Is ripping 4K Blu Rays Practical?

[roflmaonowhow]

I have 5 x 8TB HDDs. All of my blurays are re-encoded with Handbrake (I'm now re-encoding w/ H265 @ 10-bit which provides superior quality with reduced banding, and re-encode all non-Atmos and non-DTS:X audio tracks using AAC at high quality), so my average file is between 5GB - 8GB per movie. I also rip all of my 4K blurays, most are 1:1 copies, but sometimes I use Handbrake to re-encode titles to get them down from 50-80GB to 15-25 GB without any perceptual difference in video quality.

I have about 1300 movies (350+ are 4K) and still room for more.

https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?t=41960

Holy crap, that must take a seriously long time to encode! Curious what your PC setup is like, you'd need something like the Threadripper CPU to crush through those 4k files. I have a 5950X and am able to get a 4k file done in Handbrake anywhere between 1 to 4 hours. I wouldn't be doing it if it took any longer.

I only have a 3900X, so it's slightly longer. I bet a 5950X cuts through it like butter!

Haha, the 3900X is no slouch compared to other 8 cores CPUs, it's actually a happy medium between price and performance. I went overboard with the 5950X because I'm not upgrading for another 10 or even maybe 15 years.

[charnathan]

If you don't want to deal with certain titles onto a specific drive, then you'll need to have a RAID configuration.

The big thing you have to understand with a RAID configuration, you'll need to consider what you want for redundancy purposes. Or drive failure scenarios.

RAID 0 will allow you to pool together multiple drives, but no redundancy.

RAID 1 will take two drives, of equal size, and make it the size of one drive since it is mirroring data to both drives.

RAID 5 will take three or more drives will pool together multiple drives, but you loose the size of 1 to redundancy. Basically it only allows you to have one drive fail.

These are the commonly used RAID configurations.

Keep in mind...you should have a back-up solution for any of these options.

[Simbo]

I have 2 x 16TB HDDs. One is completely full, the other still has around 10TBs free.

I have a mixture of Blu-ray and UHD (around 150 UHD) but don’t compress any of my movie files. On the UHDs I usually just rip the movie, English Atmos track + DD English track.

I’ve spent a lot of money on my setup so want the best quality I can get….I hate the thought of compressing my movies.

[Lost Dog]

This comes up all the time... The reality is at current electricity costs re-encoding for space costs more than hard drive space. Add on top of that lower quality visual and / or audio it really is not worth it.

[staknhalo]

it's worth it for me to not be drowning in hard drives or constantly having to buy them - much easier and convenient to pay the electrical costs of encoding

45mbps I encode down to (if native bitrate below that just remux)

[leosantare]

I would be looking for a UHD collection of no more than 200 titles. At 60GB each, that would put me right around 12TB and I understand you should never exceed 80% of the drive. I would also be putting my documents, my music and my picture files on the same drive which all amount to less than 1TB. In total, I would be around 12.8TB.

I could go with (1) 16TB HDD or (2) 8TB SSD's in RAID.
Any suggestions?

Also, are the 4K UHD discs really an upgrade to 2K HD discs? I've been reading a lot of the 4K UHD reviews and most say the video quality is worse than 2K.

Thank you,

[AngryVirginian]

Now with 4K Blu Rays, I believe the amount of space would triple! That would mean you would need about a 15TB drive for a collection of 200 titles. I don't even think a single drive comes that big.

So, I wanted to ask how people do it and why. I would not be interested any compression since that would defeat the purpose and I would only want to use 1 hard drive for my collection.

I think that practicality depends on several factors including hardware, software, and budget. I have 1,800 movies in my collection with about 700 of those in 4K UHD. All titles are either remux-es (I also rip extras for my favorite movies) or full BDMV backups (for Dolby Vision FEL discs and bonus-only discs). My files are stored across three volumes in my Synology NAS.

It would be a nightmare for me to manage & browse my collection with Windows Explorer to watch on a PC. However, I watch most of my collection through a Zidoo device. Zidoo's Home Theater software (similar to Plex, Kodi, etc) provides a GUI that aggregates all my movies, puts them into categories, puts posters on movies for easy identification, provides search functionality, and provides myriad options for sorting & filtering. All I need to do is put new files on the NAS and the Zidoo's software will take care of it.

