If you want to get your DVD collection onto your Mac, Apple TV or portable iOS device, chances are you've already discovered the free Handbrake software, which handles the task like a champ. What you may not know is that there are some simple tricks and tweaks to make Handbrake really sing, particularly if you've been challenged by getting commercial discs from your personal collection properly encoded.
VLC: Crack That Copy Protection
While Handbrake alone will tackle encoding videos just fine from homemade recordable DVD-Rs, you'll need to beef up your arsenal if you want to put your favorite movie or television show episodes on your iPad without paying a tax to Apple by buying it all over again on iTunes.
Commercial DVDs are CSS encrypted to prevent them from being copied by nefarious pirates who would seek to profit from illegal copies of studio content. Unfortunately, that also locks you, the law-abiding citizen who purchased the official release, out of easily making copies as well. Assuming you own the DVD in question, you're legally permitted to make a copy to watch on other devices that you own – although Hollywood studios often won't make it easy for you to do.
While Handbrake used to include its own methods for cracking CSS encryption, in recent versions, the programmers have instead turned to the free, open-source VLC Media Player software. All you need to do is download and install the latest version of VLC for Mac OS X. Next time you open Handbrake and load a commercial DVD as a source, the application will quietly use components of VLC in the background to make the magic happen -- you won't even see VLC launch, since it doesn't have to actually be open to work its mojo.
Dealing with 99 Title Sets on Commercial Discs
If you thought Hollywood was going to stop at CSS encryption when foiling your disc-encoding plans, think again! DVD authoring companies have come up with unique ways to throw you a curveball and potentially hose your encoding process. Thankfully, there's a way around this, if you know what to look for.
DVDs are made up of "title sets," which are essentially containers for video content. The most annoying method currently employed by studios is to create a disc using all 99 available title sets, every one of which looks like they could be the real deal. Encode the wrong one and you'll get files that end prematurely or simply won't play at all – assuming the encode doesn't fail altogether. If you load a commercial disc into HandBrake and see 99 title sets, you'll know immediately that you've found one of these tricky discs.
In order to determine which of the 99 title sets is the real McCoy, you'll need to insert the DVD into your computer and launch Apple's DVD Player. Open the disc (File > Open DVD), then click the Play button to start. Once you've gotten past any corporate logos or advertising at the beginning (feel free to skip past them, if you can), select the main menu option to start the movie. Now, click the Controller's time indicator in DVD Player twice to switch from time display to remaining time and finally title display. You'll now see something like "17/99" -- the number on the left-hand side will show you the currently playing title set, and that's the correct one you want to select in HandBrake to get a proper encode. Anything else is likely a dummy title to throw you off the scent and can be ignored.
Multiple Title Sets and TV Shows
If your media tastes tend to lean toward television shows, you'll have even more work ahead of you, depending upon the company who releases your favorites. DVD authoring companies frequently build discs with multiple titles in a way where the episodes will show up twice: One title set for all episodes on the disc (usually three to eight, depending on the show length), and then each episode in its own title set.
For instance, let's look at a disc from the tenth season of Frasier. Popping the disc into the computer and choosing it as your Source in HandBrake will reveal that Title Set 7 is more than two hours in length, which means the six 21-minute episodes on this particular disc are laid out one after another. While it might be convenient to encode one long file, you won't get the benefit of individually tagging episodes in iTunes this way. Thankfully, the six title sets preceding the longest one represent the separate episodes, so you can easily select each one, add it to your HandBrake queue and wind up with separate files for each episode.
Occasionally you'll come across discs from a studio where discs appear to be authored in a completely nonsensical way (Shout! Factory, we're looking at you). For the classic Valerie Harper sitcom Rhoda, the studio created duplicate title sets for each episode, presumably so you won't know which is the real one. However, simply playing a few seconds of each episode via Apple's DVD Player will reveal the true title set as shown in the previous step.
With It's Garry Shandling's Show, the studio created further confusion by not only creating duplicate title sets, but also mixing them up in a random order. In this case, certain episodes that appear to be the correct title set in DVD Player still won't encode in HandBrake, causing the application to completely skip that title or create an unfinished file. To correct this situation, jot down the proper title sets in DVD Player first, then in HandBrake, open the Preview Window and step through the sample images – you should see each one change accordingly, but if you find two that appear identical, it's time to look for another title set with the exact same running time. Try previewing again and then encode from the title set that displays correctly.
How To Choose (and Save) The Best Preset
Perhaps acknowledging that its target audience is mostly interested in encoding for iOS devices, HandBrake has worked hard to create presets for each of Apple's product categories, with the most recent 0.9.5 update offering ready-made presets for the iPad, iPhone 4 and second-generation black Apple TV. However, if you own more than one of these devices, you'll likely want to use the Universal preset as a starting point for all of your encodes.
HandBrake's Universal preset provides the optimal quality and size for everything it encodes, maintaining compatibility with all of Apple's mobile products -- at least from the sixth-generation iPod or later, which includes all models of iPhone, iPod touch Apple TV and of course, the iPad. Simply put, if you use even one of these devices, you're better off encoding everything with the Universal preset so you will have the best chance of future-proofing your content.
