“…PDF attachments sent from Apple Mail to a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Update Rollup 3 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3) to an Microsoft Outlook 2010 client.”

I did several DVDs, both commerical and some DVD+R’s that I used to back up TiVoed movies. My HTPC is built around Plex instead of Apple TV; as I suspected, Plex can “see” MKV files directly. I just put the MKV file in one of the folders that Plex already “knows” about and it automatically catalogs it, downloads the metadata, and the cover art.

I’m developing a little bit different process than what Ara described. I like DVD commentary tracks and supplemental features, so I’m just grabbing most everything in the one MakeMKV run. In contrast to Ara’s process, I’m checking what MakeMKV selected to make sure that it selected *all* the commentary tracks & special features. A MakeMKV run is much faster than Handbrake — probably because it is not compressing anything — so it is no big deal to just grab everything you want.

If the DVD contains several different video files, MakeMKV automatically creates separate files. You can rename them so you can tell them apart and group all the files for a DVD into a folder. In Plex, you can display the catalog by folder; you group the files by DVD in this way.

A nice feature of Plex is that you can choose the audio track at playback time. If you keep more than one audio track, you will get a pop-up menu with the available audio tracks. In this way, the one MKV file works as a “universal” movie file.

You can also have MakeMKV keep the subtitles. I prefer the original language audio but the English subtitles. Using VLC, I verified that the requested subtitles are stored in the MKV file. Plex also has an option to choose a subtitle track at playback time, but it doesn’t work right. I can select the desired audio track and the desired subtitle track, but Plex munges up the subtitles. That part has to wait for a bug fix or try to figure this out. It looks like a textencoding problem

The other issue with the MKV files is that they are so large that some don’t stream to the iOS devices without stuttering. They play on the HDTV great, but that is a wired connection. To get wireless going flawlessly for every movie, I’d need to proceed to Step 3 and transcode the MKV to mp4/H264 using Handbrake. Unfortunately, the whole theee-step process is real time consuming. The resulting .mp4 is about half the size of the MKV but it streams perfectly to iPad and iPhone. On the other hand, sometimes the MKV streams to my iPhone or iPad perfectly, so I need to figure this out better. Perhaps I only need to get a wireless extender nearer the iOS device (I’ve got an Airport Extreme in a different room).

I suppose that using Plex is the solution to Ara’s problem of preserving the Blu-ray video and audio quality for digital media. It gives you everying and at full quality. With Plex, you can truly put the disks into deep storage.

But it all works! I can see that it is far from being ready for the mass-market, but it has an extremely high coolness factor for mac geeks, despite what PC pundits think.

according the old guard press Apple has been dead, dying or about to die since it first opened the doors. they have never been kind. the computers were tolerated in a business because some part of them were needed to get a job done that couldn’t get done any other way. it seems odd that nearly every magazine used Macs in some kind of way until Windows 95 made it more tolerable to do layout, color correction and other prepress work. kinda cool as long as it made the presses run. sure.

remember when the floppy got axed. Henry Norr (one of the best Mac news guys ever) dedicated 4 column inches of his review of the iMac for MacWeek about what a terrible mistake this was going to be. totally uncool was the word.

when the iPod came out 10 years ago it was declared a instant dud because it was expensive and only worked on a Mac. totally uncool said everyone on SlashDot.

Macintosh never worked well with an Exchange server. and Office for Mac or Windows have had interoperability issues since forever. but that’s not Apple’s fault. but it does make working with them uncool according to IT nerds that have to deal with the screams of the lusers.

and look at all the cool technology that has been killed along the way. why before it even got out of the box Mac BASIC had been knifed to make people happy. but let’s make a list just to be sure: HyperCard, Dylan, AppleTalk (the protocol), printers, small displays, and I could go on and on. what is next? FireWire and optical media. venders and retailers are left with unsellable inventory again and again and it’s really uncool that there is that wake of trash.

Final Cut Pro X is either the best thing ever or you wondered why you didn’t jump to Adobe or Avid long ago. it’s a 1.o product and you’d be crazy not to look at other technology. my feeling is that this move of alienation of a user base was intentional. they are a demanding lot. but the way it was done was totally uncool.

Apple has been a uncool to it’s partners. we won’t ever really know how much money IBM/Motorola lost over Apple switching to Intel. billions were invested in getting fabrication and assembly to make zillions of CPUs. after Apple left there wasn’t a customer. at least 4 companies got left holding the bag making developer tools. not to mention forcing every single Mac developer to rewrite thousands of lines of code to make it work on Intel based Macs. sure, some of it was simple. but look at how long it took Adobe to finish it’s migration.

the number of features that Apple has appropriated from 3rd party developers is countless. one day you might be making a working wage selling a tool only to find it as a feature in the next OS. small developer beware. don’t count on long term revenue stream. especially if what you made is cool.

if Apple was ever cool it’s news to me. this is a company that you should be very wary in your dealings if you are trying to make a living around them.

but from a user perspective. sure. it’s cool. Apple is cool. just be sure you have AppleCare on Mac.

