Help using Handbrake to compress blu ray files?

[Technique]

So i've damn near filled my 6TB hard drive and i've still plenty more to do ... that means some videos are going to need compressing (all these files are blu-ray MakeMKV rips).

My computer isn't the fastest at doing this which isn't a major issue because i can just set it up to do the job through the night.

 

To help advise as best as you can you'll probably need to know what i want to achieve and what i'm going to do with the file. If i miss anything out then just ask...

 

MY GOAL:

 

* I want to compress the file down from the original 20GB-40GB that it is. Not to a specific size but smaller without any noticeable loss in image & sound quality.

* I want subtitles to remain in the video file - finally figured out how to do this after some trial & error

* AUDIO - the audio currently comes through my TV speakers. It may well forever stay like that, i don't know. I've been looking in to soundbars for a while now and i hope to get one (but have other issues there - off topic) but it's no certainty. I may well move house in the future and have a 5.1 or a 7.1 setup. The latter two (5.1 & 7.1) are very unlikely but not impossible. The soundbar option is the one that there's actually a good chance of ........ my point is .......... i want to future proof the compressed file so that if i ever do get a soundbar (or indeed 5.1/7.1 setup) I can relax in the knowledge that my movie files can make the most of it rather than being like - damn i wish i'd converted those 300 video files that took me months a little differently.

Problem is ... i don't really understand the audio settings on the audio tab in Handbrake.

 

* The video files are stored on a specific hard drive on my PC and they are played on my TV in my living room via Plex.

 

So 3 key things really...

* Image quality - but i think my settings are suitable for my goal? So i'm not particularly worried here. Would just like someone to check.

* Audio quality & future proofing - i honestly don't have a clue.

* Image dimensions (we'll get on to that in a sec)

 

SUMMARY:

 

Fairly confident i'm right here. I've selected HQ on the right as a best of both worlds kind of thing - good quality without taking forever and creating a bigger file.

I note the size says 1920x800. More on that on the next screenshot.

 

DIMENSIONS:

 

I see the source as 1920x1080 yet the entered numbers by default are less. What is correct here? 1920x1080 or 1920x800?

In this example i actually changed the 800 to 1080 simply based on the reasoning i've heard of 1920x1080 but not 1920x800, that's all.

 

FILTERS:

 

I left these as default as i don't really know what they do.

 

VIDEO:

 

Now i actually left this as default when i converted my file in this example, however where the red arrow is, i've since read that i should change from Peak Framerate to Constant Framerate.

Correct? Or leave as Peak?

 

AUDIO:

 

Here's the problem where i've no clue. I don't really know what to select to achieve my goals. I don't know what codec, what bitrate, what mixdown.

I did a little reading but still don't really understand it. Based on this i changed the mixdown for one of the defaults to 5.1 channels.

Most my movies are English but some are in foreign language (Chinese martial arts movies). So not really sure what to select. I used this as an example since most are total English.

The reason there'll be so many options in that dropdown is because when ripping from MakeMKV i don't know which audio/subs to select as there's often many 'English' options. Based on this i just select them ALL. As a result as you'll know - i sometimes end up with that pointless audio of like the director talking over the movie.

 

SUBTITLES:

 

Confident i've got this down now...

 

So with those options i just mentioned to you (such as changing the image dimensions & not really understanding it) i ended up with this...

 

ORIGINAL MAKEMKV RIP:

 

CONVERTED HANDBRAKE FILE with altered 1920x1080 (instead of the default 1920x800):

 

As you can see, it is a wider file than the original. Leave as 1920x800?

 

I also noticed though that the audio files are different:

 

ORIGINAL MAKEMKV RIP:

 

CONVERTED HANDBRAKE FILE:

 

 

 

Sorry for the long post but wanted to give as much info as possible so that we don't have to play tennis before you're able to advise.

 

 

 

Oh and a final one before i finish. Nothing major but while i'm asking the others i just wondered about this one - on my PC many of the video files have like 'poster thumbnails' for the movie, yet the converted by Handbrake files do not.

Is there a way of changing this so that the converted files have the same thumbnail? If so, how? Like i said, nothing major, just me being picky.

 

[spacelordmaster]

Leave the settings the way they are at default. They work just fine like that and the quality output is great and small files compared to the original.

