[DrGrafix]

I have a bunch of DVDs that were ripped on my PC using AnyDVD. If I simply point VLC to the Video_TS file, it play the movie without any hiccups. I bought a Gen1 ATV with XBMC (and Boxee) on it. Would XBMC give me a sort of menu that would allow me to point the ATV to the USB drive that is connected to my mac and see those folders as some sort of menu on my TV screen? And is that menu customizeable in any way (i.e. can I include a jpg with a screen shot from the movie with a title?

My intention is to hardwire the ATV to my mac's network to make "streaming" cleaner. Is that the better approach? I have also heard something about ignoring the internal ATV drive (40GB this one) and somehow linking the ATV to a specific host drive which would have either XBMC and/or Boxee on it. Is that possible and are there FAQs where I could read about that?

Whoops! I also forgot to ask whether I need to "convert" those PC created Video_TS files via handbrake to a Mac format? And should a host USB drive be formatted as a Mac-specific drive or is PC format OK?

As you can guess, I'm new to all this and I appreciate any/all help.

Doc

[S80_UK]

Dare I suggest, Read The Fine Manual...

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMC_Online_Manual

XBMC should have little problem with your files however. You would just need to share the USB drive on to the network from the MAC.

[DrGrafix]

I've been reading the manual for about an hour now. Even the MAC-specific FAQ... but I have yet to find anything that suggests whether a mac user should format a XMBC/ATV dedicated external HDD to MAC or PC standards. Perhaps someone could either point me to the spot in the online manual or just tell me what would work better.

I also haven't been able to determine whether using straight TS_Video files created on a PC has any greater or lesser advantage for a Mac user than converting said TS_Video files via Handbrake into MP4s.

[garyi]

Put your files on a shared drive.

Put each VIdeo TS folder in its own folder and name the folder properly, for films its a simple as the film name follwed by the year it was made in brackets

Such as:

The Thing (1981)

If this drive is on a mac or attached to a mac goto system prefs and sharing then file sharing then options. Turn on SMB

Back in sharing click the plus button and navigate to the drive or folder all your videos are now in and click ok.

Back on the ATV open XBMC goto videos and 'add source'

click on browse and scroll down to windows network (SMB) then workgroup then your mac should appear then your share folder, go into this folder then click ok. Then set content on this folder as movies and use folder names for look ups and do not scan recursively.

Then scan for new content.

Provided you have names your films right lots of nice things will occur.

XBMC plays video ts fine, but make sure once you are done to leave the videos section and go into movies section, depending on what skin you are on this might involve tuning on library mode.

This is confusing and geeky. We are all in trenched and think its easy, But its not. Its actually very difficult for new users so don't feel bad about it. My wife has seen me use XBMC for years and still has no idea whats occuring, only how to select a movie to play!

[darkscout]

You're taking a whole bunch of ideas like disk partition formats, file formats, folder structures (TS_VIDEO) and mashing them into a weird question.

1) XBMC will play almost anything under the sun.
2) Personally .mp4 is easier to deal with than TS_VIDEO.
3) XBMC will support what ever partition formats the host OS does.
Windows: FAT32, NTFS
OS X: HFS+, FAT32, NTFS (with FUSE driver)
Linux: EXT*, FAT32, and about anything else you want.

Apple TV I think only supports HFS+. However, I don't think that it supports reading (by default) external media. If you use OpenELEC or Linux on your AppleTV instead of AppleTV OS (Tiger, 10.4, with some fancy "Finder"), then you'd fall under the linux category.

[DrGrafix]

Put your files on a shared drive.

Put each VIdeo TS folder in its own folder and name the folder properly, for films its a simple as the film name follwed by the year it was made in brackets

Such as:

The Thing (1981)

If this drive is on a mac or attached to a mac goto system prefs and sharing then file sharing then options. Turn on SMB

Back in sharing click the plus button and navigate to the drive or folder all your videos are now in and click ok.

Back on the ATV open XBMC goto videos and 'add source'

click on browse and scroll down to windows network (SMB) then workgroup then your mac should appear then your share folder, go into this folder then click ok. Then set content on this folder as movies and use folder names for look ups and do not scan recursively.

Then scan for new content.

Provided you have names your films right lots of nice things will occur.

XBMC plays video ts fine, but make sure once you are done to leave the videos section and go into movies section, depending on what skin you are on this might involve tuning on library mode.

This is confusing and geeky. We are all in trenched and think its easy, But its not. Its actually very difficult for new users so don't feel bad about it. My wife has seen me use XBMC for years and still has no idea whats occuring, only how to select a movie to play!

Ohhhh that last paragraph made me feel good Gary LOL. I'm still evolving and learning about macs, still have a pc crutch just in case. I bought Parallels but haven't installed as of yet. I use a AR XSight remote for our home theater setup and my wife is terrified of controlling so many devices that she just asks me to put the TV on! It does sound like maybe I should slowly convert all my dvds to MP4? But before I do that, I'm going to format the new (shared) drive with HFS+ Journaled... I assume thats the way to go?

You're taking a whole bunch of ideas like disk partition formats, file formats, folder structures (TS_VIDEO) and mashing them into a weird question.

