Finally digitised

Many many moons ago, I spent the best part of 3 months, ripping all my CD’s to mp3, ensuring all the meta tag info was correct, and the album artwork was present.

This year, it’s time for my DVD collection.

As some of you may know, I’ve recently bought an Apple TV (well 2 actually), and a 4TB Raid Storage device to store all my media.

After playing around with the Apple TV, I noticed the feature of “Computers”, and how this would stream anything from my iTunes library on my MacMini. As a test, I added a few more items (as I only had the “Digital Copies” from some of my recent DVD purchases), and these streamed fine, so decided to work on ripping my entire collection.

So, about a 2 months ago, I set to work using Handbrake to start ripping all my DVD’s to a “iTunes happy” format. Handbrake comes with a number of default settings, and I found using the default “Apple TV” format gave a good balance between quaility and file size. Another great feature of this default setting is that not only does it rip the 5.1 audio stream (allowing this to be played via the Apple TV), it also took the 5.1 track and down sampled this to 2 channels, allowing this to be played on any other device that can read mp4 format.

So two painful month have passed, and I’ve finally ripped all my DVD movies, meta tagged them, and added them to the iTunes library on the MacMini.

To get all 276 DVD Movies, and multiple TV boxsets ripped into iTunes I had 5 Macs all running Handbrake 0.94 and spent every spare moment at home switching disks as they finished. I had no problem with 95% of the disk, as they ripped first time. I did however find problems with some of the newer disks, and had to use either MacTheRipper to rip them to my hard drive, or if that didn’t work Ripit seemed to get it done. Once on my hard drive, I was able to then covert them.

As you can imagine, the disks were all finishing at different times, and initially found myself checking the progress every hour or so. If a disk had finished, I then started the next disk going. After the first 50 disks or so, I decided there had to be a smarter way. After a little research, I found I could redirect the growl messages (for when the encoding was complete), to my iPhone. The software I used on my iPhone was Boxcar, this combined with a plugin for growl would then send me a push notification upon completion.

I noticed after I’d ripped them all, the some of the media looks a little “jaggy” (namely the animation, and some older films), after reading the forums, people suggested turning on the Detelecine setting in the Picture setting, and this worked a treat. I did have to re-rip a handful of disks, but it was no biggy.

Once I’d ripped a film, I used a piece of software called iDentify, this searches TheMovieDB, tagChimp and TheTVDB and fill in all the meta information, including chapter names (if available), actors, rating, artwork etc.

I soon realised that if I named the film by it’s IMDB name, eg tt0092610, as in http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092610/, this would allow the software to instantly find the correct film. With the TV episodes, I learnt to look on TheTVDB.com first, and made sure the episodes I was ripping matched the naming on there, eg “Battlestar Galactica (2003)”, and then adding s01e01…and continued this throughout the boxsets. The result of this was the files renamed to either the IMDB name or TVDB name.

1 slight bugbear I had, was the TV boxsets that didn’t run in order. An example of this was the run order of Star Trek TNG, on one of the disks I believe it went 108, 116, 115, 117, or something like that. This meant I had to fire up the disk, and check the episode list before ripping, so I could name the files correctly, ensuring when the meta data was applied, it was correct for that episode.

All in all, a worthwhile task, I now have instant access to all my music, TV and movies from either the bedroom or front room.

Tags: album, album artwork, apple tv, artwork, audio stream, balance, Copies, default settings, digital copies, disk, drive, dvd purchases, entire collection, feature, going, Handbrake, IMDB, info, iphone, itunes, MacMini, macs, MacTheRipper, many moons, meta tag, multiple tv, plugin, progress, raid storage, Ripit, software, spare moment, storage device, tag, tag info, test, time, tv format, year

Apple Airport Express

Like most people, I have multiple devices that require internet access, however I hate having to run cables.

My main problem has always been the upstairs, downstairs divide. Not wanting to run a cable through the floorboards, I’ve tried multiple solutions from wireless access points, to the Powerline adapters . Now don’t get me wrong, the Powerline mains adapter does work ok, and it’s only very occasionally I get buffering, however I thought I’d give the Airport Express a try.

I have multiple devices which use wireless n, and to be honest wasn’t really that impressed at the speed difference over wireless g, that was until I got the Time Capsule. The Wireless n technology used by Apple is pretty amazing, I went from an average transfer of 4Mb/sec to around 20Mb/sec.

