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!
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25 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.
This is the method I use to get my purchased DVD’s into my AppleTV. I use Universal mode and I just let Handbreak take the material directly off the DVD. I don’t copy the content to an HD and then use Handbreak.
I get my DVD cover art and write up info from Amazon.
Re: Drice4444 – The only reason I copy from the DVD to a hard disk is that I read (somewhere) that trying to do this directly from the DVD causes excessive wear on the DVD head and can wear it out prematurely.
Where does everyone get their DVD Cover art from?
Scott, I get mine from IMDB.com, another visitor mentioned just doing a Google search by image for the CD Cover.
Meta X is great for downloading all cover art, actors and descriptions. Chapters are dicy. Hope this helps. I also use Handbrake to rip directly from DVD to MP4 for AppleTV. I haven’t heard about stressing the DVD head. Can anyone shed any light on this?
Heathan: here’s a link to DVD-Guides that talks about stressing the DVD (http://www.dvd-guides.com/guides/dvdrip/235-convert-dvd-to-h264-mkv-mp4-using-handbrake). Maxosx.com forum also says, “Converting directly from a DVD puts a lot of stress on your drive, as the conversion process can take a long time.” The feeling seems to be that the constant head tracking over a long period of time can stress the DVD Player. Anyone know anything more?
El programa Hand Brake aun en formato 64 es bueno, pero algo debe de tener pues cuando se pasa al itune y este a su vez se sincroniza al AppleTV, la reproducion en el TV es muy mala, pues cuando se esta reproduciendo se pierde colores y hay constantes perdidas de definicion, y lo unico que pienso que esta produciendo esos problemas es que en Hand Brake no convierte muy bien a los formatos MPG4 aun H264. Esa es mi apreciacion despues de haberlo probado, si alguien ha superado esta situacion por favor escucho consejos…. gracias
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.
Amy: I’m not a Handbrake guru and I don’t play with all the settings, but I get great resolution by setting the destination file size to 3840Mb (multiples of 64) and let handbrake do the rest. This is a close to 4Gb you can get. I’m very happy with the results, albeit the conversion time takes longer. I also remove any subtitles.
This has worked great, i am actually using a paid for program that incorporates handbrake and works well. Is there a way that you know of to rip a disk of a series and have it in the tv show section of apple tv? So far all i can do is keep each episode as a seperate movie.
Moreperf: I don’t believe there’s any way to put content in the TV section. Movies is the only part that is open to add to.
For TV shows in iTunes, while in iTunes go to “get info”, then click the “options” tab. In the “Media Kind” field select “TV Show”. Also, under the “Video” tab entering the TV show title along with episode name as well as season and episode numbers will cause iTunes to automatically group your TV shows.
Hope that helps.
Use MetaX for all tagging of mp4/m4v files. You can add the cover art, specify Movie, TV Show or even Music Video. You can also assign the Season and Episode for TV shows. And iTunes will automatically organize the files using the TV show name and season info. There’s a slightly different syntax for what goes in each field. Look at a purchased TV show if you have one.
MetaX also let’s you add the movie or TV show rating (G, TV-G etc) so using that with parental controls keeps the kids out of movies not for them. Also – I tag all movies for the kids as “Kids and Family” so they can simply view by GENRE and not have to wade thru all the movies. MetaX has a lookup feature that pulls in all the tags and art most of the time – and chapter names – from Tag Chimp. But also has the capability to drag/drop this info from other sites (B&N).
I use AnyDVD vs DVD43. It’s always being updated and allows you to rip to an image file (ISO) or DVD structure.
Lastly, I wouldn’t waste your drive space on large output files from Handbrake. I’ve tested larger files vs. the AppleTV preset and there is little or no erosion in quality. Pretty much all my movies are between 800MB and 1.5GB and look stunning on my ATV and on XBMC or BOXEE on other HTPCs here at home.