File Compression

[bcrozierw]

I'm brand new here - so apologize if the answer here is obvious ...
I'm using MakeMKV to rip my dvd and bluray library to a NAS (100 titles so far) but I'm running out of space.
My son tells me a typical 1080p move should take up less than 4 gb, but mine are averaging 25+.
How do I compress these files? ... can't find anything in Preferences

[Woodstock]

MakeMKV won't do video compression. But, tools like handbrake can.

Compressing a 1080p video to "less than 4gb" depends on how much quality you're willing to give up and how compressible the source is. Something like anime will usually compress to 10-15% of original size, but a fast-moving live-action (or special effects-laden) movie might only compress to 50% size.

Recent examples from my use, "The Russians Are Coming" was a 22GB movie on disk, and compressed to 11GB. "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" was 39GB on disk, 11GB after compressing, both with handbrake presets that favored high quality.

[bcrozierw]

Thank you very much.
Should I keep using Make MKV or is there a ripper that will compress its output?

[dcoke22]

I recently did the blu-ray Bumblebee (2018). It was a 28GB rip. I turned it into a 7.5GB h.264 file (using Handbrake & Intel QuickSync hardware encoding) and a 3.9GB 10-bit h.265 file (using ffmpeg & x265 software encoder). The h.264 took about 18 minutes because of the hardware encoding. The h.265 encode took about 3 hours, 45 minutes.

Also, big hard drives are relatively inexpensive. Putting big hard drives in your NAS to be able to skip the transcoding of your rips is a good example of trading money for time.

[bcrozierw]

Thank you both ... I will try handbrake.
My NAS is a Synology DS420+ with 4 2TB drives.
I might have made a mistake choosing 2-drive fault tolerance when I was expecting my 600 titles to require less than 4 TB ...
Imagine my surprise when Synology tells me I'm at 80% capacity with 100 rips.
I guess I'll go on the Synology Forum to see if I can recover some of that extra space.