The Model Number is: CP40NG10. Though LG’s site says all their Blu-Ray internal/external devices are Mac compatible.

I had been considering an adapter that would take HDMI from a Blu-Ray player and convert it to display port which than could be displayed on a 27″ iMac. These solutions are 720P only and run close to $150 bucks.

Once I heard about MakeMKV I went and got a LG external Blu-Ray drive from Best-Buy that was relatively inexpensive as it only reads Blu-Ray (though burns DVD/CD). Hooked it up and ran MakeMKV and now I am a really happy camper.

Macgo makes a Blu-Ray player for the Mac. The license for their program is good for both the Mac and Windows version. I haven’t tried this a MakeMKV and VLC is fine for me, though sources such as Other World Computing say this works very well.

Can you guys discuss, albeit short, up-to-date external encoding options for ripped DVD content? I have a Turbo.264 (non HD) for some things. Otherwise, I use Handbrake. The weakest link in my MacBook is the GPU: Intel GMA X3100 144 MB. Offloading HD encoding would be nice since I don’t plan to buy another MacBook for a couple years.

In recent years the longevity of the Mac has presented challenges with the increase development pace of video content.

This was very helpful, as I hadnt heard the formula for burning a blu-ray. I’d have to buy the player and right now it isn’t worth it because I have so few blu-rays. But it is a good thing to know since the weapon of choice for HTPC on Mac is the Mac mini and it no longer comes with even a standard DVD. So you might as well budget another $100 for that external player.

My Handbrake settings pretty much agree. I go with the variable bit rate setting in the 4000-5000 k range ( depending on the source) and I only grab the DD 5.1/448k choice, if available. Handbrake likes to pick 2 channel even if 5.1 is available. I always use the 2 pass encoding, as I dont want to go back to the physical disk.

I’d have to check as to whether Plex can play the MKV file directly. That would save the lengthy step of transcoding to the MP4, maybe it is so big that it won’t be able to stream wirelessly to the iOS toys (I mean devices).

Good show!

Deborah Brenner

Great show with very interesting information on using the AppleTV for a home theater system.

One thing that wasn’t covered was the ability to greatly expand the content selection that is available on the AppleTV when using AirPlay/AirPlay Mirroring and the iPad 2. This iOS5 feature allows you to steam video content from the iPad to the AppleTV.

With this feature I can stream video content for many iPad apps that include video stream such as the almost all the TV network’s iPAD apps and even Hulu Plus.

This works great for me.

It is important to note that Airplay Mirroring, the ability to mirror the screen of the iPad (or the iPhone), is only supported on the iPad 2 (or the iPhone 4s) and not the iPad 1 (or any previous iPhone model).

Thanks.

I’ve got a blog post in mind to outline my current iTunes-centric environment and workflows… perhaps I’ll work on this and post a link when it is ready. Looking forward to the next episode as this is an area that has interested me for a few years now; I’ve ripped (and re-ripped) hundreds of DVDs and HD-DVD/Blurays along with my iTunes TV Show purchases to completely cut the cord.

Have you seen the new Bose TV. It has an absolutely awesome remote system and sound system. Their pricing is 3 or 4 times what you might pay for a similar quality tv without the enhanced audio. They are a very niche player and Apple probably wouldn’t want to be in the game at that level, but what they have done for ease of use suggests to me what Apple could do for the control function. Its the only one advance that I’ve seen on that side. Apple with Siri and it’s ability to make things simple could make use of a TV/AV system great.

Just a thought.

Chuck

With my MacBook Pro open and running iTunes I could stream the movies from the Time Capsule over WiFi but for some reason I found that iTunes kept losing the links to the movies and I often had to re-establish the link again using Get Info before I could pull/push the movie to the AppleTV. Bit of a pain to have to keep waking my laptop and fix connections just to watch a movie which kept confusing my family. I’d been looking into buying a Mac Mini as a media server, just like you were talking about in the show, but reluctant about the £500+ price tag.

Then I saw an article about FireCore’s aTV Flash (black). I was hesitant about the £20 cost but it promised quite a few extra features (browser, XBMC, weather) that it can add to the AppleTV. There was just one I was interested in, the media player it adds can play video directly from a NAS drive – no computer, no iTunes. Apparently it also plays a lot more formats but everything I ripped is m4v/mov anyway. The app does have to jailbreak the ATV to install the software, but it only took me 30 mins to do two AppleTV’s, it wasn’t much hassle and it’s not something I’d tried before.

All I can say is it works very, very well. It feels like an ideal set-up, just the Time Capsule that’s always on anyway and the Apple TV, taking quite a bit out of the equation. Course I can still access my iTunes library when I want too for other stuff.

I’ve got one ATV in the living room which has a network cable directly to the Time Capsule and another upstairs connecting directly to the NAS over WiFi, both working beautifully.

You can add specific folders on the NAS as ‘favourites’ and it just adds a direct link under a new ‘Media’ menu that comes up immediately on the homescreen right next to ‘Computer’, so it’s just a couple of clicks to start a movie.

