Video Encoding Woes
Filed Under (Geek) by Dave on November-30-2008

So I have my lovely Mac Mini back from Apple after having the hard drive replaced and it is now happily living next to our 42″ HDTV and ready to begin its life as our media server.  The delay hasn’t been on the machines side, but more on my failings.  I have yet to spend the time, do the research and learn the terminology and technology to know what I need to convert “obtained*” content into something I can easily use full screen in HD.

The machine comes with Front Row, which unfortunately only works with things in your iTunes library.  I had purchased a copy of VisualHub and has in the past used that to rip into a Tivo format for my standard definition Tivo.  I tried the program again last night to try and convert some “obtained*” content and was greeted with a notification that the author is no longer going to develop the application anymore.  While I can use a program that wont be developed anymore as long as the features still work, I’d like to have something that would progress with my machine as it sees new operating system updates.

What I’d like even more is a better front end than Front Row.  Something that is easy to use with just the Apple Remote and can play multiple file types.  The ultimate would be for me to just play the content in the format it was downloaded saving the time of transcoding and the need for me to learn all the technologies, formats, resolutions and codecs.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

* I know many people have objections to “obtained” content.  I am not inviting a discussion on legality or morality of this endevour.

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Comments
Scott on November 30th, 2008 at 10:50 am #

the following blog has some resources:
http://www.entertainmac.com/

Get the Perian plug-in – with it installed you can play pretty much everything through front row – doesn’t have to be in your itunes library, just drop movies in your “Movies” folder.

http://www.perian.org/

Scott on November 30th, 2008 at 10:51 am #

Oh, and handbrake has added converting between formats as well as DVD-Rip to it’s feautres. Cross platform, also now requires VLC Media Player for the DVD Decoding.

Dave on November 30th, 2008 at 11:06 am #

Scott,

Thanks for the links. The issue now with Perian + Front Row becomes will it work if I make ~/Movies a symlink to /Volumes/Media/Movies as the hard disk on the mini is only 60GB.

MegaZone on November 30th, 2008 at 7:22 pm #

While VisualHub has been discontinued, the author kindly open-sourced it and it has been revived as FilmRedux: http://transcoderredux.svn.sourceforge.net/
http://www.iskysoft.com/article/how-to-build-isquint-and-visualhub.html

Andrew on December 13th, 2008 at 2:48 pm #

I use VideoDrive (http://www.aroona.net/VideoDrive/Home.html). It’s not an alternative to Front Row, but it does the job when it comes to different file formats. I recently, started downloading 720p movies in .mkv format and VideoDrive is my only option of getting iTunes to recognize these files under Movies. The way it does it, is by creating small (~ 5-10MB) .mov files, tricking iTunes into thinking that it’s importing a quicktime movie. It works the same way for other file types (e.g. avi, mpg, etc.). You can even fill out appropriate fields for title, description, year and even import high-res cover art. The .mov files are stored in the Movies folder inside your iTunes Music folder. The only potential problem that I see in the future is if I decide to migrate my library to an external hdd, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to migrate my 4-10Gb original movie files along with aliases (5-10MB .mov files). But that’s not an immediate concern of mine, since my iMac hdd is 1TB.

Keep in mind that if you plan on using it with AppleTV, it might not work properly. I’m not sure if iTunes uses Perian to playback the original mkv files from the hard drive. So, unless you have boxee or some other software tweak installed on your AppleTV, it most likely won’t work. However, I don’t have an AppleTV, so I can’t vouch for its incompatibility with such a scenario, but that’s just something to keep in mind. Good luck.

Dave on December 13th, 2008 at 2:53 pm #

Hooking it up an Apple TV is not really an issue as my Mac Mini is hooked directly to my 1080P television. Thanks for the advice, I’ll check it out.