Repurposing an old Mac into a home media server is a great idea. A nerdy, tedious, somewhat overrated, great idea.

For years I was wanting to convert all my DVDs (where by “all” I mean a whopping 35) into digital versions which could be accessible via my Apple TV. I’m glad I never bit the bullet and bought a Mac mini, because about a month ago the video card on my wife’s MacBook Pro started going out. The screen shows random red lines and flickers — it’s just bad enough that she can’t use it on a daily basis, but still good enough that I could repurpose it into our new file and media server.

All in all, the tasks I’ve assigned to my Mac Media server include:

• Run Printopia to enable AirPrinting on our non-AirPrint printer (Nerd score: 4/10)
• Let Mail.app run 24/7 so that certain sorting and filing rules are executed at all times, not just when my MacBook Air is on. This helps keep emails out of my iPhone’s inbox that shouldn’t be there in the first place. (Nerd score: 4/10)
• Host video and audio files so we can put our box of DVDs in the attic, and access the movies directly from the Apple TV. (Nerd score: 6/10)
• Run Dropbox and Hazel so I can do things like upload audio to my Amazon S3 server from my iPhone, rename and move pictures of receipts, and more. (Nerd score: 9/10)

Printopia and Mail.app are pretty self explanatory. Below are more details on how I went about ripping my DVD collection into iTunes and how I’m using Hazel and Dropbox to enable some workflows on my iOS devices.

Ripping DVDs

First things first, I backed up the MacBook Pro, updated it to Mountain Lion, and then did a clean install.

The whole process of downloading and installing, and then erasing and installing again took about 3 hours. I then changed the name of the Mac from “Shawn Blanc’s MacBook Pro” to “Media Server”, and installed HandBrake, Hazel, LaunchBar, 1Password, and Dropbox in order to start getting around.

I set the MacBook Pro up on the edge of my desk, and began ripping DVDs with HandBrake. It took about 90 minutes to convert the DVD into an .m4v file. After which I had to add the file to iTunes, go online and find artwork, add the artwork, then tell iTunes the movie’s media kind was “Movie” and not “Home Video”. The whole process was slow and tedious.

Setting up the Media Server was a topic of one or two Shawn Today episodes, and I received a lot of feedback from folks who’ve been down this road before. In short, I was doing it all wrong.

If you’ve ever set up your own media server, you know there is more than one way to go about it. You can set up cron jobs and hazel rules to automate the whole process from DVD to iTunes, you can do everything manually, or somewhere in between. Since I was only converting 30-some-odd DVDs, I chose not to go crazy with the automation scripts.

Here’s the workflow I finally landed with (thanks to several awesome readers who sent suggestions in):

• Rip movies using RipIt. This app copies over the whole disk in under 30 minutes as a .dvdmedia file. I plugged in an external hard drive and ripped the DVDs to there.
• Since HandBrake takes nearly 90 minutes to encode a movie into an .m4v file I could basically rip 3 DVDs to disk while HandBrake was encoding one.
• This meant I could just load up the Handbrake queue with all the ripped .dvdmedia files, and let it encode a batch of movies (into m4v using the Apple TV 3 setting) while I’m sleeping.
• In the HandBrake settings you can choose to have files sent to a metadata filling app once they’ve been ripped. If you’re going to go to all the trouble of ripping your DVD collection to digital, you really want an app that will fill in the movie’s metadata for you so when you browse the movies in your library you see all the relevant and important info (movie description, actors, director, rating, artwork, etc.).
• I used iDentify which worked alright. There were a handful of movies that iDentify thought were something else, or that it couldn’t find data for at all. Fortunately it was an easy fix. For those few movies, I simply looked up the film on IMDb and entered the IMDb code (you can see it right in the IMDb URL) into iDentify.
• From there, iDentify requires that you hit “Save” before the metadata is written to the .m4v files. Which is unfortunate because it meant I couldn’t use Hazel to toss the files into iTunes once they were all done because who knows when I would get around to saving all the metadata of the batch-processed movies.
• Thus I would manually drop the m4v files into the “Automatically Add to iTunes” folder.

The whole process took me about 10 days. I could have done it in 4 had it not taken me a few days to figure out a faster workflow using RipIt and HandBrake’s queue, and had I not gotten tired of babysitting the Mac and ejecting a disk and putting in a new one every half-hour. I understand why some folks tell me they’ve slowly been ripping their DVD library for years.

