Setting recommendations

[pwn]

So I have a pretty big collection of movies (mix of BR and DVD) that I'm storing on my personal home NAS. I've come to the realization that storing the raw data is not going to be realistic as im probably going to run out of space before ill be able to add more disk. My goal is to take my raw BR and reduce them from their current size down to something more manageable. I really like my video and audio and I don't want to loose that much quality. Quality is by far my biggest priority.

I plan on playing things via my Mac Mini to my TV/receiver but I would like the ability to play them on my computers. For the most part I use VLC for this.

I've toyed around with the video settings and I think that an RF of 16 will be good as I can't see really any loss though i know there is some. Most BR seem to be about 30-40GB. Is 16 a good RF, or should I go lower? Is it worth the additional size?

The next and probably more complicated question is regarding audio. I really wish that movie houses would standardize, I think it would make this whole process easier but I digress.

Many of these movies have 2-4 English audio tracks. I'm assuming that these additional tracks are commentary and other crap that I don't really care about. How do you tell which is which?

Also there are sometimes multiple 5.1 tracks. I think that the extra fall under the above assumption but again which to choose?

When encoding the audio I've been adding the same track 2 or more times and choosing AAC (faac or ffmpeg)--I'll normally leave it at what it defaults to-- AC3 (pass through), and if the track is DTS or DTS-HD as pass through. Any recommendations on audio encoding would be helpful as I think I'm going overkill. Is there a way to label these tracks?

Last but not least is getting this done as quickly as possible. I've done some tests and it seems to take about 6 hours per movie. I'd like to speed this up keeping in mind that audio and video quality are paramount. I have a pretty killer computer so raw compute power shouldn't be a problem.

[Smithcraft]

Timeframe sounds about right. It's not going to go much faster, unless you lower the settings. Most people go higher for HD content, around 22 or so. You can give it a try and see how it looks.

I don't bother with the AAC track, and just use pass through for everything, except for LPCM of course. In that case I just remux it back in.

SC

[pwn]

I can leave everything out and just go with AC3 and pass through and it will play fine on my computer/mobile devices?

It seems like I want to stick with MVK as MP4/M4V only can contain 1 audio track. Are there any other reasons to stick with MKV?

[TedJ]

MP4 can hold multiple audio tracks, it's the audio formats it supports (AAC, AC3) that's lacking.

[sub0ptimal]

DVDs will almost always have a 5.1 AC3 track. Some also have a 5.1 DTS track. I pick the DTS track if it is available, but it doesn't make that much difference. Older DVDs will have a AC3 2.0 track. These can be skipped. Some old DVDs only have 2.0 tracks, especially if the original movie was in mono. (50s and earlier) The commentary track(s) will usually be AC3 2.0. Whatever tracks you pick, the simplest thing is to do pass-through (not the default, you need to select AC3 Passthru or DTS Passthru)

Newer Blu-rays will often have a "audio for the blind" track, which is 5.1 AC3 or DTS. I have ripped these to MP3 to play in my car on long rides, but otherwise they are not needed.

You can either use the preview to figure out what tracks to use, or just rip them all and then delete the ones you don't want later.

There's no getting around the time needed. I get about 16 fps on Blu-ray on my ripping machine. Video is 24 fps, so a 2 hour movie takes 3 hours to rip.