the long road to centrally stored movie heaven!

Thanks very much for the input guys.

How long did it take with ripit?

For a 40 minutes TV show, handbrake takes around 15-20 minutes ona quad core duo running at 2.66Ghz. You really want to keep with the h264 codec as its kind of the standard these days. apple, ps3, xbox360 etc.

Hmmm, ok, I see what your saying and yes, it does make good sense.

Dances with wolves DVD took just over a couple of hours to rip and encode on the mac mini! :'(

On my work Mac I can encode a film in less time than it takes RipIt to rip the DVD to the Hard Drive (Dual 3Ghz Quad Core) where on my aging iMac a home It can hake a happy few hours to do just one.

I tend to rip a load of DVDs to the Hard Disk and then set up a queue in Handbrake and leave it going overnight/through the day when I'm at work if I have to use the iMac.

On my work Mac I can encode a film in less time than it takes RipIt to rip the DVD to the Hard Drive (Dual 3Ghz Quad Core) where on my aging iMac a home It can hake a happy few hours to do just one.

I tend to rip a load of DVDs to the Hard Disk and then set up a queue in Handbrake and leave it going overnight/through the day when I'm at work if I have to use the iMac.

Queueing them makes good sense! Thanks for that.

I always just point Handbrake straight to the DVD and let it get on with it. A 2hr movie usually takes it about 40mins on my iMac. Some DVD's take longer than others though.

One thing i'd advise, before you start, is purchasing a bluray burner (<£50 for a 3.5" jobbie, <£100 for laptop ones), and some media (~£1 for brand name media).

I've done something similar, and as i was ripping everything, it got burnt to bluray, as i found the ripping/encoding process quite time consuming. If the HDD in my NAS dies, i don't want to waste hundreds of hours re-encoding all my DVDs again.

Good advice, I have ripped a few tv series and movies onto a 2tb hard disc and like you say the thought of a drive/device going down and then having to re rip everything again just does not bare thinking about.

Bluray burners have come down in price a bit now as well.