alasgar olyana briella
Leoma Cianchetti
In a surprising twist of fate, we went from a somewhat more centralized online media situation back then (basically, Netflix) to a hellscape of dozens of streaming services today. And in many cases, older movies can only be found as used and/or pirated DVDs on eBay!
Thus, I'm writing a fresh guide to how I rip DVDs and Blu-Ray discs into my Mac, then transcode them with Handbrake. Heck, some people who are deeper into the r/datahoarder rabbit hole even have dedicated transcoding servers so they can generate optimal archival copies in 4K, 1080p, etc. akin to how YouTube and other online platforms set up their files!
In the end, I'm mystified it's still so hard to buy older movies so I can watch them on my networked devices. You'd think Hollywood would've learned from the music industry that if you just let people legally pay for non-DRM media, and make the process easy and convenient (certainly more convenient than sailing the seven seas or ripping discs), people will pay.
Note: If you want to rip DVD content directly using Handbrake, you can install libdvdcss manually or with Homebrew: brew install libdvdcss. Then run the following command to copy the libdvdcss libraries into the path Homebrew expects:
Have been converting our massive collection very SLOWLY over the last couple of years using using Handbrake + VLC. We have multiple platforms (iOs, Windows, Android, TV's, PS4, etc) so I went with a 4TB HD plugged into router, but want to switch to a full-time ASUS NAS system....
3) Having ripped TV show by disc (not episode) & sorting them into files by season. Could you explain the purpose of ripping each individual episode & if the disc menu is still accessible when that's done?
2) Adding metadata means adding additional info to the video file so that Jellyfin or any other media players display correct title info, which allows for more logical file naming (Star Wars: A New Hope vs 04-Star_Wars_A_New_Hope.M4V, also the Fast and Furious franchise is TERRIBLE to sort without metadata, named by actual movie name) on the filesystem.
FYI, older physical media didn't obscure disc title information as much as more modern media does, fake title information, and other nonsense info resulting in garbage rips unless one uses MakeMKV for them (Sony pictures are the biggest culprit here) and then uses said rip to verify correct titles to then encode. This can be done on the fly using MakeMKV to emulate a non-obscured discs, but it's a more manual process and results in only having the encodes after, not a full backup useful for preservation purposes.
4) Jellyfin allows for devices to play media stored on a filesystem by all sorts of devices (android, appletv, smart tvs, game systems, etc) instead of directly playing back using VLC or other software.
Not sure why you would want to use Handbrake/VLC when they haven't implemented the use of the CUDA cores on Nvidia graphics cards for transcoding!!! With PC & Windows (7 & 10) I have used DVDFab in conjunction with an Nvidia card's CUDA cores to rip standard definition DVD's at, if memory serves me correctly, around 400 frames per second. I was also only using a 750 GTX (or maybe it was my 1050 GTX card??) card at the time which is fairly dated. I think I was able to rip a feature length film (main feature/movie only) in under 10 minutes. Anyway, it was faaast! Waaay faster than Handbrake/VLC which I had previously tried. I have not tried Blu-ray as I don't have a Blu-ray reader in my PC.
After reading this, I embarked on my own Jellyfin build and it's going well. I'm running on an older system running debian 11 and the only issue I'm figuring out is how to expand my RAID as the collection gets bigger. One big help I stumbled across is ARM, the "automatic ripping machine"... While not perfect, it automates a lot of the ripping and transcoding process, once you get the setting figured out.
It is located at " -ripping-machine/automatic-ripping-machine"
I appreciate how beginner friendly this is. As a 23 year-old, I've never really had to rip a DVD myself, having grown up just on the tail end of physical media's popularity (although I have fond memories of asking my dad to put my favourite movies on my ipod touch).
It's nice to know that I can still open my 2012 macbook pro (which yes, does have a disk drive and that drive plus all the other ports are the main reason I haven't switched to a better computer yet), pop in a DVD and at the end of the day, have complete control over the media that I love.
Thanks for the guide.
You also can directly convert the DVD to MP4 using HandBrake's software. For commercial discs, you need to install a free library, libdvdcss, or else HandBrake is unable to handle the protected DVDs. Found a good guide here: -for-handbrake/
What is the simplest way of doing this? I am not particularly bothered about separating each tv show episode as I am happy to rip the whole disc and ply it back via PLEX in the same format as if I was watching the dvd. I just want to basically have everything accessible via PLEX on multiple devices to stream without having to put the physical dvd into. DVD player.
Given the warning message it will be worth checking the integrity of your TM backup. Possible instructions here. -time-machine-backups-2260096. Follow the local backup instructions. But the best instructions may may depend on which MacOS version you have.
The MAC is now quite old and running Mohave with one upgrade left to Catalina. The external Seagate is connected directly. It has always been connected since it was purchased and I have never ejected or disconnected it. It always just worked.
TimeMachine drives are supposed to be connected all the time. Hard drives can fail. I remember having an external backup drive fail, and walking to the local computer store to pick up a replacement. When I was running a Mac, I had TimeMachine connected all the time, and a second drive used weekly or so with CarbonCopyCloner. Try taking the drive to a store with Macs or a friend with a Macbook, and see if the disk is readable. If not, it's dead, just replace it. TimeMachine accesses the disk a lot, even more if the machine is left on 24/7. Turning the computer and then the drive off, and restarting again might solve the problem so try that first. The connection between the computer and the TM drive also may be a problem. Try a different external device in the port. USB or Firewire? Get a second drive for Carbon Copy Cloner and run that weekly for belt and suspenders backing up. (You'll probably have to see if they're offering older versions to work with earlier versions of OSX).
The TimeMachine backup process is designed to work with both permanently or intermittently connected external drives. This allows it to be used with Notebooks/Laptops as well as Desktops. What is important is to "Eject" the drive before disconnecting it. If the external drive is not present a local TM snapshot will still be taken periodically (hourly?) on the internal disk (if there's room).
Hopefully the OP can still access the external drive contents on his own iMac. A single, isolated "drive disconnected" message wouldn't worry me too much, especially if the Mac can reconnect and the disk's contents check out OK when it does. But if it happens again (when the drive hasn't been unplugged) then it suggests a poor electrical connection or the drive is starting to fail.
If this is a backup drive and you still have all your data on your Mac or elsewhere, then you may not be looking at a catastrophe as, unlike the climate catastrophe, you probably still have time to do something to avert it. Forget about analysing what is going wrong, just get a new backup drive with at least 4GB storage capacity (preferably two drives - I recommend Sandisk desktop drive, was G-Technology). Get this asap - you live in London so you will have stores nearby or same day delivery if not. Attach it to the Mac and backup everything immediately.
If you do not have the data on your Mac or elsewhere, then this is genuinely a potentially very serious situation (even if it is just an electrical problem). If that is the case, you can run Disk Utility FIrst Aid to see if it can repair the disk. You might be able to fix it and recover your data if it's not on your Mac. In any case, continuing to use a drive that may be on the verge of failing is really asking for trouble. Retire that drive.
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