iTunes Extra....

[ssj2_goha]

Has anyone gotten one of the new iTunes Extra movies?
It looks like they have made a way to pack a menu, extras and the main movie into one file...
so they play like a dvd....
I know people will ask for this feature once it becomes more widely know about.
Any ideas how they are doing it?
I might buy batman begins to see how it's done...
If I do I will post my findings here.

[Ritsuka]

Probably some html simple html pages.

[ssj2_goha]

Yeah it looks like it's a folder acting like a file that basically has a website in it....
Defiantly not something that you would want in handbrake......
It would have to be an external program to create those....

[thesrd]

Has anyone gotten one of the new iTunes Extra movies?
It looks like they have made a way to pack a menu, extras and the main movie into one file...
so they play like a dvd....
I know people will ask for this feature once it becomes more widely know about.
Any ideas how they are doing it?
I might buy batman begins to see how it's done...
If I do I will post my findings here.

Haven't gotten my hands on one yet, although aside from the feature of iTunes Extra
it would be nice to be able to include a dvds subtitles without it being burned to the
image... In looking at the iTunes prefs, Playback tab there is an option for it.

[nightstrm]

Has anyone gotten one of the new iTunes Extra movies?
It looks like they have made a way to pack a menu, extras and the main movie into one file...
so they play like a dvd....
I know people will ask for this feature once it becomes more widely know about.
Any ideas how they are doing it?
I might buy batman begins to see how it's done...
If I do I will post my findings here.

Haven't gotten my hands on one yet, although aside from the feature of iTunes Extra
it would be nice to be able to include a dvds subtitles without it being burned to the
image... In looking at the iTunes prefs, Playback tab there is an option for it.

This is already available; there are a few iTunes videos that take advantage of this, and the dev snapshot of Handbrake can do this as well (in certain situations).

[jamiemlaw]

I've bought one of the movies because I was interested in how it was put together (it was Office Space). Here are my findings:

Like applications, iTunes extras are indeed just folders but that have been given an .ite file extension – so you can see their contents by right-clicking on them and choosing "Show package contents". It's basically just a webpage, called "index.html", written for Safari, using a lot of JavaScript and CSS transitions.

The index file is surprisingly bare The body contains just a single <div> tag, but it does call upon 24 javascript files. Most of these are located in a "src" folder, and I assume these don't change from movie to movie; 8 of them are found in a "controllers" folder and from what I gather, each determines the layout, structure and actions of one of the menus.

There is also a "views" folder that contains basic HTML for each of the different menus (barely, though: just a few empty <div>s that get populated through Javascript. Finally, there are a bunch of other folders that store images, CSS, fonts, audio and video that end up getting used. In order to play the video, I had a quick look at this and it appears to use some iTunes-only javascript, by using a window.iTunes object and calling some of its methods. The four methods I see are "play( ... )", "stop()", "volume()" and "findTracksByXID( ... )". These methods only work in iTunes – not Safari.

Finally there are some other files that store metadata and artwork. I found that these just appeared in the ITE folder after I added some metadata and artwork from within iTunes.

I'm not likely to continue my research anytime soon, but I hope this helps to explain more about how iTunes Extra works. Oh, some other things: I went to check if you can view the extras on either an iPhone or Front Row. You can't on either. Not even Front Row; which is strange because I think I caught some code that mapped key-presses to functions, which would allow you to use the arrow keys to navigate the menus rather than just the mouse. Maybe that's for a later update.

As far as Handbrake being able to make an iTunes Extra file from a film: I don't think it's impossible to take a DVD menu and somehow convert it to a web page, but I doubt it'd be a walk in the park either. I really don't see HB performing that task. Maybe you'd use a different app for that, if someone would be kind enough to make one.

[gary001]

I was wondering about HandBrake gaining this functionality too. I doubt this will, as HandBrake is more an encoder than anything else. Maybe there could be a setting so all the videos on the DVD can be encoded and placed into its own folder. Then have the folder tree branch out so we know which are what files, and just let some other app do the rest. Whatever route the HandBrake Devs decide to go -- whether it be built-in or something else -- I hope they at least give us an easy way to get all the videos off the disc in a clean orderly fashion

[eddyg]

It would be interesting to convert a DVD menu into an ITunes Extra folder. Not easy mind you. DVD menus tend to be short movies in a loop rather than a static page don't they? And there is the translation from DVD vm commands for the buttons to JavaScript, and mapping the correct titles to button presses.