Video Quality: Ripped vs Original

A ripped DVD, streamed over WiFi to my Apple TV is of a noticeably less quality than a DVD played in my player. But, it’s not that bad.

I watched and compared scenes from a handful of different films — including Hero, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3: Dead Man’s Chest (don’t judge) — to see how the quality of the digital version compared to the DVD disc.

Hero and Pirates both looked good. The digital version close to the same quality, but not quite equal — almost on par with an HD movie that’s streamed over Netflix. The Count of Monte Cristo was much better on DVD than digital — especially the darker scenes. It was about on par with an SD-quality film streamed on Netflix.

But you don’t rip DVDs to your computer for the image quality. You do it for convenience and for the sake of simplifying. Our DVD library is filled with films we rarely, if ever, watch. It’s worth the tradeoff in order to have all our movies in one spot, accessible through the Apple TV, while also being able to get the physical DVDs put into storage somewhere. (I’d give them away, but I think that’d be illegal.)

Dropbox, Hazel, and additional Nerdery

Now, so long as you’ve got a Mac that’s running and connected to the Internet 24/7, there’s no reason not to use it for some nerdy fun.

Thanks to some fantastic 3rd-party apps, the iPad is a fully-capable work machine for me. It’s my new laptop, while my MacBook Air has, more or less, become my desktop.

There has been, however, one particular area that the iPad could not replace my MacBook Air. And that was in the uploading and posting of the audio files for my daily Shawn Today podcast. Last summer at WWDC, I traveled only with my iPad. For all my writing, reading, and email needs the iPad performs fantastically. But I had no way of posting Shawn Today while on the road.

However, thanks to this Python script from my pal Gabe Weatherhead, I just add a little bit of Dropbox and Hazel magic to take an audio recording from my phone and upload it to my Amazon S3 bucket for publishing to the podcast.

Here’s how it works: First, I use the iPhone app DropVox, which records a voice memo and uploads it to a Dropbox folder.

Next, Hazel grabs any new audio files that appear in that folder and renames them to something proper. Then, using Gabe’s script, the file is uploaded to my S3 bucket and the uploaded file’s URL is copied and pasted into a Simplenote note. Hazel then moves the original file into an “Uploaded” folder, and finally emails me a text message letting me know the file is up.

My Hazel rule looks like this. And the emailing of the text message is through a simple Applescript:

tell application "Mail"
    set theNewMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:"Shawn Today", content:"Successfully Uploaded", visible:true}
    tell theNewMessage
        make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:"[email protected]"}
        send
    end tell
end tell

 

Once I get the text message notifying me of the completed upload, I launch Simplenote on my iPhone or iPad to find the audio file’s URL. I then copy that URL, launch Poster, and publish the latest episode of my podcast.

See? For some of us, all we need for an iOS-only workflow is a Mac at home doing the heavy lifting.

My history with iOS notes apps is briefly recounted. I used Apple’s own Notes app until 2009, which is when I learned of Simplenote. And I’ve been using the latter ever since.

To say I’m a fan of Simplenote would be like saying I kinda like coffee. Aside from Apple’s Messages and Phone apps, I don’t think any single app has been on my first Home screen for longer. And it’s the app I rely on the most because it’s where my “digital brain” lives. Notes, ideas, information — just about anything relevant or important to me right now — is stored inside Simplenote.

This, of course, isn’t the sort of thing that only Simplenote can handle. There are many options for those of us who have important bits of information we want to write down and have available to us regardless of if we’re with our iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Some folks live and breath in Evernote, others with a different notes app which syncs via Dropbox. If you’ve got a repository for where all your “stuff” lives, then you know what I mean when I say if I had to pare the apps on my iPhone down to just one, Simplenote would be the app left standing.

It’s not just about the app, of course. It’s about the data inside the app. Simplenote is invaluable to me because of the notes it holds. But a great app encourages regular use the same way a crummy app discourages it. And I can think of no higher priority for finding a great app than when looking for the one which will hold my digital brain.

* * *

The initial appeal of Simplenote over Apple’s Notes app was two-fold: (a) Helvetica; and (b) cloud sync. At first, the only non-iPhone access to our Simplenote notes was via the Web app. It may sound rough compared to what we are used to today, but compared to what it was like back when our notes were drowning in skeuomorphic legal pads and Marker Felt, Simplenote was a glorious, cutting-edge breath of fresh air. (And it has come a long way since those early days of an icon that pictured a high-school locker with a yellow sticky note.)

