To Compress or not to compress?

[pusta]

I was just curious what everyone's workflow is when ripping BDs that you own. I picked up a Synology NAS with 12TB of space that I plan to store my ripped collection on, and I go back and forth on whether I should compress the MKVs in Handbrake or not. I plan to play them on a Western Digital TV Live, which can do everything under the sun (except DTS-HD MA), and a Roku 3 via Plex. I know Plex will need to convert most MKVs for the Roku, but I think my PC can handle that. I like the manageability of the compressed files, but I also hate losing any of the quality of the BDs.


So, in short, just curious what others are doing.

[Woodstock]

I run everything through HB to make MP4s. Some of my devices simply can't handle MKV over the network, and I don't want to waste the CPU cycles recoding them on the fly - process once, and just serve up the data.

As for the quality of the BD image.... Meh. I'd say there is less than 5% of what I have in my collection where going beyond DVD quality "makes the movie". If I have a BD source, I'll have HB rip at the original resolution, but I don't worry about the occasional artifacts. Monsters Inc is fun to watch, even if you can't see the individual hairs fluttering in the wind.

[Smithcraft]

I transcode and most of the time I can't see any issue.

If I had a 12TB setup, I wouldn't bother.

SC

[Twowit2woo]

FWIW I think one of the biggest issues is how big the screen you intend to watch it on is as well as your eyesight.

There will be an "optimum" resolution that your eye cannot tell the difference between. I remember some warez group years ago stating that they reckon 6500kbps is about the max and anything over that you cannot really tell. (They used to rip Bluray quality onto DVD's.)

Everyone's mileage will vary and a debate can ensue, but personally I used that figure and added a bit, so rip every single HD movie at 8500kbps using H264 (and always have done.) I watch on a 32inch telly and the quality is top notch (and includes individual hairs on Monsters inc!) Most movies end up around the 6GB mark.

I have yet to view a film at this setting and regret not ripping at a higher bit rate.

Pick a film, convert it then compare to the uncompressed original. That to me is the most sensible approach as everyone's eyes are different.

No doubt in years to come when I am watching it on a 60 inch, I'll probably regret not ripping at a higher resolution. That said, we'll all be watching UltraHD by then (or even 8K); at which point I'll be ripping from scratch again so it doesn't matter

[MJFieser]

I've got 32TB (8x4TB), so I don't bother with compressing them further. The only things I strip away are the non-English subtitles and (excluding commentaries) the non-lossless audio tracks.

Full quality rips are the only way to go… for me.

[OldDragon]

I think it depends on the playback devices and the screen size. I used to compress when I only played back on iPads and TVs 55" or smaller. Now that I have a large projection environment (home theater), I am going through my collection and re-ripping "raw".

Moral of my story: if you have the drive space, just rip uncompressed and you only need to rip once. I've learned it's easier sacrificing a little CPU for conversion to the small screen and leveraging one uncompressed copy per movie (Plex rocks for on-the-fly conversion).

Long time stalker, first time poster.

[pusta]

Thanks for the comments everyone! I think going forward I am going to leave the MKVs uncompressed. If space becomes an issue, I think it will be easier to compress select films in the future. Thanks again!

[Devore]

With 12TB, definitely do not bother. Strip off the extras and other language and format audio, subtitles, etc. That's 500 titles at around 22-25GB each. Hmm, might be a problem in my case If you start running out of space, you can either add more space (disk will be higher capacity), or begin to compress some titles, or start purging.

I am actually going through a digitization process with my DVDs right now (then BRs), finished the DVDs today. Way easier than expected. I'm not interested in "archival" quality, just ease of access and saving physical floor space. Discs will go into storage. DVDs are crappy quality on modern HD displays anyways, a _little_ worse is no big deal.

DVDs I target 700MB/hour (1400kbps for video, 192kbps MP3 audio), for BR I have tested 4500kbps for video and 384kbps 5.1 AC3 audio (for passthrough over optical link), that is targeting 2100MB/hour, and looks pretty good for me. I am sure videophiles everywhere are aghast Both for DVD and BR that works out to around 25-33% reduction ratio, depending on bitrate of original.

The real trade-off, aside from loss of quality, is the time and CPU power you have to spend doing it. If you want a decent encode at your chosen bitrate, you will want somewhat higher quality encoder settings.

[crowfax]

I have an ever increasing in space Drobo which right now is around 9tb. I rip the main movies and move them over to the Drobo for safe keeping, but on my media server i tend to compress everything down to 720p using handbrake on high profile with the xbmc tuning depending what kind of film it is; to save space as it only have 1tb of storage and it'd soon run out even when I only keep movies on it I've not had time to watch.

[Devore]

Tell me more about this "XBMC tuning"? For DVDs, I don't really care, they are small and low quality enough. But for BRs using a target bitrate might be either too wasteful or not enough. I figure fiddling with the settings for each movie individually is way too much work and time, and I am not familiar enough or trust the constant quality RF setting. I am only just starting to look into putting my BRs on the media server.

[crowfax]

Tell me more about this "XBMC tuning"?

My bad! I was typing in a hurry, I meant the x264 tuning in handbrake:

[StixUK]

Being a Noob to all this ripping stuff and looking at how much money I had to spend and what I wanted I took what I saw to be the best decision at the time.

I purchased a Buffalo NAS 2TB single drive and based my requirements on that as cost me around ?120 to buy which was stretching my budget. So i really was working on small margins.

Have a touchscreen PC so no option to upgrade to a HTPC or add drives and don't have the intelligence for that either or money (or haven't learnt yet!).

I rip as MKV as like the single file format and I yearned not to compress as the NAS drive would take them and my LG 42" 3D Smart TV would play the MKVs as well, but I gave in and I use Freemake to compress my MKV files.

I use their standard MP4 setting, which produces a 720p 'DVD Quality' file, not to sure of any of the settings, all I know is a 6GB disc comes out at 2GB. I rid of everything bar the 5.1 Sound as have surround sound system so works well. Subtitles are removed as well - no need for them yet.

This works for me at the moment and is very good for our setting.

In the future I would like to upgrade my storage so I can have Blu-Ray discs and 3D discs to make use of the 3D TV. I would then not have to compress, which would save a lot of time.

I would also consider building my first PC to use as a home theatre system attached to the TV and then I would eliminate the need to cut and paste my compressed files from PC to NAS drive. Although I would need quieter fans as hate fan noise, which I don't get from my NAS.

So all in all, I think we would all love uncompressed Blu-ray systems with perfect playback but it is a personal thing, decided by budget, space, time and convenience. Everyone is different.