If you find yourself encoding a lot of your DVD collection, you've no doubt discovered that the Universal preset may not tackle every disc the same way – for example, some discs have 5.1 surround sound (more on that in a moment), some don't. Thankfully, you can use the Universal preset as a starting point, tweaking settings and saving new presets for certain discs such as television shows, where you might want to return days, weeks or months later to encode additional discs from the same series.
To save a new preset, start with Universal and make any necessary changes. Click the + button at the bottom of the presets window, give your preset a name and optionally, check the "Use Picture Filters" option to include any changes you made there in the new preset, then click Add to save it. You can also enter a short description to help you remember what the preset is for. (We suggest leaving "Use Picture Size" as None, since that option is best set by the application as you insert each disc, unless you have very specific reasons to save changes.)
Saving 5.1 Surround Sound for Your Apple TV
If you own or are thinking of owning an Apple TV (first or second generation) and have a multi-channel receiver in your home theatre, you should consider including the AC3 5.1 surround audio featured on many DVDs as part of your encoded files. Apple has a very specific method for doing this -- AC3 5.1 has to be on a second track -- since other devices such as the iPad and iPhone can't make use of AC3-encoded audio, which means you'll also want to include an AAC-encoded version as well.
In order for Apple devices to play nice with HandBrake encodes that include 5.1 surround, you'll want to use the Audio tab to create two tracks of audio in your encoded file. For the first audio track, select your AC3 5.1 source under Track, then AAC (CoreAudio) for Codec and Dolby Surround for Mixdown (Sample Rate should be Auto, and Bitrate 160 kbps). Add the second track by again selecting the AC3 5.1 source on the next row, but this time the Codec and Mixdown should both be "AC Passthru" – this essentially copies the AC3 track into a second audio track that only the Apple TV can read, while keeping an AAC-encoded, two-channel stereo version on the first track for all other devices to use.
To simplify the process, the Universal and Apple TV presets in HandBrake will choose the correct audio configuration for both tracks, although if your disc doesn't contain AC3 5.1 audio, it's best to change the second track to None to keep your file size smaller.
Identifying Your Source Material
If you're encoding disc content that was produced more than a few years ago, chances are you'll need to address the issue of interlaced video. The problem stems from the way most content used to be recorded, which was 29.97 frames per second video, with each frame comprised of two fields (commonly known as 60i, or 60 field interlaced).
Thankfully, it's usually easy to spot interlaced video prior to encoding it, thanks to HandBrake's Preview Window. Load a Source, select the desired title set, then click Preview Window; now you'll see one of 10 still-frame images from your chosen source material, and you can step through them by clicking on any of the hash marks that appear in the floating palette.
If at any point during your preview you see jaggy horizontal lines wherever there is motion in the frame, then you've got interlaced material and you'll need to address it accordingly. However, if the motion in your preview frame is blurred, chances are that the content is progressive, meaning it was recorded at 24 frames per second (better known as 24p, even although it's technically 23.976 frames per second).
There's a free, sure-fire way to determine what kind of source material you're dealing with: Download and install MediaInfo Mac, which lets you load any video file and get a full report on its content. In order for MediaInfo Mac to properly report video on a CSS-encrypted disc, you'll first want to open Apple's DVD Player and play the disc for a few seconds.
Now you can launch MediaInfo Mac, open the VIDEO_TS folder on your mounted DVD disc and browse for a series of 1GB files beginning with VTS (Video Title Set) and ending in .VOB. The series with the most number of files will be your main DVD content; drag and drop one of the files from the middle of the series into MediaInfo Mac, which will then display a list of details about the content.
Pay close attention to the Video Stream #1 area, taking note of both the Frame Rate (either 29.970 or 23.976 fps) and Scan Rate (either Interlaced or Progressive). If your content is progressive, you can encode without having to do anything further. However, if you have interlaced content, you'll want to have a look at our final pro tip.
Using the Decomb Filter on Interlaced Video
Now that we've identified what interlacing is, here's how to combat it using HandBrake. The software includes a filter option for deinterlacing, which is the process of removing those horizontal jagged lines from your encodes so you'll get buttery-smooth video. However, we don't recommend using deinterlacing – not only can it ultimately degrade your picture quality, but it's also a time-intensive task that will slow down the encoding process.
The best solution is to use the decomb filter, which HandBrake recommends for tackling only the frames that suffer from interlacing in the first place, while leaving the rest of the frame alone. It's so good at what it does that the developers of HandBrake claim you can leave it on all the time and therefore never worry about interlacing.
After using MediaInfo Mac to confirm that your disc content was recorded using interlaced video, return to HandBrake and open the Picture Settings window, which will appear as a floating palette outside of the main HandBrake interface. Click on the Filters tab and you'll be presented with a number of options for dealing with pesky problems such as interlacing, noise and blockiness.
In this case, you'll want to make sure that the Decomb option is switched on (toggled left, rather than toggled right for Deinterlace), then select Default from the Decomb pulldown. Now your encode will be channeled through the Decomb filter, stripping the final video of interlacing and making all right with the world. If you plan to frequently use the Decomb filter, you can select it and then save a new preset which will include it by making sure that "Use Picture Filters" is checked when you add the preset to your list.
Follow this article's author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
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