Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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Andrew Bienhaus
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Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by Andrew Bienhaus »

Description of problem or question:

Seeking friendly experience, within the similar scope of what I am trying to accomplish.

Steps to reproduce the problem (If Applicable):

Have lots of DVDs & BluRays. Have the players to play them back, when I really REALLY want the high quality ... but also am building out more and more Kodi boxes (via FireTVs) and media servers in the home, and replicating to Dad's cottage, etc.

Seems that MakeMKV is the Solid tool to rip, and then Handbrake to compress.
I followed some common advice to use 1080p30 Matroska preset in Handbrake, but in my test case it only took the 1:48m movie (Deadpool) from the ripped MKV of 24.6Gb, down to 8.2Gb.

Does that sound about right?
Or have I missed a setting somewhere... based on other posts, I had sort of expected about 4Gb.

The original movie is 24fps, as is the output, so have I actually reduced the framerate at all? (as the 1080p30 implies in my mind)

If my target is 2-4Gb for most movies, should I be selecting 720p perhaps? Or something else?

Thanks for anyone willing to share their experience with this... I am sure I can't be alone, and there must be many who have ripped big chunks of their physical collections. :-)

But - I see a similar length movies stored as an MKV, that are a BR 1080p rip, at 1.9-2.1Gb.
So has that person likely dragged the quality bar somewhere way to the left to accomplish that?

HandBrake version (e.g., 1.0.0):

1.2.0

Operating system and version (e.g., Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, macOS 10.13 High Sierra, Windows 10 Creators Update):

Windows 7/10
rollin_eng
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by rollin_eng »

Could you please post your HB logs, instructions can be found here:

https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/hel ... y-log.html
mduell
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by mduell »

I'd test another half dozen movies of diverse types, and then see what the average size is. If they all come out around 8GB and you want 2-4GB, then increase the RF by about 6.
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JohnAStebbins
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by JohnAStebbins »

As mduell hints at, output size can vary dramatically from one source to another. My super grainy Aliens BD encoded to 29GB using the same settings that encoded Avatar at 13GB and Ratatouille at 3.5GB. If you "optimize" for one movie, you'll end up with disappointing results for others.
Andrew Bienhaus
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by Andrew Bienhaus »

Thanks guys, appreciate the thoughts.
Yes, if I was around 2.5Gb, I'd just try other movies... but I'm not even in the ballpark. ;-)
Sounds like I want 1080p30, 265, and to tweak the RF for size, and let the encoder run all night with a high processing setting for quality...

logs:
www.bienhaus.org/dphb.zip
(sorry I didn't include initially, struck me as something to do when it's broken, but makes total sense if you want to see what I am really up to)

I did leave all the audio tracks in, as there are a bunch in this one I wanted, and they don't strike me as "huge" as video... wish there was a tool somewhere that could show me the size of the pieces of the MKV file, and I might learn more there.

Presently 47% through another test of the same movie... 9:19 to go, with 8 hours in.
This time did H.265 MKV 1080p30, RF 22, Very slow Encoder... which seems silly compared to the 90 mins that h.264 was doing, but it might be a mix of the 265 and my slow encoder setting, not sure... :-)
rollin_eng
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by rollin_eng »

Your audio is whats taking up most of the space.

Your video is only 2.5 gigs and the audio 5.5 gigs.
Andrew Bienhaus
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by Andrew Bienhaus »

Rollin'... thanks. Where can I easily see that, or, in the future perhaps predict it?
rollin_eng
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by rollin_eng »

It’s at the end of the log:


