Home Media Server

[hammondc]

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.

[pnoon]

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.

[CigarSquid]

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

[shilala]

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.

[Flynnster]

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.

[The Poet]

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

[CigarNut]

Does Handbrake also rip Blu-Ray discs?

[shilala]

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.

[hammondc]

Originally Posted by pnoon

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.

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

Originally Posted by Flynnster

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.

Hmmmm....I don't have much, but it seems like Handbrake would convert the stuff I do have.

Originally Posted by shilala

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.

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

[hammondc]

Originally Posted by Flynnster

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

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

[LasciviousXXX]

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.

[hammondc]

Originally Posted by LasciviousXXX

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.

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.

[themoneycollector]

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.

[hammondc]

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

[Chainsaw13]

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.

[hammondc]

Good info!

[shilala]

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.

[hammondc]

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

[Chainsaw13]

Originally Posted by hammondc

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

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

[shilala]

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