How to add your DVDs to AppleTV
Ripping your personal DVD’s for the AppleTV adds convenience
[This is a companion article to: How to use AppleTV with Windows]
Now that you’ve got your AppleTV configured and running, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to play any one of your personal DVD’s through it? Selecting them from My Movies is so much simpler than finding and then loading up the DVD.
How to prepare your DVD for AppleTV
AppleTV will not play DVD’s directly, they must be reformatted to a compatible file format.
Note: A DVD optimized for AppleTV will not play on your iPhone or iPod Touch unless you use Handbrake’s “Universal” preset.
DVD43
Windows will not allow you to copy a DVD by default so use DVD43, a DVD dycrpyter, which bypasses most encryption techniques and allows a file copy. The first step is to allocate some hard disk space, maybe using an external drive. Count on 2-3Gb per movie. Next you’ll want to copy the DVD to this hard disk. Once DVD43 is installed it sits in your Task Tray as a little yellow smiley face 
.
When you insert a DVD into your computer it will try to process it.
And if everything is good you’ll see the happy face 
.
Now if you open My Computer you will be able to see and copy the contents of your DVD. You only need to copy the VIDEO_TS folder, which may take 15-30 minutes. Create a temporary folder on your hard drive for the DVD copy, which can be deleted once the conversion is done.
HandBrake
Once the disk is on the hard drive we use HandBrake to convert the file from DVD format to MP4. Handbrake is easy to use as it has a preset configuration for AppleTV. It is available for both OSX and Windows. You can use Handbrake’s default preset with little noticeable difference, however we have the disk space so we try to get the best quality we can within Apple’s 4Gb file size limitation by tweaking the parameters on the video tab, Target Size = 3800
A Handbrake conversion can easily take an hour, so add three or four movies to the Handbrake queue and let let them run overnight.
Once a DVD is in MP4 format, open up iTunes and select movies, then select File, Add File to Library and select your converted file. The movie will appear on the right and if iTunes can find the album artwork it will show up.
Adding Album Artwork
More often than not iTunes will not find Album Artwork for your movies so you will have to go get your own. To do this use CDCovers. Find your DVD and copy the picture to your movies drive. You may want to create a folder for this called MovieCovers. Then from within iTunes, right-click on the movie and select Get Info. Move to the Artwork tab and click Add. Select your album artwork and now it will show up both within iTunes and on your AppleTV
Adding Movie Comments
Another nice feature is to add comments to your movie. Comments show up under the DVD Jacket on the AppleTV. To add these comments go to the list view in iTunes and add your text to the Comments column. You can sometimes get good movie text from the Internet Movie Database IMDB.com.
Selecting Movies on the AppleTV
Once your movie is showing within iTunes you can now view it through the AppleTV by selecting it from the My Movies menu option.
Sit back, grab the popcorn and enjoy!
11 Comments to “How to add your DVDs to AppleTV”
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Is there a reason not to use Handbrake’s “Universal” format? I rip all my stuff that way and was under the impressin that I could then play it equally well on iPhone as well as appletv.
You are right Duane, according to the Handbrake website “Universal” format should work for all Apple devices. I’ve just never tried it so I can’t offer any comment on quality. I do try to optimize for AppleTV. I currently don’t watch movies on iPod, or Touch/iPhone.
I’ve updated the article as appropriate.
Please, send me to email new link for download DVD43. The link is dead. THX a lot.
Stavros: DVD43 link has been updated and I sent you the link by email.
Hi, thanks for providing this post. I am trying to copy a DVD to my desktop (I have DVD43, and a green smiley face). I get an error dialogue box “Error Copying File or Folder” that states “Cannot copy VTS_01_1: Invalid MS Dos Function”. The file (VTS_01_1.VOB) is pretty large (247 mb). Do I have to use a DVD copy program like “1-click-copy”. Any freware versions you would recommend?
Thanks!
Kevin: I don’t use any disc copy program to copy files from the DVD to the hard disk. I have found, however, that sometimes DVD43 does say a disk is copyable when in fact it is not. I know it’s hard for rippers such as DVD43 to stay on top of the ever-changing protection schemes used. You may be running into this.
/Technicalguy
Great article – I’m already using the handbrake + DVD43 combo – which works well most of the time!
I also agree about storing in the highest quality. What I still haven’t figured out though, is how to encode using handbrake so that it comes up as ‘HD’ on my Apple tv. Any thoughts?
Good question Mike, and probably one for the Handbrake forum. Please reply back when you get an answer.
I’m also still trying to optimize the AppleTV preselect on Handbrake to get the best resolution possible under 4Gb.
Simple and concise overview on getting DVDs into Apple TV format.
Just one correction I would suggest, which is that the Universal mode has a default Picture Resolution of 720pixel width, which is fine for AppleTV and iTunes, but will not transfer to the iPhone properly. You can manually adjust this to 640, which would still work fine (the iPhone tech specs do list MP4 resolutions upto 640×480). This is preferred over the Handbrake default iPhone/iPod Touch settings, which has the resolution at 480pixel width.
Also, I do a search on images.google.com and type “The Dark Knight movie poster” to get my cover art.