How I Prepare DVDs for Use in my Media Server

Full confession: We have a rather decent stack of our favorite movies and TV shows on DVD but we never watch them. Why? It boils down to inconvenience. The fact is: we’ve gotten used to streaming content, and for the most part, it’s fine. But what if our favorite movie or TV show is no longer available for streaming? Or what if a movie or TV show we want to watch is simply not available on any streaming service? These situations happen more often than not.

Being the geek that I am, I started looking into making my own media server. This sounds fancy, until one realizes that a media server is simply a computer running media server software, with (ideally) oodles of storage.

Making a media server is not as difficult as I initially thought it would be. And best of all, you can make one out of any Mac, Windows or Linux box that you may already have lying around. (I use a 2018 Mac mini connected to an OWC DVD player, and it works perfectly for such tasks.)

Here are the ingredients for my media server:

• MakeMKV: converts DVD content into a “free and patent-unencumbered” format (as an ISO file) that can be played anywhere. An ISO file is an exact copy of a CD, DVD or Blu-ray archived onto a single file.
• Handbrake: Extracts content from the ISO into individual .mp4 files
• Jellyfin: an open-source (free) media system for streaming your media to any device on your local network.
• Roku 4K Streaming Stick: Roku’s streaming device is fast, inexpensive, and allows me to install the Jellyfin app.

With the exception of the Roku, the other items on the above list are available for free online.

The basic series of steps to prepare content for your media server are as follows:

1. Insert a DVD disc into your computer and use MakeMKV to create an ISO file. Click the yellow folder icon to initiate this process. Depending on your computer, this can take anywhere between 30 – 45 minutes.
2. When the ISO is complete, launch Handbrake. Use the pull-down menu next to Title and select some content. When ripping The Office DVDs (as shown in this example), there were duplicate entries (indicated by identical time stamp values). I came to discover that the numbers preceding each timestamp do not correlate with the sequencing of content on the disc. Handbrake includes a preview of the content (use the forward and backward arrows on the preview to see select scenes).
3. After selecting your content, provide an appropriate filename in the Save As text field. Then click the “Add to Queue” button. For episodic content, I use titles that fit the form of Show_Season#_EpisodeName.
4. Repeat step 3 for each title you want to convert.
5. When you’re finished, press the “Start” button to process all of your content. Each episode of the Office (which on average, has a run time of 22 minutes) takes about 25 minutes to fully complete. I let the process run in the background while I work on something else.
6. Verify that your mp4’s play fine. If they do, you can delete the ISO files to save some storage space.

Once you have processed all of your files into .mp4 format, you’ll want to transfer them over to the media folders that Jellyfin will look at for streaming your content.

 

 

 

Additional resources:

• Setting up a Jellyfin Media Server
• the Jellyfin app for Roku

Hopefully this will encourage you to look through your DVD collection and set up a media server. Enjoy!

-Krishna

 

Krishna June 26, 2024 Handbrake, How to backup DVDs, Jellyfin server, MakeMKV, Roku 4K Streaming Stick