[22:35:44] mux: track 0, 155514 frames, 2369597279 bytes, 2922.60 kbps, fifo 512
[22:35:44] mux: track 1, 608085 frames, 3966320176 bytes, 4891.96 kbps, fifo 2048
[22:35:44] mux: track 2, 608085 frames, 1223467020 bytes, 1508.99 kbps, fifo 2048
[22:35:44] mux: track 3, 202695 frames, 363229440 bytes, 448.00 kbps, fifo 512
[22:35:44] mux: track 4, 202695 frames, 181614720 bytes, 224.00 kbps, fifo 512
[22:35:44] mux: track 5, 202695 frames, 181614720 bytes, 224.00 kbps, fifo 512
[22:35:44] mux: track 6, 3704 frames, 35525538 bytes, 43.82 kbps, fifo 32
[22:35:44] mux: track 7, 4842 frames, 70114264 bytes, 86.48 kbps, fifo 32
[22:35:44] mux: track 8, 3988 frames, 62389032 bytes, 76.95 kbps, fifo 16
[22:35:44] mux: track 9, 2 frames, 6691 bytes, 0.01 kbps, fifo 8
Andrew Bienhaus
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by Andrew Bienhaus »

ouch!
wow... ok, thanks.

so, there's a feature request for Handbrake, that maybe I should put in?
(a rough predictor/estimator tool)

those I guess are likely because I selected "auto passthrough", sort of assuming audio was tiny... ;-)
Andrew Bienhaus
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by Andrew Bienhaus »

Ok, so yes, my next pass at Deadpool, with a single audio track, AC3, Mixdown from 5.1 to Dolby ProLogic II, and I got the sought after 2.1Gb.

In general... (again, friendly opinion/advice wise)... is that a good choice for mixdown and audio codec to use?
Or, if I think I might ever want to use the 5.1 down the road, should I choose AC3 and 5.1?

Looks like audio still accounted for 500mb, in my single audio prologic ac3...

[01:22:02] mux: track 0, 155514 frames, 1598914730 bytes, 1972.06 kbps, fifo 2048
[01:22:02] mux: track 1, 202695 frames, 518899200 bytes, 640.00 kbps, fifo 4096
[01:22:02] mux: track 2, 3704 frames, 35525538 bytes, 43.82 kbps, fifo 64
[01:22:02] mux: track 3, 4842 frames, 70114264 bytes, 86.48 kbps, fifo 64
[01:22:02] mux: track 4, 3988 frames, 62389032 bytes, 76.95 kbps, fifo 64
[01:22:02] mux: track 5, 2 frames, 6691 bytes, 0.01 kbps, fifo 8
Andrew Bienhaus
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Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 4:24 pm

Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by Andrew Bienhaus »

Just ran some tests, to see how the conversion/audio codecs help/hinder... ac3 vs. aac, didn't seem to make any difference, although online postings indicate that aac might have some issues with the codec, so I guess I will stick with ac3.

Next will try and see how the bitrate changes things. :-)
mduell
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by mduell »

Andrew Bienhaus wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2019 2:43 pmso, there's a feature request for Handbrake, that maybe I should put in?
(a rough predictor/estimator tool)
No, variations on this have been rejected previously.
Andrew Bienhaus wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2019 2:50 pm Ok, so yes, my next pass at Deadpool, with a single audio track, AC3, Mixdown from 5.1 to Dolby ProLogic II, and I got the sought after 2.1Gb.

In general... (again, friendly opinion/advice wise)... is that a good choice for mixdown and audio codec to use?
Or, if I think I might ever want to use the 5.1 down the road, should I choose AC3 and 5.1?
Yes, it's generally a good option.

If you want 5.1 down the road, you should add 5.1 AC3.
Andrew Bienhaus
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by Andrew Bienhaus »

ok, zooming in on target settings now... :-)

ac3, 5.1, same movie.
384k bitrate:
130,123,828 bytes
640k bitrate:
518,899,200 bytes

so obviously a fair difference, although not the end of the world. .4Gb, on a 2-3Gb file.

Is there anyone who would however have an opinion such as; "I would never set sc3 5.1 below X bitrate"...?
Although, I think Handbrake is trying to tell me... because when I select a 5.1 track, pick ac3, and 5.1, it sets the bitrate to 640.

Agree with that?
mduell
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Re: Seeking friendly advice on encoding DVDs & BluRays for Kodi playback via HDMI & HD

Post by mduell »

Those numbers aren't right, 640k audio is 640/384 times as large as 384k audio.

The general guideline is to never do AC3 below 64k/channel. 640k is recommended for 5.1.
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