I have an (I think) above average home theater setup so I don't want to take any chance with encoding. I want the best possible picture & sound quality from my discs. I can always get more storage.

I use an Oppo 203 clone to play Dolby Vision FEL disc backups. The Oppo provides only a Windows Explorer-like experience to browse files (no fancy GUI or search function). I feel frustrated sometimes having to look for what movie to watch on that device but I still keep it in the mix as it is the only device right now that can play & passthrough everything.

[etranger69]

Now with 4K Blu Rays, I believe the amount of space would triple! That would mean you would need about a 15TB drive for a collection of 200 titles. I don't even think a single drive comes that big.

So, I wanted to ask how people do it and why. I would not be interested any compression since that would defeat the purpose and I would only want to use 1 hard drive for my collection.

I think that practicality depends on several factors including hardware, software, and budget. I have 1,800 movies in my collection with about 700 of those in 4K UHD. All titles are either remux-es (I also rip extras for my favorite movies) or full BDMV backups (for Dolby Vision FEL discs and bonus-only discs). My files are stored across three volumes in my Synology NAS.

It would be a nightmare for me to manage & browse my collection with Windows Explorer to watch on a PC. However, I watch most of my collection through a Zidoo device. Zidoo's Home Theater software (similar to Plex, Kodi, etc) provides a GUI that aggregates all my movies, puts them into categories, puts posters on movies for easy identification, provides search functionality, and provides myriad options for sorting & filtering. All I need to do is put new files on the NAS and the Zidoo's software will take care of it.

I have an (I think) above average home theater setup so I don't want to take any chance with encoding. I want the best possible picture & sound quality from my discs. I can always get more storage.

I use an Oppo 203 clone to play Dolby Vision FEL disc backups. The Oppo provides only a Windows Explorer-like experience to browse files (no fancy GUI or search function). I feel frustrated sometimes having to look for what movie to watch on that device but I still keep it in the mix as it is the only device right now that can play & passthrough everything.

Hello Sir

I’m wondering what stands behind using Oppo 203 and not Ziddo or Kodi/Plex when playing rips of 4K DV.

I’m considering myself what would be the best solution to store (Synology nas) and play the content of 4K rips (including HDR 10 and DV) directly on my OLED CX.

[AngryVirginian]

Now with 4K Blu Rays, I believe the amount of space would triple! That would mean you would need about a 15TB drive for a collection of 200 titles. I don't even think a single drive comes that big.

So, I wanted to ask how people do it and why. I would not be interested any compression since that would defeat the purpose and I would only want to use 1 hard drive for my collection.

I think that practicality depends on several factors including hardware, software, and budget. I have 1,800 movies in my collection with about 700 of those in 4K UHD. All titles are either remux-es (I also rip extras for my favorite movies) or full BDMV backups (for Dolby Vision FEL discs and bonus-only discs). My files are stored across three volumes in my Synology NAS.

It would be a nightmare for me to manage & browse my collection with Windows Explorer to watch on a PC. However, I watch most of my collection through a Zidoo device. Zidoo's Home Theater software (similar to Plex, Kodi, etc) provides a GUI that aggregates all my movies, puts them into categories, puts posters on movies for easy identification, provides search functionality, and provides myriad options for sorting & filtering. All I need to do is put new files on the NAS and the Zidoo's software will take care of it.

I have an (I think) above average home theater setup so I don't want to take any chance with encoding. I want the best possible picture & sound quality from my discs. I can always get more storage.

I use an Oppo 203 clone to play Dolby Vision FEL disc backups. The Oppo provides only a Windows Explorer-like experience to browse files (no fancy GUI or search function). I feel frustrated sometimes having to look for what movie to watch on that device but I still keep it in the mix as it is the only device right now that can play & passthrough everything.

Hello Sir

I’m wondering what stands behind using Oppo 203 and not Ziddo or Kodi/Plex when playing rips of 4K DV.

I’m considering myself what would be the best solution to store (Synology nas) and play the content of 4K rips (including HDR 10 and DV) directly on my OLED CX.

My primary use of the Oppo 203 clone is to play DV FEL disc images. I use my Zidoo to play everything else; DV MEL rips, MKV files, etc. Please consult the mega long DV thread on what devices have a second HEVC decoder to properly process FEL layer for DV titles.