The first Mac client for Simplenote I used was a Dashboard widget called Dashnote. I used it for a few months until, in January 2010, Notational Velocity added Simplenote sync. And my iPhone, Mac, and iPad have had shared notes ever since.

Today, thanks to The Cloud, a huge part of my personal and professional workflow is underpinned by the syncing of my everyday data like documents, bookmarks, notes, and tasks.1

The broad strokes of my job here at shawnblanc.net include reading, writing, and publishing. If I had to, I could do those things from any of my 3 devices — iPhone, iPad, or Mac — at any given moment because everything important is pretty much in sync and accessible at all times.

To give a brief overview of my writing workflow, most articles start out as ideas and/or collections of information. And that always starts out in Simplenote (on iOS) or nvALT (on OS X).

(Of course, my database of notes is comprised of much more than just ideas and reference material for pending articles. They are made up of just about any tidbit of information which is relevant or important right now, or which I may want to access when on the go. For example: flight and hotel information for an upcoming trip; my shirt size for fitted, button-up shirts; some recipes; lists and references for random things (such as some favorite Supply Decks in Dominion); and more.)

Once I’m ready to turn my reference note into an article, I paste the note into a new Byword document and save that document to a Dropbox folder named “Writing”. All the articles I’m writing right now are in that folder.

On my iPad I have Byword, iA Writer, and Writing Kit all pointed to my “Writing” folder. These are all awesome apps and I use them on my iPad for long-form writing. Which one I use often depends on the weather or what type of coffee I made that morning, but these days it seems to usually be Writing Kit.

Now, some people keep both their notes and their articles-in-progress within their Notes folder. I, however, like having a separate place and separate apps for my Notes and Articles. Notes are notes, which for me means they are small, tidbity, random, and many. I don’t organize them by tags or folders, I just search for what I’m looking for. Simplenote and nvALT are fantastic apps for quickly jotting down or finding a note, but they are not the best apps for writing and editing big chunks of text in.

* * *

Over the past several months, I’ve encountered occasional syncing hiccups. Posts like Michael’s and Brett’s led me to believe it has something to do with the combination of Simplenote and nvALT that I use. These hiccups slowly eroded my trust in the Simplenote syncing engine to handle my data. That is a bad place to be with an app you use so regularly. Therefore, a few weeks ago I reluctantly began looking into alternatives to Simplenote.

My options were:
1. Keep using my Simplenote/nvALT setup and hope the syncing issues resolve.
2. Find an alternative to nvALT and continue using Simplenote on iOS.
3. Find an alternative to Simplenote on iOS and begin syncing all my notes via Dropbox, whilst continuing to use nvALT.

Friends shouldn’t let friends look for a new iOS note-taking app that syncs with Dropbox.

There are a lot of great notes apps out there, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Once you start looking around it’s easy to get sucked in, never to be heard from again. If you’ve ever been in a similar boat then you feel my pain (maybe you still haven’t yet found land).

This entire article is the results of my rummaging around in search of answers. Is there a fix to the syncing hiccups? Is there a good alternative to nvALT? Is there a good alternative to Simplenote? Can someone please bring me a fresh cup of coffee?

The Root of the Simplenote / nvALT Syncing Hiccups

Early on in my quest, I found the root cause of the syncing hiccups I’ve been encountering. While my suspicions were correct that it had to do with the combination of Simplenote and nvALT, the problem is not as serious as I thought.

The syncing hiccup happens when creating a new note from within Simplenote’s iOS app. If it’s an extended note, the text will sometimes get cut-off as I’m in the middle of writing and a few sentences worth of text just disappear. Fortunately, a look into the note’s version history will reveal the text as it was just before getting cut off — thus, I haven’t actually lost any data. But having the ever-looming prospect of losing text is worrying to say the least.

The cause of this syncing hiccup is, however, not within Simplenote’s servers. Rather, it’s a bug in nvALT, and it only has to do with the first time a new note syncs into nvALT that was created via the Simplenote iOS/Web apps.

Knowing that there’s no real threat to losing my notes, and knowing the cause of the bug, gave me some fresh trust in my Simplenote/nvALT system. I could continue on and wait for a bug fix, look for a different Simplenote app on the Mac, or flat out move to Dropbox syncing.