1) XBMC will play almost anything under the sun.
2) Personally .mp4 is easier to deal with than TS_VIDEO.
3) XBMC will support what ever partition formats the host OS does.
Windows: FAT32, NTFS
OS X: HFS+, FAT32, NTFS (with FUSE driver)
Linux: EXT*, FAT32, and about anything else you want.

Apple TV I think only supports HFS+. However, I don't think that it supports reading (by default) external media. If you use OpenELEC or Linux on your AppleTV instead of AppleTV OS (Tiger, 10.4, with some fancy "Finder"), then you'd fall under the linux category.

Scout... I apologize for asking so many questions. I just didn't want to find out that; (a) I should've used HFS+J instead of a FAT32 or NTFS format on the drive, (b) I should've ripped with handbrake into MP4 rather than AnyDVD in TS_Video, and © discovered that ATV with XMBC installed won't work when streaming from a PC-formatted FAT32 drive.

As noted above, I think I should start off by formatting the drive, converting a couple of rips or DVDs to MP4, moving them onto the drive, then hook up the ATV and see what I have to deal with. Kind of starting at the low end of the pool and eventually figure it out.

I do appreciate the help guys. Thank You and Happy New Year!

[defiler]

DrGrafix, I'll give you the same advice I seem to be giving everyone just now.

MakeMKV. It'll turn a DVD (or the video_ts files) into a single .mkv file. This contains a bit-perfect copy of the video, plus whichever soundtracks and subtitles you want. That way you don't end up with a bunch of folders with movie titles, and having to select the ts file inside. You sort the movies however you want and you (or whoever else is using it) just picks the movie name and it plays.

It'll beat its way through copy protection on many DVDs and BluRays (though I use AnyDVD for that anyway, and my AppleTV (scrubbed, Ubuntu + XBMC + CrystalHD) seems to have an easier time with the MKV files than the directories pulled off the original media.

That's how I do it. Saves a little space (I don't need non-English soundtracks, for example), loses no quality, *MUCH* faster than HandBrake,and makes file management easy.

Now, if you're using an external drive with an AppleTV, I'd make it HFS *without* journalling. That means you'll be able to pop a linux image onto the AppleTV later (if you want), and still use the same drive without all the tedious mucking about. On the other hand, XBMC will mount network shares. If you have a computer running all the time anyway (like me) just run the movies over the network and don't worry about the capacity of the user-side device. If you don't have a computer on all the time, and don't want to start one up just to play some movies, make sure your external drive is nice and quiet. Doesn't have to be all that fast, but it does have to be quiet.

[ral67]

actually a properly patched ATV with nitoTV can mount NTFS readonly and FAT32 read-write

If you plan on using AFP or NFS sharing you need HFS though

[garyi]

I would recommend dvd2onex if you have video TS folders.

As you are using XBMC it can read vobs fine, and the benefit here is DVD2oneX will transcode a folder in around 7 minutes where as handbrake will take a month.

[defiler]

I would recommend dvd2onex if you have video TS folders.

As you are using XBMC it can read vobs fine, and the benefit here is DVD2oneX will transcode a folder in around 7 minutes where as handbrake will take a month.

If its that fast I seriously doubt it's transcoding. It's likely just repackaging the existing streams into a new container file, much like MakeMKV. Given the cost of storage these days, I wouldn't bother transcoding. There's no point in sacrificing any quality from the original just to save a little space, so if dvd2one is just repackaging then it would seem to be a reasonable option.

For the time taken, the loss in quality, and the low cost of storage I wouldn't entertain the prospect of actually transcoding these days. Unless it's something that my XBMC actually chokes on (VC-1 at the moment).

[garyi]

Sorry yes. I was trying to sound technical.

All it does I think is extract the VOB out of the TS and do some magic and stuff.

all I know is, if you are using XBMC then it works a treat and is super fast.

My method is:

use Ripit to get DVD to mac, about 20 mins
Run DVD2onex on the resulted file, 7 mins.

To be fair i have not used handbrake in a long time and now have a i7 quad core so it would probably be pretty quick

[defiler]

Sorry yes. I was trying to sound technical.

Hehe - fair enough.

All that's happening is that on any VOB or M2TS file (or for that matter, AVI or MKV) you have a number of data streams interwoven through the file. When a device needs to play the video, that's one stream. When you want sound that's another (and if you want to change languages it just changes the stream it's reading). Again, subtitles are just another stream and the DVD player / XBMC / DVB box / whatever just picks the streams it needs and skips over the rest.

On a DVD / BluRay these streams often overrun one file and then start agian in another (hence lots of VOB files). All MakeMKV does (and by the sound of things dvd2one in this case) is pull the streams you're wanting from the original files and reinterleave them into a new file. It's a straight copy really. Think of it as taking stuff out of one box and putting it straight into a different box.

HandBrake actually decodes the video down to individual images and then recodes it using the compression settings you specify - that's transcoding. It's memory and processor-intensive, so it takes a long time. A few GB and an i7 and it won't be intolerable though. The thing with encoding video is it will throw away details that the codec doesn't reckon you'll notice in order to save space. Since it's been encoded (and detail thrown away), by decoding and then re-encoding it you'll throw different details away so you lose twice. And if you're using a different encoder (or even different encoder settings) and repeatedly transcode the files, they'll deteriorate at a surprising speed.

And that's why you buy a bigger hard disc rather than transcoding