itunes

Since 2008, I've ripped every DVD and Blu-Ray I bought to my Mac, with a collection of SD and HD media totaling around 2 TB today. To make that library accessible, I've always used iTunes and the iTunes Shared Library functionality that—while it still exists today—seems to be on life support, in kind of a "we still support it because the code is there" state.

The writing's been on the wall for a few years, especially after the split from iTunes to "Music" and "TV" apps, and while I tested out Plex a few years back, I never really considered switching to another home media library system, mostly due to laziness.

I have a 2010 Mac mini (see above) that's acted as my de-facto media library/NAS for over a decade... and it's still running strong, with an upgraded 20 TB of total storage space. But it's been unsupported by Apple for a few years, and besides, I have a new ASUSTOR Lockerstor 4 with 16 TB of always-online NAS storage!

So, I have amassed a pretty massive media library over the years—my goal has always been to maintain every single bit of digital media I own locally via iTunes (and/or other libraries which can be shared with devices in my home), and be able to play any of my DVDs, Blu-rays, digital purchases, etc. on any of my devices (mostly in the Apple kingdom, but there are a few Raspberry Pis and other devices floating about).

I also like the convenience of purchasing media on the iTunes Store, so I have also amassed a decent collection of movies and TV shows there. One problem: none of those files can be played outside the Apple ecosystem! In the past, I outlined how I put Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and DVD media onto my Mac. In this post, I'll run through my process for stripping the DRM from protected M4V videos I purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store.

Aside: It's ironic that the International Day against DRM was a couple days ago—it has no bearing on my writing this post, it's just coincidental.

For many years, I've ripped all my DVDs, Blu-Rays, and HD-DVDs into my computer, and it's great to be able to watch any of my digital content on any of my devices whenever and wherever I want, without having to have a huge stack of discs laying somewhere accessible (I store them all in a box in my basement).

For almost as long, I've used iDentify for this purpose, but it looks like the developer behind the app gave up on the iTunes/macOS ecosystem entirely in the past year or so, and the app stopped working on macOS Sierra 10.12.

I looked around for alternatives, and found mentions of iFlicks (didn't seem as fully featured), Vidalin (no longer developed), MetaX (no longer developed?), and Subler. I tried a couple of these and didn't find them as pleasant as iDentify, but then I also found MetaZ, tagged as "Two letters better than MetaX".