[Technique]

3 hours ago, spacelordmaster said:

Leave the settings the way they are at default. They work just fine like that and the quality output is great and small files compared to the original.

But don't the default settings not include a 5.1 setup? So if i ever ended up having a 5.1 setup i wouldn't be able to make the most of it? Or have i got the wrong end of the stick there?

 

Like i said, 5.1 & 7.1 are actually unlikely even if they still are possibilities. What IS likely however is a soundbar of some description. I don't understand audio enough (for enough, read: AT ALL) to know whether default settings will be able to make the most of a soundbar or whether the sound quality will actually be quite poor (compared to if i had selected other options within Handbrake when compressing).

[+BudMan MVC]

On 5/28/2019 at 2:48 AM, Technique said:

So i've damn near filled my 6TB hard drive and i've still plenty more to do

hahahaah - I told you! heheheheheheh

 

Remember!

[fusi0n]

I usually do two audio tracks. One for stereo and the other 5.1 Master Audio AAC with highest bitrate. On your playback device, you can choose the audio source. Don't rip for what you have right now, or rip what you think you may have later. Rip for best case scenario so you don't have to re-rip. 

[+BudMan MVC]

Good news is 12TB are now available

 

You can find some good prices on 8s and 10TBs.. Shucking the externals is quite cost effective... I had gotten a 8TB for like 100$

 

I can see new rig in your future...  NAS with 4x8TBs prob could be put together for a good pricing

 

Compressing your library could very time consuming.. I was moving some files to x265 10bit, and finally just got more space

 

 

[Technique]

6 hours ago, fusi0n said:

I usually do two audio tracks. One for stereo and the other 5.1 Master Audio AAC with highest bitrate. On your playback device, you can choose the audio source. Don't rip for what you have right now, or rip what you think you may have later. Rip for best case scenario so you don't have to re-rip. 

What codecs do you use for each?

And which mixdowns for those codecs?

 

I see in the list there's AAC (avodec) and AC3 but then there's AAC passthru and AC3 passthru. I read yesterday that i should apprently be using this passthru for top quality. Don't know how accurate that is, so instead of AAC (avodec) should i then use AAC passthru?

5 hours ago, BudMan said:

Good news is 12TB are now available

 

You can find some good prices on 8s and 10TBs.. Shucking the externals is quite cost effective... I had gotten a 8TB for like 100$

 

I can see new rig in your future...  NAS with 4x8TBs prob could be put together for a good pricing

 

Compressing your library could very time consuming.. I was moving some files to x265 10bit, and finally just got more space

 

 

I could do movies on differing drives, but for now i have the drive connected to my PC and i only have space for 1 drive to be allocated to this kind of work. After that i'd need to store them and i can't afford a NAS at the moment. Not only that but i read that there's not so much processor power with a NAS.

 

Also compressing the library wont be that time consuming - i'd set it up to happen while i'm asleep, so i wont even notice. 1 movie per day. I could set up a few over the weekend. Wouldn't impact on me so much.

[+BudMan MVC]

4 hours ago, Technique said:

i can't afford a NAS at the moment.

I love these sorts of comments.. They are always such BS..

 

It's not that you can not afford it.. its that you choose not to spend the money on X at this time...

 

I can not afford the beer or whiskey I drink either - its just I "choose" to spend my money on them vs say a faster nas, etc.  So you are doing the same thing... If you wanted it, you could afford it   Just like any hobby... Its not like we are all sitting around with X $ just burning holes in our pockets and say hey I need to spend this on something.. Lets get a XTB sized drive, vs going out to dinner or buying that bottle of whiskey that is way over priced, etc. etc..

 

How many movies do you have?  So your going to spend X days in a row setting up a transcode before you go to bed?  Yeah that gets old like day 3... Then maybe you can afford the bigger drive that is on sale

 

I have a ds918+ nas off the shelf - and I can almost promise you it works as plex server way better than whatever pc your running..  It has no issues with 4k, and I have streamed remotely to 5 different clients at the same time without it breaking a sweat, etc.

 

[ShadeOfBlue]

On 5/28/2019 at 2:48 AM, Technique said:

I see the source as 1920x1080 yet the entered numbers by default are less. What is correct here? 1920x1080 or 1920x800?