You can organise your folders/menu items as you want, so I’ve got Movies, TV, Family Videos and Concerts all split out and right on the homescreen. Oh, and all of this is indistinguishable from the rest of the navigation.

This shows the AppleTV is more than capable of streaming direct from a NAS without iTunes, I hope they build it straight into the next version of the OS so you don’t need the jailbreak & third party software to do it.

I listened to the show. It was a good start. I got really excited when you guys started talking about blu-ray ripping. Unfortunately it ended up being a cliffhanger. So please, please, please, please do the follow up show on blu-ray ripping.

Thanks
-Heiko

As Yogi said, our similarities are different. I settled on Plex to power the HTPC rather than iTunes or Front Row but I also use Handbrake to gradually convert my DVD library to mpeg-4/H264. I am in no rush. Plex integrates nicely with iTunes if you choose to use iTunes content in your media library but you are not dependent on it at all. It’s just one of several resources.

I learned that one advantage that Plex has is that I do only one Handbrake encoding per movie. And it is the “high quality” encoding for the HDTV. I choose Handbrake parameters so that no loss of quality can be detected, which means a pretty high bitrate. In some cases, I find that I need to turn on the Deinterlace filter to eliminate “jaggies” (This is especially true when Handbraking old Tivo’d shows (480i) from cable). I don’t accept jaggies and I don’t accept any pixelation.

The one encoding works for all devices. OK, the setup is this. The Mac Mini is wired to the HDTV but it also streams via wi-fi to any iOS device within reach. You just need to log in with your username and password, just like a shared volume. There is no monkeying around with Apple IDs or iTunes Sharing rules. Its just your wi-fi setup; mine is an Apple “Extreme” wireless router. And Plex can play back a movie on the HDTV and also stream another movie to an iOS device at the same time (in case someone in the household doesn’t care for your choice of movies!) It’s a server!

Adam, there’s no problem digitizing the extras from a “Special Edition” dvd; of course, I need to encode each extra as a separate file. I label them differently (e.g. “MovieName (BTS)”, “MovieName (Deleted scene)”, “MovieName (Director’s commentary)”, etc.). The separate files are listed in the Plex guide under the names I give them. I want to forget about the disks themselves so I encode everything I want.

BTW, the iOS Plex app, which is the only cost in the Plex system, does triple duty. It is a wi-fi remote control, a display for your (searchable) Plex movie library, and a playback device. The use case is that you choose a movie from the movie library and then decide to either play it on the HDTV or on the device you’re holding. On the iPad, this is terrific; when you add an mpeg-4/H264 to a folder that the Plex Server knows about, it automatically adds the movie to your library, downloads info on the movie, populates the info fields, and adds the cover art. Once its all set up, the system really leaves iTunes in the dust.

I think the process and setup are way too complicated for normal people but perfect for geeks. Apple is right about normal people, but I like Plex. Draw your own conclusions.

When I said this to a PC user a couple months ago, after helping her purchase her first Mac, she (an employee at Nike headquarters) snapped back with

“Drink the cool aid.”

Not having been in corporate America, I had never heard this term, but it’s oh so true!

Still the daddy of mac podcasting

This are my thoughts on mini-theft:

I think that Apple has a way to disable the RFID chips on their merchandise once you buy them with the revamped iOS app. You buy an Airport Express with your iPhone and when you pay using your iTunes account it has to go and cross reference by location/inventory, etc and disable the alarms so that you can leave the store without setting the thing off.

It isn’t possible to share that with different iCloud accounts unfortunately.

Also, we do share a separate iTunes account, and we do have different iMessages accounts. currently only both our phones back up to the Cloud, we’d surpass our free 5gb limit if our iPads also did so.

so for now, until Apple changes things, we changed Siri to simply call us Friend instead of our names.

also, if you only want to share calendars, instead of creating a 3rd iCloud account, you could simply “share” a calendar via ical and invite your spouse to be a reader/editor of the calendar.

Editor note: Removed link that wasn’t relevant to the discussion.

I was hoping the Video app in iOS 5 would become as good as the iPod touch one, but it’s horrible. You can’t have it play music videos one after the other without a trick I don’t want to do, and you can only see songs sorted by title, not by artist. I use an app called VP Lite which isn’t brilliant, but it’s OK.

So some time ago I went to 3rd party apps for podcasts. As you said Downcast is quite good, but I mainly use iCatcher which was the first one dedicated for the iPad and has all the advanced functions similar to Downcast. I just had some problems with Downcast at times. Downcast and iCatcher also allow you to speed up video podcasts.

But this doesn’t fix the audiobook problem as far a playback speeds go. Of course Audible has it’s own app, though it is not a universal app. But I create a lot of audiobooks using the OSX Voices. For that I use an app called Speedup which allows you to set the playback speed to whatever you want, though it also is not a universal app. It will speedup anything you have in your library.

This was an outstanding show. Thank you for doing the background research so that we could understand the history behind the Siri technology. I plan to win some bets with my new knowledge that Siri is named for SRI!

Which is a pain.