I have a collection of about ~110 4K Blu-Ray movies that I’ve ripped and I want to take the time to compress and store them for use on a future Jellyfin server.

I know some very basics about ffmpeg and general codec information, but I have a very specific set of goals in mind I’m hoping someone could point me in the right direction with:

  1. Smaller file size (obviously)
  2. Image quality good enough that I cannot spot the difference, even on a high-end TV or projector
  3. Preserved audio
  4. Preserved HDR metadata

In a perfect world, I would love to be able to convert the proprietary HDR into an open standard, and the Dolby Atmos audio into an open standard, but a good compromise is this.

Assuming that I have the hardware necessary to do the initial encoding, and my server will be powerful enough for transcoding in that format, any tips or pointers?

  • shrugal@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Best tip I can give is to use a tool that’s made for this task, like Tdarr/FileFlows/Unmanic. They take care of all the complicated issues like encoders, ffmpeg parameters and parallel processing on multiple nodes, so you only have to handle the things you actually care about.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      6 months ago

      Unmanic is way easier to understand than Tdarr. I use it to transcode DVR recordings recorded using Plex and a HDHomeRun tuner. Digital TV uses MPEG2 which has pretty large file sizes.

  • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    You’re about to embark on a massive journey and I wish you the best of luck :D

    Compressing 110 4K movies is going to be a long encode time, but it will be so nice to digitize that collection.

    First question: if you already have them ripped and stored, do you even need to re-encode them? If you have a powerful enough Jellyfin server for transcoding, that may be enough.

    That said, if you’re looking to optimize for space and quality, there’s some questions to ask:

    • proprietary (but ubiquitous) HEVC or the emerging open standard AV1? It’s going to be a lot easier finding tips/guides for HEVC.

    • Constant Rate Factor (CRF), or Average Bit Rate (ABR). CRF tends to be more straightforward if you have a varied collection of content because it let’s the encoder choose settings to deliver consistent quality. 2-pass average bit rate is good if you have a target size or compatibility in mind - great for squeezing out the absolute optimal quality if you’re trying to fit on a Blu-Ray disc or meet certain streaming criteria, but 2x the encode time (hence “2-pass”) can be a tough sell.

    Stick with software encoding, steer clear of hardware solutions like NVENC. They’re crazy fast, but inconsistent quality.

    There’s some guides out there on converting DV to HDR 10+ etc, but I don’t have a lot of experience with that process.

    • fenndev@leminal.spaceOP
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      6 months ago

      The issue is storage costs. Currently they (and some Blu-ray shows I ripped) are taking up just over 12TB. I bought all of these movies when I had money to spend on stuff like that, but money is short and times are tough. “Storage is cheap” but my wallet is cheaper right now, aha.

      • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        Look, I definitely get it, but just a note, encoding 100+ 4k HEVC movies is going to take months of time at full PC loads. It’s a subtle cost, but depending on your electricity rate, running a 200W PC 24/7 for 3 months straight may hurt your bottom line more than it helps.

        If you already have the storage, the cheapest option may be just to keep it. If you’re looking to increase the size of your collection it may be about even to save 6 TB via encode and to buy an extra 6TB disc, depending on your setup

        • jbrains@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          I am definitely keeping an eye on my electricity bill right now, since I have Unmanic running full speed and it’s about 3 weeks into a 4-month job that might only save 1 TB.

  • DaGeek247@fedia.io
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    6 months ago

    I did a comparison trying to find where my personal “good enough” and techinically indistinguishable crf levels were at a little while ago. It may be worth looking into as a start. I’ve never really touched hdr before though.

    Comparing compression levels

  • authorinthedark@lemmy.sdf.org
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    6 months ago

    oh hey I’ve actually done this recently so a lot of this is fresh for me. Now I had a slightly different use case than you, I had a bunch of AV1 files that wouldn’t run on my pi so I had to convert them to something less GPU intensive. I was finding x265 was indistinguishable for me from AV1, and had a HUGE file size drop, close to a half or even a third. x264 had a larger file size than 265 and looked worse so I don’t recommend it. I did not try VP9 once I was satisfied with 265 but you could try it out and see how it compares. My recommendation is to pick one (shorter) file and run a couple of different transforms on it till you’re satisfied before trying to transform your entire library

    Preserving audio and metadata is trivial, just use -c:a copy for audio and -c:d copy for metadata

    EDIT: I feel dishonest not mentioning the important caveats regarding my own experiments. My files were 1080p, so the difference between codecs might be less noticeable at that resolution. It was also anime, which is similarly going to be easier to compress and be less distinct between codecs. This is why I cannot recommend x264 because if you can ruin 1080p anime it’ll ruin whatever you’re working with. This is why I recommend picking a sample video and spend a day running a couple test transformations on it to see what you like

    • DaGeek247@fedia.io
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      6 months ago

      Skipping the audio encode from a blu-ray will lose op out on a surprisingly large amount of space, especially with 110 source disks. I checked one of my two hour blu-ray backups. Audio will net you about nine audio tracks (english, french, etc). A single 5.1 448kbs audio track will take about 380MB of space per movie. Multiply that by nine (the number of different tracks in my sample choice) and you’ll get 3420MB per disk. That means about 376GB of space is used on audio alone for ops collection. A third of a terabyte. You can save a lot of space by cutting out the languages you don’t need, and also by compressing that source audio to ogg or similar.

      By running the following ffmpeg command; ffmpeg -i out-audio.ac3 -codec:a libvorbis -qscale:a 3 small-audio.ogv I got my 382MB source audio track down to 200MB. Combine that with only keeping the language you need, and you end up dropping from 376GB down to 22GB total.

      You can likely save even more space by skimping on subtitles. They’re stored as images, so they take up a chunk of space too.

