Correct way to convert 4k HDR rips?

[xtjacob]

I recently got a bunch of 4k HDR movies and after ripping them my 1TB drive is about full. Usually with 1080p videos I re-encode them to make them smaller, but from what I've seen I can't use handbrake because it has an 8-bit internal pipeline. Is there any other software I could use as an alternative? Or do I just need to leave the video files as is?

[bentonkyguy36]

I'm wondering the same thing myself

[bmillham]

I recently got a bunch of 4k HDR movies and after ripping them my 1TB drive is about full. Usually with 1080p videos I re-encode them to make them smaller, but from what I've seen I can't use handbrake because it has an 8-bit internal pipeline. Is there any other software I could use as an alternative? Or do I just need to leave the video files as is?

I used to worry about space, and would use Handbrake to help save space. I've since realized that it's not worth the time to re-encode. Hard drives are not that expensive nowdays. I personally would rather have the larger, untouched movie vs. a compressed (of a already compressed) source.

I have 37T of drive space now used for my video and music

[dcoke22]

I am not aware of a way to transcode HDR movies to something smaller. The major tools like Handbrake or ffmpeg don't handle the HDR (yet). You can use ffmpeg to make 10-bit h.265 files, but if you start with a HDR source, the colors won't look right. I usually only do 10-bit h.265 encodes when I'm dealing with a 1080 blu-ray that's exhibiting color banding after my typical h.264 transcode.

In the short term, it seems like 4K UHDs are better left alone. Spinning hard drive space is cheap and plenty fast enough for playing movies.

[tvguy7]

Handbrake does in fact support 10 bit HDR.

[Woodstock]

Handbrake and 10-bit HDR has "gotchas". It will read the files, but the color map will be converted to 8-bit as it goes through the pipeline. You can then use a 10- or 12-bit encoder for output, but the color map will already have been reduced to 8-bit.

Exception is if you use hardware decode and encode with no filters; this is being added in their beta, and only works with one hardware encoder at this time.

But, the general case is that handbrake does not process 10-bit HDR as 10-bit HDR.

[blacktoe]

I recently got a bunch of 4k HDR movies and after ripping them my 1TB drive is about full. Usually with 1080p videos I re-encode them to make them smaller, but from what I've seen I can't use handbrake because it has an 8-bit internal pipeline. Is there any other software I could use as an alternative? Or do I just need to leave the video files as is?

I used to worry about space, and would use Handbrake to help save space. I've since realized that it's not worth the time to re-encode. Hard drives are not that expensive nowdays. I personally would rather have the larger, untouched movie vs. a compressed (of a already compressed) source.

I have 37T of drive space now used for my video and music

Same here. I found that as time went by I ended up having to go back and rip films again later once I'd invested in more storage, particularly as the quality or encoded files became problematic as other hardware got upgraded. If you can invest in storage to keep the untouched files it will probably pay off in the long run.

[tvannaman2000]

Handbrake and 10-bit HDR has "gotchas". It will read the files, but the color map will be converted to 8-bit as it goes through the pipeline. You can then use a 10- or 12-bit encoder for output, but the color map will already have been reduced to 8-bit.

Exception is if you use hardware decode and encode with no filters; this is being added in their beta, and only works with one hardware encoder at this time.

I wish Nvidia had 10-bit NVenc hardware encoding, I only have access to their default 8 bit encoders. If I do the 10 bit encoding, it uses the CPU and and I might get 4-5 FPS if I'm lucky. It took well over 24hrs to encode a 40+gb Harry Potter movie.

[Coopervid]

You can use the free functionality of CloneBD to just extract the main movie. With the purchased version you can also transcode the UHD main movie to a smaller size and also to 1080 BD.

[donholio]

I've had good luck with StaxRip. It's a little more complex than Handbrake but it works with NVENC x265 in 10-bit. I get a 4K disc re-encoded in about 60-90 minutes on a RTX2070. The application uses NVENC which you can also call from a command line without StaxRip. I feed my HDR MKVs into StaxRip and it splits out all of the video, audio, and subtitle tracks into individual files. Once that's done, you crop to suit, pick which audio tracks and subtitles get re-encoded or muxed and hit next. StaxRip spits out a smaller file in a few minutes.

I usually go CQP-24 for most of my encodes and that gets me files from 7GB (upscaled Animation) to 35GB (4K heavy grain catalog titles). You can enable the PMD denoise to help on noisy sources without destroying the picture quality.

I'm usually using these settings. YMMV
--cqp 24 --codec h265 --preset P7 --output-depth 10 --profile main10 --level 5.1 --aq --aq-temporal --gop-len 16 --lookahead 32 --strict-gop --aud --repeat-headers --cuda-schedule auto --mv-precision q-pel --cabac -i "<input file>" -o "<output file>"

You can get more info about what these settings do here (if this doesn't work, search for NVEnc options on Google. It points to a GitHub link for the project):
https://github.com/rigaya/NVEnc/blob/ma ... ions.en.md

Best of luck.

[mtotheb]

I finally got an easy workflow for my 4k Blu-Rays (including HDR):
With https://www.selur.de (Hybrid, imagine HandBrake but on crack) I can use my GTX1060 to do up to HEVC@10Bit HW-NVenc encoding AND tone mapping is as easy as to click a toggle.

With Quality set to 18 I get 50 FPS on 10bit HEVC.

[Woodstock]

Does Hybrid automatically download the other projects it depends upon?

[mtotheb]

Does Hybrid automatically download the other projects it depends upon?

On the windows installation it does, didn’t check others.

[SimonM]

I’d really love to test a full 10-bit HDR pipeline, but I’m a total noob when it comes to ffmpeg. I ripped a 10-bit concert DVD in Handbrake software mode, and I’m very happy with the results. I think you have to be clinically insane to want more than I already managed to achieve, bu. **plot twist** I actually am—(kinda). So if there’s better to be had then damn god I want it!

I’m happy to provide an in-depth results comparison if anyone can help me make this happen. I have both Mac and Windows available, on the same machine via Boot Camp.

Sorry I can’t spend a lot of time researching this myself. I’m getting kicked out of my place (probably) so I have a lot of other stuff to focus on instead. That and I judged the effort-to-benefit ratio wasn’t favourable for me learning ffmpeg right now. That can always change in the future obviously.

I ripped my DVD in backup mode.

[Ryushin]

RipBot264 will also do HDR. All my DVD/Blu-ray/UHD discs has been run through RibBot264. Grainy sources have been degrained using MDegrain2 which offers amazing results. I encoded CRF18 for all my files.

For those that say disk is cheap, that may be, but I would need a half PB to store my disc collection. My files look better to me than the source if I needed to degrain and look identical to the sources if I did not need to degrain. Only downside to transcoding the source is I loose Dolby Vision. I know there are ways to retain that information but I have not gone down that rabbit hole yet.