So with the help and a lot of excellent advice I received in my other threads, my new "home media system" is working like a charm. Everyone's happy, even my daughter up in college who received her iPad and is happily using PLEX as well.
The next step is I want to start getting my DVD's on my computer. I've done it in the past, but the quality sucks and I'm starting over. I've been doing a lot of reading, but could use some help with some specific issues. (I'll preface this all by saying these my DVD's that I own and I'm not stealing anyone's stuff)
I downloaded Handbrake which seems to be universally loved and I got the .dll file that you need to supposedly take care of the encryption named correctly in the right place.
I tried one disc, a Diana Krall dvd of videos, but it could read it and said it was encrypted. Hmmm... So, I grabbed another Diana Krall dvd of a concert and put that in and it could read it fine. I tinkered a bit with the settings but here's my questions:
1) For titles, it says you usually want to grab the longest title which is most certainly the actual movie. However, in the case of an Evanescence DVD, there are 15 titles, all about the same length. I ran each one and had 15 different movies. How do I combine things into one movie? Also, the Diana Krall disc worked fine, except there are no menus. You select it and it just starts. Not a big deal for that, but it may be for some movies.
2) Audio - I selected AC3 Dolby Digital and "Passthrough" but when I play it via the AppleTV, it only shows as Dolby ProLogic II. I don't you can play the hi-def audio codecs, but you should be able to play Dolby Digital. Ideas?
3) File format. What should I be using? I'm assuming M4V is a good universal format and is also supported by AppleTV.
4) I'm not concerned too much about compression. I'd basically like to rip the best complete copies possible. Is there a better/easier solution than Handbrake?
4) What's up the encryption issue? I'm running 64Bit windows and that .DLL file you use with Handbrake was supposed to decrypt on the fly but clearly isn't working.
The goal is to just take the hassle out of this. I don't care about high end compression tweaks, etc... I'm just trying to get the DVD on the PC as is. Obviously not copying commercial trailers is a plus.