• April 19th, 2008
• Joseph Crawford
• 9:19 PM (GMT-4)
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Since I bought my first Apple TV a while back I have been using a few applications to convert my DVD collection to a digital format. I do not know about you but I really got sick of searching through 300+ DVD movies to find what I wanted to watch.

I have been using an application called HandBrake to encode my DVD’s to MP4 files which are playable in iTunes. I am doing this because in order to play a movie on the Apple TV they have to be in your iTunes library or at-least be playable in iTunes. I have had some really good experiences with HandBrake while encoding my movies. They always have a really good level of quality. Although at first I did not know anything about video or how to encode the guys in the IRC channel were really helpful. Once I learned a bit I was able to tweak the settings to get them just right. If you are going to attempt your own video encoding even using a utility like HandBrake I suggest that you read up on the topic first.

The second application I use is called MetaX, this is a tagging application that can be used for Movies or TV Show episodes. This is the application you will use to make your movie library look really nice. It can tag any of the Meta data that the file will support. I like to set as much information as possible when tagging my files. I always like to use high resolution artwork for the images so that when they show in iTunes or on the Apple TV it is easy to see what is what.

I am not going to cover all of the features of MetaX in this post rather only the one’s I like the most. You can read all about the application on the developers website. I love the fact that you can open a file in MetaX and it will search Amazon for the meta information. I got used to this feature and used it all the time. Today however I updated to the new version and see that they have integrated the ability to search tagChimp which is a great feature. The tagChimp site is a repository of meta data for movies and tv shows. You have the option to have MetaX submit your tags to tagChimp when you write the tags to a file. This is completely optional but it does help to make the tagChimp site better for all of the end users. I did like the old Amazon search and I still have it enabled for my movies that do not get found on tagChimp, however I have been getting sick of the artwork quality that comes from Amazon.

The next feature that I like is the Movie Posters section. This comes in handy for the movies where you cannot find any good artwork for your movie on the normal Amazon search. This will open a sidebar that will fetch artwork from the internet based on the movie name. I have very rarely had a movie where I could not find good quality artwork for.

The final feature that I find myself using quite frequently is the IMDB Browser. This is handy because you do not have to open up an external browser to load the IMDB website. I use this for movies that do not get found in Amazon or tagChimp. You can get all the information you need for tagging your files. If you have a movie that you cannot find any good artwork for you can always hop over to the FreeCovers site and grab them from there.

If you have used these applications or have opinions on alternatives let me know in the comments below. These however are the 2 best applications I have found thus far.