Wouldn’t it be great if your home-ripped movies looked the same in your iTunes library as their expensive iTunes Store–bought brothers?

We already showed you how to convert your DVD collection into iPod-compatible clips using MacTheRipper and HandBrake (“Hardcore How-Tos: The Digital Media Edition,” Apr/08, p23). This time, we’re going to take this process a little further and polish up those files to make them look just like iTunes Store purchases, complete with named chapter markers, poster artwork, and a description field containing a film synopsis as well as a short list of its cast and crew.

If you followed our directions in the April issue, you’ll have to re-encode your film in step 1 below if you want to name the chapters. But the rest of these steps can be done to the files you already have. Most of the information for the description field can be gleaned from your DVD covers, but if you don’t own a scanner and don’t feel like typing all that information, the Internet is the best place to search for alternative content. Time to get your DVDs out and start creating a beautiful digital film collection.

What you need: iTunes 7.5 or later (free, www.apple.com), HandBrake (free, handbrake.fr),  Lostify (donationware, lostify.com) and your DVD collection.

1. Name Chapters Using HandBrake

Having DVD Player and HandBrake side-by-side can make it easy to write down the film’s chapter names.

When converting a DVD using HandBrake (www.handbrake.fr), chapter names are added automatically. However, if you click on the application’s Chapters tab, you can give them more memorable titles. Many DVDs have named chapters, which can be found somewhere on the DVD case, or by going into the DVD’s Chapter Selection menus (you can use Apple’s DVD Player to watch the film as you set up the conversion in HandBrake, although you should quit DVD Player before starting, as DVD drives can’t be accessed by more than one application at a time). 

2. Time-Saving Tips

Editing chapter names is greatly speeded up with the use of keyboard shortcuts.

You can enter chapter names in HandBrake quickly thanks to keyboard shortcuts: Hit the Return key once you’ve renamed a chapter, and use the Up or Down arrows to move to the previous or next chapter. To overwrite the default chapter name (or alter an already modified one) hit the Tab key. If you’d rather not have to type all that information, there’s a website that stores DVD chapter names: www.dvdchapter.com. If your DVD is there, you can just copy and paste the data into HandBrake.

3. Set Up iTunes

If you plan on digitizing many movies, it might be best to keep them on a separate drive and stop iTunes from copying them into its library.

While your movie encodes, you can make sure it’ll look good in iTunes by setting the Movies section to Cover Flow View (go to View > Cover Flow View or use the keyboard shortcut Option-Command-5). Next, go to iTunes > Preferences and select the Advanced section. In the General tab, make sure the “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library” box is not checked, as you may want to place your films in the more appropriate Movies folder, or maybe even on an external hard drive.