There are cropping controls on that same tab. By default, it has auto-cropped the black bars from the video (140 pixels removed from top and bottom). That's a good thing, and is why the height is 280 pixels less than expected.

[fusi0n]

3 hours ago, Technique said:

What codecs do you use for each?

And which mixdowns for those codecs?

 

I see in the list there's AAC (avodec) and AC3 but then there's AAC passthru and AC3 passthru. I read yesterday that i should apprently be using this passthru for top quality. Don't know how accurate that is, so instead of AAC (avodec) should i then use AAC passthru?

I could do movies on differing drives, but for now i have the drive connected to my PC and i only have space for 1 drive to be allocated to this kind of work. After that i'd need to store them and i can't afford a NAS at the moment. Not only that but i read that there's not so much processor power with a NAS.

 

Also compressing the library wont be that time consuming - i'd set it up to happen while i'm asleep, so i wont even notice. 1 movie per day. I could set up a few over the weekend. Wouldn't impact on me so much.

I use Passthrough because I want the best possible audio. The difference in size isn't HUGE, but it is noticeable. If you HAVE to use it, use AAC. If you do pass through, the audio track(s) will be pure, and if your receiver/soundbar has the codecs, it will process the audio, sounding even better. 

[Technique]

On 5/29/2019 at 8:43 PM, BudMan said:

I love these sorts of comments.. They are always such BS..

 

In the past i've always played this game of tennis with you

But since you actually have chosen not to help in this thread by answering my question, i honestly can't be bothered getting in to it with you. Suffice to say your post, that one at least, is exactly that ... BS

 

22 hours ago, fusi0n said:

I use Passthrough because I want the best possible audio. The difference in size isn't HUGE, but it is noticeable. If you HAVE to use it, use AAC. If you do pass through, the audio track(s) will be pure, and if your receiver/soundbar has the codecs, it will process the audio, sounding even better. 

So i should select passthru every time then?I know you said there's a little difference in file size but tbh it'll be less than the original so it's no big deal.

 

Would you select AAC and AC3 or just AAC?

 

 

 

[fusi0n]

1 hour ago, Technique said:

In the past i've always played this game of tennis with you

But since you actually have chosen not to help in this thread by answering my question, i honestly can't be bothered getting in to it with you. Suffice to say your post, that one at least, is exactly that ... BS

 

So i should select passthru every time then?I know you said there's a little difference in file size but tbh it'll be less than the original so it's no big deal.

 

Would you select AAC and AC3 or just AAC?

 

 

 

AAC. it's a lossy codec. It will provide better sound quality. 

[Jim K Global Moderator]

2 hours ago, Technique said:

In the past i've always played this game of tennis with you

But since you actually have chosen not to help in this thread by answering my question, i honestly can't be bothered getting in to it with you. Suffice to say your post, that one at least, is exactly that ... BS

 

So i should select passthru every time then?I know you said there's a little difference in file size but tbh it'll be less than the original so it's no big deal.

 

Would you select AAC and AC3 or just AAC?

 

 

 

I normal do passthrough for movies where I care about the audio.  RomCom's or movies that I may only watch when I'm incredibly bored or whatever ... I'll do AC3 @ whatever bitrate (like 384). 

 

Passthrough will increase your file size substantially though.

[+BudMan MVC]

How many movies do you have? Total?  Lets call it 30GB a movie - with 6TB you do approx 300 of them.  Lets say you do 1 a day and cut that in half for size now your at 600 moves.. So your going to spend almost 2 years compressing your library?  Even if you 2 do a day to store your 600 movies.. Your like a year of every single night setting some movies to transcode, etc.

 

Your going to be better off just buying more space - then sure now and then shrink the larger of your files, You can save space just by trimming out stuff that is not needed that you might of been grabbing.  All the different audio tracks, subs while small - do you really need swedish or Chinese subs, etc. etc..

 

Or investing in better transcoding hardware so your not spending 8 hours a movie to shrink but say 1.. Then you could batch up a bunch to do each night, etc.

 

I warned you from the get go that this hobby can get expensive!  Just trying to save you some pain dude - while sure it seems fun to shrink your movies.. It gets old real quick!  Another thing to think about - so once you spend all this time transcoding vs just the few minutes ripping to mkv.. You prob going to want to back up all that effort   So your going to need more disk space for the backup.. Vs if its just a few minutes rip of a movie - you have the backup already on the original media.. And worse case scenario you loose the disk the rips are on, you could always just rereip..