Not impossible though.

I think this is in the relm of what HB is for, since any tool will need access to the full DVD structure.

Cheers Ed

also, thanks to jamiemlaw for the analysis.

[kiran_mk2]

A feature that detects extras and lets you give them "names" via video preview and then writes a basic HTML setup to provide a simple menu with the film and extras as options and selecting extras brings up a new page with all the extras you selected with the names you gave them. Who needs all the fancy dvd menus (apart from the Spinal Tap menu of course). I can see a separate app being made available to add movie artwork as a background for the menu (using UK Quad posters which are landscape rather than portrait).

[philgin]

Hi,

Is is possible for you to email me philgin007@gmail.com the ite folder even without the video files inside it. Just the css, js etc.. files... I'd like to experiment it myself. Hehe..

or

Can you post the structure? I mean where is the original (full-length) movie file located in relation to the ite folder, etc...

Thanks.

Philgin

[jamiemlaw]

For public information, I came across this site that has goes into some depth about iTunes LPs and iTunes Extras. Hope it helps.

[Deleted User 15919]

I have been thinking about a good way to import DVDs to harddisk with all features for quite some time. iTunes Extras comes very handy for me. I started a SourceForge project for a DVD to iTunes Extras importer. I cannot start coding yet, because I am deeply involved in another project until the end of the year. But I have dumped my implementation notes into a wiki. Anybody who is interested is welcome to join the project.
http://dvd2ite.sourceforge.net/

[Ritsuka]

Apple released some documentation http://www.apple.com/itunes/lp-and-extras/

[nightstrm]

Apple released some documentation http://www.apple.com/itunes/lp-and-extras/

The ability to convert DVD extras to the iTunes extras format would make me seriously consider pulling all of my discs out of storage and restarting the conversion process (again).

[zedsdead]

Apple released some documentation http://www.apple.com/itunes/lp-and-extras/

The ability to convert DVD extras to the iTunes extras format would make me seriously consider pulling all of my discs out of storage and restarting the conversion process (again).

I agree. This, along with the soft subs would completely remove any need for the dvd (not that I use them anyway, but still).

Also, I just wanted to say thanks to the developers. The new version of Handbrake is really amazing!

[agentdavo]

For fun, I have just started writing a basic plugin for pgcedit...

edit: scrap that! Moving onto DVDUnauthor...

DVDUnauthor reads in a DVD file system and produces mpeg-2 streams and an XML file that can be input back into dvdauthor.
http://nfs.shawnfumo.com/wiki/DVDAuthor/DVDUnauthor

[eddyg]

A feature that detects extras and lets you give them "names" via video preview and then writes a basic HTML setup to provide a simple menu with the film and extras as options and selecting extras brings up a new page with all the extras you selected with the names you gave them. Who needs all the fancy dvd menus (apart from the Spinal Tap menu of course). I can see a separate app being made available to add movie artwork as a background for the menu (using UK Quad posters which are landscape rather than portrait).

This is what I think is the best initial approach as well. Forget trying to pull the artwork and functionality of the DVD menus and VM, just have a simple fixed template with a black background with white text for the title (and a little pineapple cocktail in the bottom right corner , and the following options:

Play Movie
Chapters
Extras -> Extra 1
Extra 2
etc

We can pull the picture at the chapter break from the DVD easily enough to populate the chapter list - and could add the thumbnails into the main movie at the same time.

As for the UI, something that could work would be to multiselect items in the queue and right click and select package as itunes extra.

We could use the names of the extras as provided by the user when encoding if we wish instead of numbering it ourselves.

Cheers, Ed.

[eddyg]

Moved to ponies so that there is only one thread for iTunes extras.

[phox17]

even a program designed to create the file in a GUI (similar to an iDVD/iWeb approach). Handbrake could rip the various video files, except for background menus, but it would still be better for people who aren't good or fast at coding.

[kiran_mk2]

The more I think about this, the more I think this is more an extra feature for a program like Subler or MetaX rather than Handbrake. Handbrake can rip all the extras to separate m4v files (using the preview to identify which extra is which). Then in the tagging program, add all the files (film and extras), tag as normal with some extra information (which file is the main film and which are extras), then you can add menu screen artwork (or crop the poster artwork) and make rudimentary changes to the menu screen (order of extras etc) and the output is a nice .ite file ready for iTunes.

This would also enable theatrical/extended edition films to be included in the same "package" - all be it with the expected bloat in file size from having two versions of the film.