Simplenote’s Dropbox Sync

Since my original plan all along was to use Simplenote’s Dropbox syncing service, I decided to keep using nvALT and move to Dropbox. Except, you can’t do that.

At first, I had assumed Simplenote’s option to enable Dropbox syncing meant my Simplenote iOS apps would use a Dropbox folder of text files to sync my notes instead of their proprietary Simperium syncing API. That is not the case at all.

What Simplenote’s Dropbox syncing actually means is that all your notes get pushed to a Dropbox folder and the Simplenote sync engine checks that folder ever 5-10 minutes and syncs any changes between it and your Simplenote database.

Though the Simplenote Dropbox syncing is not what I thought it would be, it still makes a great way to easily migrate my notes into Dropbox as individual text files. Also, it makes a great backup of all my notes. If you’re using Simplenote and are a premium subscriber, I highly recommend enabling the Dropbox syncing.

Savvy readers may know there is another way to get your Simplenote notes into Dropbox as individual text files. You can do so via nvALT. And it’s been outlined here in great detail by Michael Schechter.

I will add that something I like about the Simplenote export is that each note created uses the first line as the text file’s title, but also keeps the first line within the note’s body. nvALT’s creation of plain text files places the first line within the text file’s title and that is it. Thus, if you’re not somewhat careful about making sure the first line of your notes in nvALT are title-worthy, you’ll end up with some weird note titles and body text that begins by missing the first half of your sentence.

All this to say, if you are having trouble with nvALT and Simplenote but want to keep using Simplenote, there is but one good alternative: Justnotes.2

Justnotes

Justnotes is a great app with reliable syncing that works with Dropbox, Simplenote, or both. I’ve been using the app for the past couple weeks and I like it (though not quite as much as nvALT).

For the keyboard-committed among us, Justnotes is not as powerful or robust as nvALT. Also, Justnotes’ window has a bigger minimum footprint than nvALT. But I like that you can manually force a sync. And I’ve talked to the developer via Twitter and learned he is working on updating Justnotes to use Simplenote’s new API (which is faster, more robust, and handles conflict resolution better) and is also making some UI improvements.

Cody Fink and Ben Brooks both wrote reviews of Justnotes when it launched last Spring.

Dropbox Text Editors

After discovering that I wouldn’t be able to point my Simplenote apps to Dropbox instead of the Simperium sync servers, I began looking into other apps that I knew did sync with Dropbox.

There is a cornucopia of Dropbox enabled text editors and notes apps for iOS. So on Twitter I asked what people are using these days, and the overwhelming response was for either Notesy or Byword.

In addition to these two apps (the latter I already know well) I spent time with these two apps, as well as Elements, Nebulous Notes, WriteUp, and PlainText.

If I was to make the switch away from Simplenote, I’m looking for an app that has a clean interface, high-contrast, fast scrolling, syncing, and searching, and powerful search. Surprise, surprise — that description pretty much sums up Simplenote. Well, I don’t mind gushing about Simplenote. It’s an app I’ve relied on for years and it works exactly as I’d like it to.

For one, I love Simplenote’s searching. When you search for a term, not only does the list of notes shorten based on notes that contain that term, but then when you tap into a note, you’re taken to the first instance of that term, which is highlighted, and two arrows at the bottom of the screen help you navigate to all the other instances of that term in your note. So, say you’ve got a note with 100 quotes in it. If you search for “Franklin” the quote note would appear in the list and then when tapping on that note you’d start at the first instance of “Franklin” in the note. Simplenote makes it extremely easy to find exactly what you’re looking for quickly.

Since my foray into other apps was not due to a fault with the Simplenote app itself, each other option left me unsatisfied. Of all the other notes apps I spent time with, none were quite the right combination of design and functionality that I was looking for. Either too much or not enough…

Which Combo?

In the end, I’ve come back full circle and am sticking with Simplenote and nvALT. Though the syncing can hiccup at times, I still consider it to be the best. And, of course, now that I know more about the cause behind the syncing hiccups I no longer fear losing my data.

But, what’s best for me may not be what’s best for you. Through this process I came across additional note-syncing setups which I heartily recommend. The two best notes apps on Mac are nvALT and Justnotes. The two best notes apps on iOS are Notesy and Byword. Pick two, sync them up, and happy note keeping.