Are your movies compressed or not? How did you decide?

When I built my first Media Server (a windows box with a raid 1), space was at a premium.  So, I compressed all of my DVDs using AutoGK down to about 700MB AVIs and Later MP4s.  Moving ahead, I built an unraid server.  While space still is not cheap, scalability and larger TVs has led me to relax my compression standards and move to Blurays.  My average MKV is now between 3 and 10GB per movie.  Closer to 3GB for kids movies, and less popular titles, while 10GBs are for mainstream movies like Marvel.  Lately I have been contemplating moving to fully uncompressed ~40GB rips for popular movies, and classics....Lethal Weapon, Wizard of Oz, Back to the future.  That kind of thing.  My question to everyone is, how do you handle compression?  My belief is that space is just too expensive for every movie to be uncompressed.  Thoughts?

 

PS...Plexwatch claims I have ~1000 movie titles and 80 TV shows totaling over 8,000 episodes.  Currently I have a ~8TB array with about 3TB free.  I have dreams of building a theater in the basement.  I know my 700MB Rips wont cut it down there.  But I am hoping the 5-10GB blurays are ok.

Semantics, but full 40GB rips are still compressed, actually fairly heavily. The question is whether or not to re-encode them with a different compression scheme, and what data to keep and what to throw out. You can save a fair amount of space by removing streams you never use, and keep the main stream intact, or you can change to a different compression algorithm, or a combination of techniques, depending on your end use. Keeping the full rip ensures the best possible quality for later use if your needs change.

All 517 of my movies are uncompressed MKVs which are only the highest bitrate video track, the highest bitrate English audio track and only forced English subs.

 

Price per GB is so low now compared to 10 years ago I don't see a need to re-encode.  My array is 16TB and I have been hovering around 3TB - 4TB free for about 2 years now.

 

BTW...I would try to avoid putting a 700MB rip on a 120" projected screen. 

 

John

BTW...I would try to avoid putting a 700MB rip on a 120" projected screen. 

 

Actually, the opposite, try putting the compressed content up on a large screen. You see why you want the higher resolution content.

 

http://hdguru.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/hdtv_distance_chart.pdf

 

Storing unusable content is a waste of space, at any price.

I keep uncompressed (BlueRay REMUX) copies of blockbusters and 6-10GB MKV x264 copies of others.

 

Generally if its fast action or something with high detail (i.e. Lord of the Rings) I store it at the best quality and things like comedy's get a lower quality.

 

I view these on a 58" Panasonic Plasma, not a 120" projector, but big enough to want to maintain some quality at times.

I keep uncompressed (BlueRay REMUX) copies of blockbusters and 6-10GB MKV x264 copies of others.

 

Generally if its fast action or something with high detail (i.e. Lord of the Rings) I store it at the best quality and things like comedy's get a lower quality.

 

I view these on a 58" Panasonic Plasma, not a 120" projector, but big enough to want to maintain some quality at times.

I learned a long time ago that if its available to always get the largest possible file size.  You're only ever going to increase in TV size... Not too many people downgrade.

 

Storage is cheap.

Storage is indeed VERY inexpensive these days.    Some disks are as low as $30/TB, the superb WD Reds are around $40/TB, and even WD Blacks are less than $50/TB.    Even at $50/TB, that's only $1 for 50GB of storage ... so a 50GB uncompressed BluRay rip costs $1; a 10GB MKV costs about 20 cents.    And at $30/TB those costs are 40% lower.

 

As already noted, however, the question is a bit incorrect => ALL movies are significantly compressed already on the DVD or BluRay media you get them on.    The question isn't whether or not your movies are compressed -- it's whether or not you re-render them with a different compressor to use less space.    Personally, I re-render everything so it will fit on a single 4.7GB DVD ... even though it's been years since I actually stored the result on a DVD  [At one time I backed everything up by burning them to DVDs ... but for several years now I've stored my backups on hard drives and, for the last 2 years, on a dedicated backup UnRAID server].    But I still compress everything down to 4.7GB  (if the source is a DVD that's already that size, then I don't do any further compression).

 

Gary, compress a bluray to 4.7 gb is going to look like s**t on a big TV screen compared to a 10 gb one in terms of details. Use hevc codec to go so down in size

Agree => I should have noted that I was referring to DVDs.    I have very few BluRays ... and I don't recompress those at all.  I figure for those few cases where I want the higher resolution of a BluRay I don't want to compromise it ... so I just ripe them as is.    As I noted above, space is CHEAP these days ... there's no real reason to recompress anything  [i just do it with DVDs out of habit 

@Gary, yes technically a BluRay is still a compressed format when compared to the original print or source material. But who has access to the source material?

 

For the purposes of this thread, it's safe to assume that uncompressed means a BluRay without further compression, since this is the highest quality anyone has available to them.

Personally with a Samsung lcd 55 inch tv seen 3 m away i cannot see the difference between a full bluray backup and a 10-12 gb mkv compressed one. So, if you have like 50 bluray that is not a problem and i can suggest you keep the bluray as it is with makemkv. But if you are like me with 500 movies and hundreds of tv-series, i say compress everything to x264 with crf 19-20 slow/slowest quality and you are set.

I like to keep my tv-series in 720p (except my favourite ones like Band of Brothers or The Pacific) but they are taking too much space anyway.

 

I'm now experimenting with HEVC encoding and for example a 2 gb tv-series episode in 720p quality is compressed to like 750 mb. Not a big saving with a few series but a couple of big hard drive if you have a lot. The same with movies : you can compress a 12-15 gb h264 movie with near same quality in 5-6 gb.