Currently I have my downstairs Xbox360, PS3, and Wii connected to a Netgear DGN2000, which forwards all traffic to my Sky Router via the Powerline Adapters. Realistically I could have bought the Airport Extreme and just used this to bridge the networks, however I like the idea of the AirTunes.

What the hell is AirTunes you may ask, well let me tell you. The Airport Express comes with a 3.5mm jack plug, which you can connect either a pair of powered speakers, or connect to an amp. iTunes then recognises this as another set of speakers, and you can stream music to this output. With it being quite warm outside, I thought it would be a good idea to have some outdoor speakers connected to this, which can be controlled from my iPhone using the Remote app.

As with any Apple product, you just plug it in, and it works ! My MacBook popped up with the Airport utility, allowed me to bridge the network between this and the Time Capsule, and that was it, jobs done !

I gave it a quick test, and I got on average 25Mb/sec transfer speed, which is twice the speed of Powerline Adapters. I plugged in some powered PC speakers, fired up the remote software, and sure enough I heard my music through them ! Perfect !

The only thing is now, I want more of these, the ability to output the same music in potentially every room in the house, controlled by my iPhone sounds an awesome idea, however it may get a little pricy.

Unboxing photos below.

Tags: AirTunes, apple airport express, apple product, DGN, difference, Express, floorboards, house, iphone, macbook, multiple solutions, n technology, Netgear, outdoor speakers, output, pc speakers, Perfect, plug, powered speakers, Powerline, powerline adapters, pricy, quick test, Remote, remote software, software, speed difference, technology, test, time capsule, traffic, transfer, transfer speed, upstairs downstairs, wii, wireless access points, work

Ozaki iPill Microphone

As some of you may know, in just over 2 weeks I’ll be heading to the Holiday Inn in Birmingham for Dimension Jump XV, this year Red Dwarf Convention, and as we do a Red Dwarf podcast (ScutterCast), I thought it might me a good idea to record some footage while I was there.

I’ve been looking at a number of solutions and came up with the idea of using Audioboo from my iPod touch, then picking up the Audioboo feed using WP-o-Matic, which will then post the audio on the Red Dwarf Forum homepage, which will then tweet this out.

One major downside to using the method, was that the iPod Touch doesn’t have a built in microphone, although I do have the “earbud with built in microphone”, which would be find for recording my own voice, but probably a little intrusive if I wanted to record anyone else.

After a couple of days of looking at different mic solutions, I read a review over at iLounge and they did a mic comparison, the audio from the iPill sounded awesome, so decided to go with that. After an evening of trying to buy one, it seemed that these are only available in the states, and they seemed to be out of stock, having heard the quality difference, I was adamant that this was the mic I wanted, in a bid of desperation, I decided eBay it was. Luckily, I found a company in the Republic of Ireland that had these in stock, and instantly bought.

This morning the mic turned up, and I’ve got to say, I’m really impressed. The first thing I noticed was the packaging, and the look of this thing. The plastic container is in the shape of a petri dish, with a small clip holding the pill shaped microphone in place.

The iPill itself pulls in half, to review the 3.5mm jack plug, that plugs into the bottom of the iPods headphone jack, and the other half has a small loop where you could potentially add some string so you don’t lose this thing.

So, the audio quality…what’s it like ?…pretty awesome ! I plugged it into the bottom of my iPod Touch, and it was instantly recognised, and I gave it a quick test in Apples “Voice Memos” software, and attached my recording below

So, the audio quality…what’s it like ?…pretty awesome ! I plugged it into the bottom of my iPod Touch, and it was instantly recognised, and I gave it a quick test in Apples “Voice Memos” software, and attached my recording below.

iPill Test

Final thoughts ?, granted this isn’t the same quality as my M-Audio mixer, and my condenser mic at home, but think it will do an awesome job, of getting some footage at Dimension Jump.

I can highly recommend this microphone to anybody who want to turn their iPod Touch into a decent dictating machine, and for £13 delivered, it’s worth every penny !

Tags: 5mm, Apple, audio, audio quality, Audioboo, Birmingham, bottom, couple of days, desperation, dimension, dimension jump, downside, dwarf, earbud, ebay, footage, forum homepage, half, holiday inn, idea, ilounge, ipill, ipod, ipod touch, ipods, jack, jump, microphone, o matic, ozaki, petri dish, plastic container, quality, quality difference, red, Red Dwarf, Republic of Ireland, stock, test, thing, touch, voice