 

If you are going to transcode you should really look to what the min bitrate your happy with so you save as much space as possible, vs having to then do it again when you run short of space again.  I have found that around 2.5mbps works for me.. You will be in the 2GB range movie file vs 30GB.. 

[+BudMan MVC]

So the 16TB avail over at newegg

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16822184805

 

Bit pricey sure... But all this means as the smaller drives price prob going to drop... 3x16TB in raid 0 and you would have room for say 1600 movies at 30GB a piece without any loss of quality.. Just saying

 

I see this is your future..

 

Not now of course - cuz you can not afford it currently.  But give it a few weeks of transcoding 1 movie a night, bet you find some money for upgrade of hardware   Tell the wife she needs to drink mcafe vs starbucks - heheh

[Technique]

21 hours ago, fusi0n said:

AAC. it's a lossy codec. It will provide better sound quality. 

Hmm that surprises me. I spent the start of the week looking at AAC or AC3 and my understanding was that if you had to pick one then pick AC3?

 

19 hours ago, Jim K said:

 

Passthrough will increase your file size substantially though.

What do you mean by 'substantially'?

I converted a movie that had passthru and again when it didn't and it was 3.41GB vs 4.62GB. I might've made other changes also (i think one may have been 1920x1080 whereas the other i let be the default Handbrake setting of 1980x800) - so it wasn't a total fair comparison of passthru vs non-passthru but still only 1.2GB difference.

To me that's not really a lot. Sure it adds up, i agree that much. Do it 3-4 times and that's another movie you could've had taking up the space. I also understand that some people want to shrink their movie to a specific size. Me - i don't really care. I just want it less than the original but not where i'm losing any noticeable audio or video quality. It appears that means i can shrink approx a 30GB file to approx 5GB, roughly speaking, which i'm fine with.

 

6 hours ago, BudMan said:

How many movies do you have? Total?  Lets call it 30GB a movie - with 6TB you do approx 300 of them.  Lets say you do 1 a day and cut that in half for size now your at 600 moves.. So your going to spend almost 2 years compressing your library?  Even if you 2 do a day to store your 600 movies.. Your like a year of every single night setting some movies to transcode, etc.

I'm in no rush. That's why i started in December, it's May and i'm not even half way through. I do around 4-6 movies per week, roughly.

I've other things to do so i do this as and when.

How difficult / time consuming is it to set up a movie to transcode? Open up Handbrake, bam-bam-bam with a few settings (once i've got them sussed), hit start and go to sleep.

Wake up, job is done, check it when i get home from work, delete the original.

6 hours ago, BudMan said:

 

Your going to be better off just buying more space - then sure now and then shrink the larger of your files, You can save space just by trimming out stuff that is not needed that you might of been grabbing.  All the different audio tracks, subs while small - do you really need swedish or Chinese subs, etc. etc..

Nope, that's why i only select English

6 hours ago, BudMan said:

 

Or investing in better transcoding hardware so your not spending 8 hours a movie to shrink but say 1.. Then you could batch up a bunch to do each night, etc.

 

I warned you from the get go that this hobby can get expensive!  Just trying to save you some pain dude -

Yes and i appreciate that, but your comment about this being BS was exactly that ... BS.

 

Sure it's a choice, yet not really. Tomorrow i have £1.3k coming out of my bank, then in the 2 week that follows i have a further £700 at least coming out. I've had some time off work because of a medical issue that came totally out of the blue, so my pay is going to be considerably down on top of the minimum £2k i'm going to have to spend in a short timeframe.

Then i've just had some major repairs on the house - the bill will be coming in the next few days, so that's more money

Then there's more repairs that are ongoing which should be wrapped up in the next 2-3 months hopefully but that's more cost

And i now need work doing on the extension roof as well as the fascia boards - more money.

 

So sure, it's a choice to pay for these things, yet also not really because what's the alternative? My house floods would be one (the repair we've just had done), my living room wall remains with partially chipped off plaster would be another & we stay with half a carpet, oh and a leaky roof, but i could choose to have all that if i want because maybe buying more hard drive space would be a better idea right now?

