Not so recently I purchased a lifetime license for Plex, but never really used it. It seemed like most everything I wanted to watch was already on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. But when those streaming services let me down and I didn't want to re-purchase the digitally copy of a DVD I already owned I figured, why not digitize my physical DVDs?
So I stared searching the web and came across an excellent article by HowToGeek,com on backing up DVDs to digital copies using HandBreak. Being a Mac guy I was already familiar with Handbrake and loved it for converting media files, but I didn't know it could also back up my DVDs? So I wanted to post the Apple specific how to for backing up your DVD collection. For the entire article including the windows specific how to please visit the how to geek article linked above.
Step 1
Download and install Handbrake, which you can download here. Out of the box Handbrake can rip DVDs that are not copy protected or convert media files from one format to another…but almost all DVDs you buy in the store are copy protected. Getting around this is a weirdly gray area legally, so applications like Handbrake can’t legally include the software needed to decrypt copy protected DVDs. You can, however, download it separately as long as you’re just using this to watch a movie on your computer you physicaly own,
The software you'll need to install for backing up encrypted DVDs is called libdvdcss. This will let Handbrake read your encrypted DVDs and rip them to your computer. The process is a little different for Windows and Mac users, so if you are installing this on windows please visit the HowToGeek article. Note that you don’t have to do this every time you rip a DVD once libdvdcss is installed, you can skip to Step Two each time you rip a new disc.
Step 2
If you’re on El Capitan or newer, we’re going to use a command line tool called Homebrew. Sidebar if you’re not familiar with Homebrew this tool is awesome, spend some time looking into it. Basically they have created a software repository like apt-get for debian or yum for redhat I cant say enough good things about it. Fortunately, it only takes a few Terminal commands to install Homebrew if you haven’t already.
Once Homebrew is installed you can install libdvdcss. Open a the Terminal command line window on your mac. Then, type in
brew install libdvdcss and hit enter. This will install libdvdcss, that's all you need to do.Step 3
Once you’ve installed libdvdcss, it’s time to get ripping. Open Handbrake and choose your DVD drive from the sidebar that appears.
Handbrake will take a moment to scan the titles on your DVD. Wait until this process is finished. It should only take a moment. If libdvdcss wasn’t installed incorrectly, you’ll see an error saying that the disc can’t be read here instead.
Once your DVD is open, head to the “Title” dropdown box and choose which title you want to rip. By default, Handbrake will choose the movie, but if you want to rip any special features or deleted scenes, you can change the target you want to rip here. You can also change which chapters you want to rip, if you only want part of the movie. I chose to allow Handbrake to select the movie and it worked perfect for me.
Under Destination, click Browse to pick where you want to place the movie after you’ve ripped it.
Step 4
Next, you’ll need to decide the quality of your output file. The higher quality the movie, the more space it will take on your hard drive. If you’re technical, you can use the Picture, Video, and Audio tabs to adjust these settings, but most people only need to click one thing: a Preset.
Along the right side of the Handbrake window, you’ll see a selection of Presets (if you don’t see it, drag the corner of Handbrake’s window and expand it until you do). There are presets for nearly anything you could need: Apple TV, Android phones, PlayStation, and lots more. If you’re watching on your computer, use one of the “General” presets—“Fast” and “Very Fast” will be low quality but small in size, while “HQ” and “Super HQ” will have higher quality but take up more space.
Step 5
Once you’ve chosen your Title and Preset, click Start Encode at the top of the window. You’ll see a progress bar along the bottom that will let you know how much time you have left in the rip. Higher quality rips will take longer, so you’ll want to let your computer run for a while.
Once the rip is done, you should be able to double-click on it to watch it! Or, if you’re using a movie library program like Plex, go ahead and copy the file to your media server library.
I will start by saying yes I downloaded the app after the keynote but didn't open it till recently. Listening to Macbreak Weekly I had listened to Andy Ihnatko @ihnatko rave about how powerful the shortcuts app was. But what pushed me over the edge was a friend who had sent me a message telling me about an in-depth bad ass shortcut he wrote that runs shell commands over SSH to his NAS server, that was enough to inspire me.
