Home Media Server
 

Who has one? I am looking to start moving all of my movies to digital. What is needed?

1. I suppose a large NAS HDD would be best?
2. What software for indexing etc? It will likely be Mac OSx. Although, I could do windows, if necessary

Any tips would be great. I tried to google this, but there seems to be a LOT to it.

Re: Home Media Server
 

I've ripped all my DVDs using HandBrake. I store them in an iTunes library on a 3TB external drive and access them via AppleTV.

Re: Home Media Server
 

Does HandBrake allow to convert to put on DVD later if you choose?

Re: Home Media Server
 

I rip all my movies to mpeg4 and serve them on my Samsung DVD player via Samsung PC Share Manager.
It's a lousy solution, but serves my purposes. I'm sure I can serve media right to my tv, but I'm too lazy to bother with it. All I want to do is watch movies with it.

Peter's solution is much more elegant being as you're using a Mac. I'm not.
You can move your Apple tv wherever you want it, too. I don't have that functionality.

Re: Home Media Server
 

Another vote for handbrake from me, very simple and always works for me.
Not positive if you can go back to dvd though, however since it's free you can always get it and mess around with it.

Apple TV is one of the most elegant options however, if you end up downloading a lot of media from file sharing sites, you may end up with some weird formats with Apple TV may or not play.

I use Plex media server right now and have really been liking it.

Re: Home Media Server
 

One can't be much more tech-ignorant than I, but what about this "cloud" I've heard about?

Re: Home Media Server
 

Does Handbrake also rip Blu-Ray discs?

Re: Home Media Server
 

Yes it does, Michael. But it was convoluted last I tried it and you have to have something like DVDFab (BluRay) or AnyDVD HD in the background. I'm not even sure AnyDVD will work.

Re: Home Media Server
 

I am leaning towards this now. I have an older ATV and it can be jailbroken to run Plex. OR....I may buy an older MacMini
Hmmmm....I don't have much, but it seems like Handbrake would convert the stuff I do have.



Rrrgghhhh....more steps. Most of my stuff is BluRay

Re: Home Media Server
 

I just discovered this yesterday. The GUI is sexy as hell and exactly what I am looking for.

Re: Home Media Server
 

Another vote for Plex from me. I use it exclusively on my Mac to stream Blu-Ray to my Roku players throughout the house. I have two external HD's (2TB & 4TB) which host the media itself. When I do rip older discs (which is, admittedly, not that often) I also use Handbrake.

The real plus for me using Plex is the ability to stream on multiple devices, including iPad's.

Re: Home Media Server
 

So you have the BluRay burned to HDD? What did you use to accomplish this?

Right now, I am looking at a Raid5 setup with a total of 10-12 TB. This will be connected to a MacMini running Plex.

Re: Home Media Server
 

I need to reinvestigate a home media server as well.

I had problems streaming mine throughout the house. But I was trying to stream uncompressed blurays over wifi.

I copied blurays to a NAS HDD using hd decrypter. Not sure of the limitations now, but in 2013'ish, there was a sony anti-copy feature that didn't easily allow sony blurays to be copied, so I just skipped those that had that.

Each movie was around 20-40GB.

The NAS is hardwired to the router and I wanted to stream over wifi to the rest of my house. It would stutter so badly that it was unwatchable over wifi. It seems like everyone else used some type of program to encode the bluray to a much smaller sized format. Then the other difficulty was if you encoded them, they were not full HD and it became a codec nightmare, the playstation might not play this or that, I think apple tv doesn't play .mkv.

Re: Home Media Server
 

BluRay seems to be the issue right now. The tech may just not be there yet. Storage is sure as hell cheap now.

Re: Home Media Server
 

Look for the program MakeMKV to rip Blurays to a .mkv file, which you can then use handbrake to convert into just about any format. I recently found out about Plex, so I don't know if it supports mkv files.

Re: Home Media Server
 

Good info!

Re: Home Media Server
 

None of my streaming stuff supports mkv, but it does transcode well.
MakeMKV's website is down, but their shareware is still available at softpedia and cnet.
Makemkv is great for making large files and lossless audio.
The only problem is that if there are a lot of people on your server using your files, it'll load the network and cause streaming problems. Space is also an issue.
I don't notice any difference between a 2gb mp4 and bigger files when I watch them, short of a full-blown bluray.

I looked into handbrake a bit further and there's a .dll available out there that takes care of copy protection.
From what I've read, folks generally use Makemkv to rip video, then use Handbrake to transcode. The two programs are made to work together, which is great.
DVDfab rips and re-encodes on the fly, and it's one-button simple. If I didn't already have it I'd go with Makemkv and handbrake.

Re: Home Media Server
 

MakeMKV will rip a bluRay but handbrake still hates BluRay....

Re: Home Media Server
 

Yea, it takes me 10+ hours to transcode the MKV bluray files into m4p format.

Re: Home Media Server
 

Right.
You gotta rip with something else, then re-encode with Handbrake for BluRays.
Or use DVDFab that does both at once.

Re: Home Media Server
 

DVD Fab looks nice. Thanks for the heads up!!

Re: Home Media Server
 

Do you guys run RAID 5 on your media storage?

Re: Home Media Server
 

I was looking at this but there seems to an issue with rebuild failures.

Re: Home Media Server
 

I have 7 platters in my main rig, Michael.
I set up 6 of them in a fake raid. I just backup drive F to G, H to J, etc.
I used to raid everything, but it ate hdd's at a rate that was ridiculous for all the more duty I was putting on them.
Raid 5 is gonna give you the equivalent of a write and two disk reads for every write. Basically thrice the duty on the platters.
A simple backup is going to give you one extra write for as many reads as you want. Saves heat, platters, and replacing them.
I've had one hdd die in this latest build, and that was within the first couple months. It was just a junk hdd.
Were I running raid, this is about the time I'd be replacing them one at a time.

Mind ya, I realize I have a chance of losing some media, albeit very small.
I don't care about that, media can be replaced easy enough and it'd be nice to get rid of most anyways.
My important stuff is backed up on 3 drives. I haven't lost anything since 2001. Knock on wood. :D

Re: Home Media Server
 

As others have mentioned, DVDFab is the way to go on this one. Though, admittedly, I don't rip much Blu Ray anymore. I obtain Blu Ray files (aargh) which are sometimes in the 30-50GB range and use Plex to stream them.

Re: Home Media Server
 

I am avoiding that attaining conversation. I fear the Pnoon ban hammer

Re: Home Media Server
 

:sw

Re: Home Media Server
 

DVDfab was tangled up in some litigation, went offline, then came back up saying they'd only be serving the customers who had lifetime memberships.
Now I see it's business as usual.
Just be aware of that, Chip. You may buy it and they'll be gone the next day.
Copy protection changes constantly, so as time goes on it'd be useless for new titles if they shut down again.
It's always been that way with all that type of software, it's nothing new. Just thought I'd mention it.
I'd checked out DVDfab for so long that I ultimately bought it just because it worked so good.

Re: Home Media Server
 

Good advice!

Re: Home Media Server
 

LOL!

Peter is a big old fluffy teddy bear :tu