 

Sure, whatever a new hard drive costs is obviously not going to cover those repairs, nowhere near, but where is that money better spent? Yes it's a choice but in the situation i think most would make the same choice.

 

And yes it's life. We all have our own sh!t going on. I don't come here volunteering any of that kind of information but at the same time i don't expect anyone to start telling me what i can and can't afford at the time. Only one person knows that and that's me.

6 hours ago, BudMan said:

 

 

while sure it seems fun to shrink your movies.. It gets old real quick!  Another thing to think about - so once you spend all this time transcoding vs just the few minutes ripping to mkv.. You prob going to want to back up all that effort   So your going to need more disk space for the backup.. Vs if its just a few minutes rip of a movie - you have the backup already on the original media.. And worse case scenario you loose the disk the rips are on, you could always just rereip..

Yes at some point i agree i will need to back up all of my rips.

Though i can't just re-rip. Some movies i can but there's many i wont be able to. Without going in to detail but then that may jog your memory as to why i can't just re-rip.

 

Well i could, but it'd take a lot more money and a hell of a lot more time.

6 hours ago, BudMan said:

 

If you are going to transcode you should really look to what the min bitrate your happy with so you save as much space as possible, vs having to then do it again when you run short of space again.  I have found that around 2.5mbps works for me.. You will be in the 2GB range movie file vs 30GB.. 

I'm not sure about the bitrate to be honest. Plex appeared to struggle around the 40000kbps bitrate mark. I say Plex, it may be my TV Plex app or my PC or whatever. To put it better - my viewing experience started to suffer around that bitrate.

 

I think Plex auto-plays my movies at 12MBps or something like that IIRC and i don't notice a difference between this and the original quality.

[fusi0n]

On 31/05/2019 at 20:35, Technique said:

Hmm that surprises me. I spent the start of the week looking at AAC or AC3 and my understanding was that if you had to pick one then pick AC3?

 

 

Not at all true.

https://www.quora.com/How-is-AAC-better-than-AC3

[Jim K Global Moderator]

50 minutes ago, fusi0n said:

Not at all true.

https://www.quora.com/How-is-AAC-better-than-AC3

You also have to take into consideration that pretty much all receivers support AC3 directly (AAC as well...but 2.0).  Not sure about Plex (never used it) but Kodi takes AAC 5.1 tracks, transcodes it to DD and pushes out to the receiver.  I would assume Plex does something similar.  I'm not aware of any receiver that supports AAC via HDMI passthrough.

 

For movies, IMO, it is best to use AC3 (if needing to compress) since it will be a "no fuss" option ... or obviously pass through DTS-HD/TrueHD/DTS/etc. for no loss in original quality.

[fusi0n]

32 minutes ago, Jim K said:

You also have to take into consideration that pretty much all receivers support AC3 directly (AAC as well...but 2.0).  Not sure about Plex (never used it) but Kodi takes AAC 5.1 tracks, transcodes it to DD and pushes out to the receiver.  I would assume Plex does something similar.  I'm not aware of any receiver that supports AAC via HDMI passthrough.

 

For movies, IMO, it is best to use AC3 (if needing to compress) since it will be a "no fuss" option ... or obviously pass through DTS-HD/TrueHD/DTS/etc. for no loss in original quality.

Passthrough is the best option. Tried to get them to just use that. 

[Technique]

If you're not particularly bothered about getting the file size as low as you possibly can, and since the debate seems to not be crystal clear (regards AAC & AC3, similar to Apple vs Android, Mac vs PC, PS4 vs Xbox etc) would you not just include both AAC and AC3 on the compressed file 'to cover all bases' then? Since it wont mean jumping from 4GB to 20GB, it wont matter a great deal if they're both included?

 

 

Just posting back as i forgot to mention earlier. This one is perhaps more at Budman than others but just to put it out there - another reason i was looking at compressing, aside from creating space, was the bitrate.

Some video files i had trouble playing back on the TV with Plex. Most are fine but some have issues and the very small few are unwatchable. These are around 40000 bitrate as i mentioned earlier. Compressing reduces that bitrate massively.

 

Taking the 1 movie i've done so far, it took the original 37193 bitrate and turned that in to 5175.

 

Now i don't know if it's the bitrate or some other factor that's causing these particular movies to buffer a lot where other movies play without any issue. >IF< it's the bitrate then this should surely help?