 

Problem with HEVC is the playback...after a few tests i can tell you that plex server on my gaming rig (i5 3570k) is able to transcode a 1080p hevc movie to my ipad with cpu between 25%-95%, so you need a capable server.

Even 1000 BluRays would only need 40TB (at 40GB each) ... which is only 5 8TB drives.    That's simply not all that much storage these days.    I know one guy with 2 100TB arrays (and growing).

 

Personally, I haven't bothered to switch my collection of 4000+ movies from DVD to BluRay, as I just don't see much difference in the visual quality on my 70" screen.    Ageing eyes may contribute to that, but the simple fact is DVDs are plenty "good enough".    If I wanted to pause frames and study them in detail -- count the leaves on a tree, etc. -- I'm sure BluRay would be better.    But it's not a transition I'll be making anytime soon.

 

One very simple immutable rule:  With ANY lossy compressor, you LOSE some quality.    If the reason you're buying BluRays is to have the "best possible" quality; then re-compressing them is working against that goal.    Granted, you may not be able to see the difference ... or what you can see isn't enough different to matter ... in which case compress-away.  That's exactly why I don't bother to get BluRays -- I simply think DVDs are plenty "good enough."      And that's on a 70" screen => if you're watching this stuff on small portable devices (phones, tablets, laptops) there's no way it matters !!

 

 

 

I think a lot depends on how you are going to watch them, if you're using PLEX then you lose a lot of quality so it doesn't matter so much.  I set up plex but was disappointed with the quality of the resulting movie and replaced it with a Windows box in each room to drive the screens.  My main system has a 65" UHD screen and a Windows i7 4K HTPC albeit set at HD1080p most of the time with an Onkyo receiver upscaling 1080p to 2160p as I only have a handful of movies/TV series at 2160p.

 

I keep some movies at 20-50GB, typically straight rips from BluRay with no further compression (often with Dolby ATMOS sound tracks as my TV room is set up with centre ceiling speakers for that).

 

I have 2 unRAID servers, one dedicated to BluRay movies with only 1 user share, currently over 12,500 with an average size of 6.1GB but that average size is going up, it's probably 8-9GB per 1080p and 4-5GB per 720p.  I am slowly replacing 720p rips with 1080p rips at typically 8-9GB or more if they are blockbusters.

 

I can see the difference between 720p and 1080p, as for DVD quality, I still have over 4,500 of those on another unRAID server along with a much larger collection of TV series and documentaries.  I can't watch DVD rips, the definition is just too bad and the difference between 1080p and 2160p is astounding.

 

As for quality, a lot depends on the nature of the movie, if there are a lot of dark scenes, that is when you can see the difference with shades of black.

I really appreciate everyones feedback.  I have been playing around with MakeMkv trying to rip specials and extra content.  I like the approach of keeping blockbusters uncompressed.  Now that I have moved on to Plex, I have been obsessed with trying to collect director commentary and so on....

 

I am having trouble obtaining Blurays of some of my old Favs.  My Cousin Vinny comes to mind.  The reviews on amazon make it seem like the picture quality is just ok, and the Extras are less than disirable.

I have my cousin vinny at 1080p and 8.3GB, has the english subtitle track mud in but turned off by default.

 

It's a little bit grainy, but the definition is very sharp.

Bruce. Were there any features on the disc?  Or was your copy downloaded?

Sorry, no features, all I have is the mkv file

The reviews on amazon make it seem like the picture quality is just ok, and the Extras are less than disirable.

 

Garbage in, garbage out probably applies here.

One of my favorite examples of what remastering can do to a movie is Jaws.  They decided to remaster the entire movie frame by frame because on higher bitrate formats, you could actually see the wires pulling Bruce (yeah, that was his name) through the water. 

I think a lot depends on how you are going to watch them, if you're using PLEX then you lose a lot of quality so it doesn't matter so much.  I set up plex but was disappointed with the quality of the resulting movie and replaced it with a Windows box in each room to drive the screens.

 

You only lose quality with Plex if you are playing back the content on a client that is not capable of direct play, and therefore Plex is transcoding the stream down to a quality the client can display. If the client is capable of direct play, Plex simply streams the source file to the client with no intervention.

 

If you were getting subpar quality with Plex, the issue wasn't Plex in and of itself, it was the clients you were attempting to play the content on.

As high a resolution as possible.

 

Having said that ... those 4k blurays are going to be space vacuums !

I just completed my Lethal Weapon Collection.  I used MakeMKV to capture all of the behind the scenes stuff too.  I am pretty excited about that.  I will go forward with using full Blurays from now on.  the 1 dollar per movie example sold me.  Plus, when it comes time to put up the projector, I am sure I will be happy I did it.

...  when it comes time to put up the projector, I am sure I will be happy I did it.

 

Agree.    It's those 120" (or larger) screens where you can really start to notice the difference in resolution.  Remember that a 120" screen has 4 times the display area of a 60" screen ... so you're FAR more likely to notice little flaws in the video.    So if you're planning to move to that size in the future, preserving all the quality you can makes sense.

 

My view (as I noted earlier), is that for those movies I choose to buy in BluRay format (which is admittedly very few), the only reason I'm doing so is to get higher quality => so I do NOT want to compromise that quality at all by further compressing them.

 

Note that if you use MakeMKV, you're not recompressing the audio/video streams. It is a bit for bit copy of the video but in a different container format.