I started thinking about things I do everyday and the one thing that bubbled to the surface was carpooling with my wife. Everyday I text her and let her know I am on my way to pick her up, but now I only need to lift my watch and say, ”Hey Siri tell my wife I am on my way." That simple Siri command triggers a cascade of events that notifies my wife where I am leaving from, when I will arrive, and the weather on the way home. Then after a pause for the duration of the drive it will send a second text letting her know I am down stairs.
In addition to my first shortcut I am going to add interesting shortcuts I write or come across on the web to this post, so keep your eyes open. Oh ya you will need to open them on your IOS devices, hopefully they will add the shortcut app to the mac someday.
Carpool ETA shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/23d0048b12804690b364761fe377739f
Boarding Airplane 2: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/90df7fff30b4488d897fa4242fdffaeb
Cool shortcut that walks you through three easy steps to send your flight information.
Cadaver Dan's
So in preparation for the party we were looking for Disneyland's Mickey's Halloween Party handout so we could plan our night but all we could find was the Disney World handout. So even though it is officially Christmas time in the parks I wanted to post my scans of the 2018 Mickey's Halloween Party flyer to hopefully help out any fellow newbies next year.
The Front
The Back
The Unofficial non Scientific Noise Cancelling Headphone Shootout.
Recently a few of us at work bought Noise Cancelling Headphones, it just happened to work out that all three were different manufactures. So as Geeks you know the first thing we wanted to do was test them head to head. I added the unofficial non scientific part to the title because were not audiophiles and we didn't use any testing criteria outside of just our personal experience. This review is not meant to swing anyone person to purchase a certain brand but just express our personal and subjective critique of each headphone.
The criteria we used to test the headphones was to pair via bluetooth to each persons respective iPhone. We all streamed the same song (Tupac's Changes) from Apple Music except the Sony Headphones (he used you tube), and we all set our volumes three click down from full volume. So below is the conciseness we came to for each headphone.
The Beats Studio 3:
Probably the loudest out of the bunch with really clear highs and mids. Also out of all three seemed to stress the least with the bass keeping the sounds clean and tight. The downfall surprisingly was the bass, what Beats is supposed to be known for. Even though the bass was clean and sounded good there wasn't the resonance the other two headphones had. The other headphones just seemed to have more of that early 90s mini truck bass. Even though all headphones seemed to have almost the same level of noise canceling the Beats seem to be little behind the other two. Not that it was bad it was much better then most headphones I have heard, I could hear more of the server noise through the Beats. One other thing we found interesting was when we stood near the exhaust of the servers the Beats were the only headphones that picked up the wind passing over the microphones. Again this isn't a big deal unless you’re flying an open cockpit plane but just something we found notable. Lastly as someone who has bought in completely into the apple ecosystem the W1 chip is really nice to aide in paring across all of your apple devices.
The Bose Q35:
These where probably the most compact of the headphones, not a surprise since they are the primary choice of most travelers. With the noise canceling turned up we felt it probably had the best noise canceling out of the three headphones, but was probably the quietest of all three. Also the bass seemed to be on the verge of distorting, not that it was terrible, but you could tell the driver was close to max output. It did have really good Bass resonance though. Also the Bose app is pretty nice to help pair and manage your headphones.
The Sony WH1000XM2:
Out all three headphones we felt the Sony's had the most balanced sound. They where also the bulkiest of all three but fold up pretty small. The app does some cool things playing with the sound by creating Virtual Surround Sound that creates different listening environments like stages, clubs, or arenas. It also had very good noise canceling on par with the Bose headphones.
Final Consensus:
All three headphones where outstanding and even though there are differences none of these where enough to say don't by these headphones. For us it really came down to price, all three retail for 349.00 but you can find some killer deals. As of the blog post both the Bose and Beats are on sale at Costco for 249.00. The Sony's where found on slick deals for 200.00 and included a Sony Bluetooth speaker. So if you in the market and with Black Friday quickly approaching keep your eyes out for deals and pick up any of these headphones we don't think you'll be disappointed.
All three headphones where outstanding and even though there are differences none of these where enough to say don't by these headphones. For us it really came down to price, all three retail for 349.00 but you can find some killer deals. As of the blog post both the Bose and Beats are on sale at Costco for 249.00. The Sony's where found on slick deals for 200.00 and included a Sony Bluetooth speaker. So if you in the market and with Black Friday quickly approaching keep your eyes out for deals and pick up any of these headphones we don't think you'll be disappointed.