 

 

Your newegg link doesn't load anything for me.

 

I've had a look at second hand drives. Seagate Archive for £120.

1) Not sure if this is a solid (decent) drive or not. Never heard of it. Barracuda and Ironwolf i had, Archive i hadn't.

2) Brand new on Amazon appears to be £190 so £70 saving. I'm always dubious about certain things being second hand on account of i'm not a very trusting person. It'll 'probably' be ok but who knows.

 

Still i wont be able to afford one for a few months yet due to other spends.

[+BudMan MVC]

yeah they ran out

 

It wasn't good price per TB anyway... Your better off finding the sweet spot for TB..   What size was your refurb disk?  £120?  Archive those are SMR disks... No I wouldn't suggest you use those for a plex server.. In your backup storage sure they would be fine there.

 

You should do the math on what is the current sweetspot for TB per $...   Prob going to be 6 or 8TB I would bet..  I had picked up a 8TB external, that I shucked and put in my nas for like $100..

 

If you wanting to save a few bucks for your drive - and you want to use it internally vs external disk google drive shucking..

[Technique]

14 hours ago, BudMan said:

 What size was your refurb disk?  £120? 

 

It was 8TB.

I know 8TB is only 2TB more than what i currently have, so not much, but i think with pricing 10TB+ just hasn't come down enough to make me part with cash.

Amazon

Guru3d

Scan

Those 3 links are all about the same drive but some times one site will offer more info. What this is getting to is what are you seeing about that drives specs that stands out as *avoid*? Is it something i should be looking for at all times regardless of manufacturer?

 

14 hours ago, BudMan said:

 

AI had picked up a 8TB external, that I shucked and put in my nas for like $100..

 

If you wanting to save a few bucks for your drive - and you want to use it internally vs external disk google drive shucking..

I've had a look and if i understand correctly then you're talking about buying an external drive, breaking in to it and removing the actual drive?

 

 

[+BudMan MVC]

The drives use SMR technology -- while the read speed will be fine, the write speed is going to way lower than a normal drive..  I wouldn't use them in your PC...  If your ONLY going to use it as your storage for plex prob be ok.  Since I don't have a clue to your use case, or what you plan on doing with the drive.. I mention the SMR technology is used in all archive disks.. Do your own research.

 

As to shucking - yeah, google it - the external drives are normally cheaper.. It is a huge thing in the data hoarder community..

 

As to it only being 8, and you have 6... You would be ADDing, not replacing.. So you would then have 14..  Replacing your 6 with an 8 would not be very economical method of getting more space

[Technique]

To move away from attempting to store original files for a second....

 

What i said earlier about playback on some high bitrate files - my TV/TV app struggles with it. Would compressing the file to a much lower bitrate not help (i.e. it wont buffer so much) or is there just way way more to it than that that that wouldn't really make a difference?

 

 

Never thought i'd ever type 3 thats in a row 🤣

[Technique]

22 hours ago, Technique said:

To move away from attempting to store original files for a second....

 

What i said earlier about playback on some high bitrate files - my TV/TV app struggles with it. Would compressing the file to a much lower bitrate not help (i.e. it wont buffer so much) or is there just way way more to it than that that that wouldn't really make a difference?

 

 

Never thought i'd ever type 3 thats in a row 🤣

In addition to that question ^^^

 

Is there a software that you can recommend that'll trim a little off a video file without changing the quality any?

 

I ripped a blu-ray a while ago and for some reason it says at the very start "left rear left surround....BEEP". The actual movie plays from about 6 seconds in.

 

Ok 6 seconds is nothing really, but my OCD has gone in to overdrive and that irritates the crap out of me. It's the only movie that's done it. I ripped and re-ripped and re-ripped again. Different drives too. It happened every time.

 

For anyone who may have this who wants to try it - it was 2013's Thor - The Dark World.

[+BudMan MVC]

Lowing the bit rate can for sure help with your streaming issue... Or you could just a replacement stick... The roku express is like $30 on amazon... Why would you spend some much time and effort redoing your files when a $30 stick could/would fix your problem.

 

Also you can just have your server transcode them done on the fly.. To like 2Mbps...

 

As to triming/splitting... Yes the mkvtoolkit gui can do all of that without any recoding..