      • the_third@feddit.de
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        6 months ago

        Please use Opus instead of Vorbis. Vorbis is old and had been superseded by Opus.

    • marci33@feddit.it
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      6 months ago

      Since you’re talking about anime, how did you solve the subtitles problem? My pi doesn’t transcode fast enough but I haven’t found a tdarr extension to do that automatically (nor a command)

      • authorinthedark@lemmy.sdf.org
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        6 months ago

        I’m sorry my subtitles worked fine from the beginning so I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve got a pi4 running osmc as my media center if that makes any difference.

      • DaGeek247@fedia.io
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        6 months ago

        God no. X264 is way worse than x265 is way worse than av1 for quality by size.

        Yes, everything made in the past 15 years can do x264, but that does not mean it is a good idea. Only do x264 if you have a specific device that needs it. Otherwise, x265 is a better choice for long term storage.

        • fenndev@leminal.spaceOP
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          6 months ago

          AV1 is definitely what I’d like to do. I’m not aiming for maximum compatibility; small file size and high quality encodes are my goal. I can transcode if needed.

          • Lemmchen@feddit.de
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            6 months ago

            Keep in mind at least your server should be able to decode whatever you choose in hardware, so AV1 might still not be a good idea depending on your current hardware and upgrade plans.

        • Lemmchen@feddit.de
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          6 months ago

          You’re right, I forgot about the on-the-fly transcoding abilities of Jellyfin for a moment. But still, the server should be able to handle whatever codec they choose in hardware.

          • dan@upvote.au
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            6 months ago

            How many of those are you streaming video to, though?

            Intel iGPUs have supported H265 since 7th gen, which is 8 years old now (released in 2016). Nvidia added support the same year, starting with the GTX1050. Even the Raspberry Pi 4 supports hardware-accelerated H265.

  • ancoraunamoka@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    Are those your own blurays? Then share them before compressing.

    Transcoding is hard. There is no way that your transcoding settings are going to be a one size fits all. I am currently encoding the famous iKaos Dragonball release and I did 48 samples before deciding what configuration to use.

    You are better off downloading stuff from torrent, especially for newer media. You’ll find a community that put 100x your time collectively on transcoding. That will also save from your tremendous electricity costs.

    Also look into vmaf for quality metrics. Consider that switching to uncompressed 1080 might bring you close to your goal with very very low effort.

    Btw, can you share the title list?

    • fenndev@leminal.spaceOP
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, sure thing.

      Abominable
      Ad Astra
      Aladdin (Live Action)
      Aladdin
      Alien - Covenant
      Alien
      Ant-Man and the Wasp
      Ant-Man
      Aquaman
      Arrival
      Austin Powers In Goldmember
      Austin Powers - International Man of Mystery
      Austin Powers - The Spy Who Shagged Me
      Avengers - Endgame
      Avengers - Infinity War
      Baby Driver
      Batman and Robin
      Batman Forever
      Batman
      Batman Returns
      Big Hero 6
      Black Panther
      Bohemian Rhapsody
      Brave
      Captain Amercia - Civil War
      Captain America - The First Avenger
      Captain America - The Winter Soldier
      Captain Marvel (2019)
      Cars 2
      Cars 3
      Cars
      Cinderella (Live Action)
      Close Encounters of the Third Kind 40th Anniversary Edition
      Deadpool 2
      Deadpool
      Detective Pikachu
      Doctor Sleep
      Doctor Strange
      Everything Everywhere All At Once
      Fantastic Beasts - The Crimes of Grindelwald
      Finding Dory
      Finding Nemo
      First Man
      From Up on Poppy Hill
      Frozen II
      Frozen
      Gemini Man
      Godzilla (1998)
      Godzilla - King of the Monsters
      Gremlins
      Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1
      Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
      Halloween
      Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
      Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1
      Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2
      Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
      Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
      Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
      Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
      Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
      Howl's Moving Castle
      Incredibles 2
      Incredibles
      Inside Out
      Interstellar
      Iron Man 2
      Iron Man 3
      Iron Man
      IT (2018)
      John Wick 3 - Parabellum
      John Wick - Chapter 2
      John Wick
      Joker (2019)
      Jumanji (1995)
      Jurassic Park III
      Jurassic Park
      Jurassic Park - The Lost World
      Jurassic World - Fallen Kingdom
      Jurassic World
      Kiki's Delivery Service
      Kingsman - The Golden Circle
      Kingsman - The Secret Service
      Logan
      Maleficent - Mistress of Evil
      Maleficent
      Mary Poppins Returns
      Moana
      Monsters, Inc
      Monsters University
      My Neighbor Totoro
      Pacific Rim Uprising
      Paprika
      Ponyo
      Ratatouille
      Robin Hood
      Spider-Man - Homecoming
      Spider-Man - Into the Spider-Verse
      Spirited Away
      Starship Troopers
      Star Trek - Beyond
      Star Trek - Into Darkness
      Star Trek (2009)
      Tangled
      The Cat Returns
      The Expendables 2
      The Expendables 3
      The Expendables
      The Good Dinosaur
      The Hulk
      The Jungle Book
      The Karate Kid (1984)
      The Lion King (Live Action)
      The Lion King
      The Little Mermaid
      The Matrix
      The Matrix -  Reloaded
      The Matrix -  Revolutions
      The Predator
      The Princess and the Frog
      The Secret Life of Pets 2
      The Secret World of Arrietty
      The Shining
      The Wizard of Oz
      Thor
      Thor - The Dark World
      Toy Story 2
      Toy Story 3
      Toy Story 4
      Toy Story
      Turning Red
      Up
      Us
      Venom (2018)
      Wall-E
      Waterworld (2019)
      Wonder Woman
      Wreck-It Ralph
      Zootopia