Bluray to HEVC

[Blinky7]

Hello guys,
I have aproximately 250 bluray ISOs in hard disks (or course ripped from my DISC collection). They amount to about 11tb worth of data so my 3 x 4tb hard drives are full.

Recently I had some tough luck economically, so I can't afford to keep buying hard disks to store my backups in, and I am thinking of ways to archive this collection without a lot of cost and loss in quality.

At first I was thinking of converting to BD25 and burning in BD25 discs, however this stil requires a lot of money for the burner and the blanks, and since I have a powerful machine, I am currently thinking of converting the whole collection to HEVC seeing as it is more efficient, to save space and keep using the same disks.

What I want to ask you about, is if you can recommend a program for the task, and also if there is any standard in HEVC already established that I should follow, to make sure the files are playable in tomorows TVs/machines that support H.265... ( I remember, with divx and avc a simple profile change could result in unplayability).

Furthermore, as the resulting files wont be stored in media but in hard disks, what is a good suggestion for the decrease in size to achieve about the same quality as the original? (for a example if in a 42gb bluray the movie alone is 33gb, for what size should I opt for in the HEVC encoder to achieve almost the same quality? (I know in every encode there is loss of quality no matter what thats why I say ALMOST the same), maybe a 70% ratio, so 23gb in this example?)

[Sharc]

Why not try BD-Rebuilder? You have the choice between x264 or x265 (H.265). For future compliance & standards reasons I would still prefer to go with x264. You can for example compress your ISO rips to BD5 (4.7GB) or BD9 (7.4 GB) size in good.....very good quality.

[Blinky7]

Why not try BD-Rebuilder? You have the choice between x264 or x265 (H.265). For future compliance & standards reasons I would still prefer to go with x264. You can for example compress your ISO rips to BD5 (4.7GB) or BD9 (7.4 GB) size in good.....very good quality.

I didn't know bdrebuilder supports h.265....if so, I will try it out!

However, I have a 1080p projector and 120" screen and I am a quality junky, so those BD5/9 are unacceptable. That's the same reason, I can't help not using H.265 if it offers that much better quality/size ratio.

After all, accepting the quality junky I am, I am OK using file sizes in excess of 10gb per movie (or 20gb if needed) as long as I get the required quality. After all, it is still much lower than the 39gb which is the average size per ISO in my collection, so even using 20gb per movie will practically double my hard disk space! If I can do that practically not sacrificing any quality, that is what I am looking for!

[foxyshadis]

By the time x265 becomes worthwhile over x264 veryslow, it is very, very slow. Expect a day or two of encoding per Blu-ray on slow presets, so start with the largest and work your way down. Since you're big on quality, consider using SMDegrain; it'll run slower but increase the quality/efficiency without being very noticeable.

[smegolas]

Ripping to ISO is very inefficient (which for many people is fine if they have storage to spare).

Better to rip to MKV (eg using MakeMKV), discard special features, disc extra audio tracks etc.

Ripped this way, 250 Blurays won't take 11TB, they probably will only take 5-6TB.... unless by some coincidence every disc you own is a high-bitrate BD-50.

[stax76]

You should be aware however not really many people are really using HEVC, the reason is it don't yet delivers the quality it's supposed to deliver, here is the most recent poll:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=172062&highlight=2015

There is a video comparison tool built into StaxRip making it really easy for anybody to compare codec and AviSynth settings:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1716551#post1716551

It can be downloaded here:

https://github.com/stax76/staxrip

There is a somehow outdated comparison thread, unfortunately nobody posted recently an update there:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=170986

[Blinky7]

Based on your replies, I am thinking of a two-step transition.
Maybe I should first convert all the Blurays to lossless MKV stripping them off the extra audio/video files, keeping only the main movie, the English HD audio, and all subtitles (as they dont take space).
This way I should be able to keep the quality to 100% while saving about 30% space and the loss of menus and extra features is something that would be lost anyway in the next step of encoding to HEVC.

So with step1 I should regain about 30% disk space back, while avoiding loss of quality due to encoding, and this should buy me some time to re-visit the HEVC encoding in the future, maybe when it is more mature and there is a standard I can base my encodings on so that they are playable in any device.

If you aggree that this is the best route for the time being, what program do you suggest for the task? MakeMKV or any other is better?

[smegolas]

If you aggree that this is the best route for the time being, what program do you suggest for the task? MakeMKV or any other is better?

I would use MakeMKV since that's what it's designed to do.

Save each new MKV file to a different HDD than the source ISO. This will maximise the speed.

If the only HD audio track is PCM (which is the case with a small % of discs) then consider converting to FLAC, which MakeMKV can do on the fly.

[Ghitulescu]

Hello guys,
I have aproximately 250 bluray ISOs in hard disks (or course ripped from my DISC collection). They amount to about 11tb worth of data so my 3 x 4tb hard drives are full.

Recently I had some tough luck economically, so I can't afford to keep buying hard disks to store my backups in, and I am thinking of ways to archive this collection without a lot of cost and loss in quality.

At first I was thinking of converting to BD25 and burning in BD25 discs, however this stil requires a lot of money for the burner and the blanks, and since I have a powerful machine, I am currently thinking of converting the whole collection to HEVC seeing as it is more efficient, to save space and keep using the same disks.

What I want to ask you about, is if you can recommend a program for the task, and also if there is any standard in HEVC already established that I should follow, to make sure the files are playable in tomorows TVs/machines that support H.265... ( I remember, with divx and avc a simple profile change could result in unplayability).

Furthermore, as the resulting files wont be stored in media but in hard disks, what is a good suggestion for the decrease in size to achieve about the same quality as the original? (for a example if in a 42gb bluray the movie alone is 33gb, for what size should I opt for in the HEVC encoder to achieve almost the same quality? (I know in every encode there is loss of quality no matter what thats why I say ALMOST the same), maybe a 70% ratio, so 23gb in this example?)
You should check first whether this codec/format is supported by your player/s, then encode 250+ files :).
Unless very important, I would do myself (and I am doing it) is, as suggested, to drop all useless menus and extras. I also drop any other language than the original one (be it Swahili :) ) and at least one subtitle track in one of the languages I know. I am not interested in anything the director or the actors have to say, if the movie cannot tell this by itself it is not worth having, let alone archiving. The only extras I keep are some Disney games and/or tests (Audio-video).
I do not reencode (except in winter, when it's cold :) ) neither the video nor the audio. Storage is so cheap nowadays that spending months to reencode files to save 10% is a waste of time.
Besides, you already own the discs, so reripping them according to the needs shouldn't be any trouble.

Nevertheless, what the **underground** community does is to resize the FullHD to 720p (sometimes with removing the mattes), and this does save a lot of space at a small visual impair. This also has the advantage of being playable on small-display portable things like tablets or smart-phones.

[pieter3d]

If you are using Plex to play this stuff, the clients do not support HEVC yet. Instead the server does on-the-fly H.264 transcode, which is absolute garbage quality-wise. If you're just using VLC on a new-ish system then you should be fine playback wise.

[benwaggoner]

By the time x265 becomes worthwhile over x264 veryslow, it is very, very slow. Expect a day or two of encoding per Blu-ray on slow presets, so start with the largest and work your way down. Since you're big on quality, consider using SMDegrain; it'll run slower but increase the quality/efficiency without being very noticeable.
x265 has gotten a lot faster post 1.7, particularly if you think of it as "what speed do I get substantially better encoding efficiency than x264 at the same speed."

x265--preset medium --limit-refs 3 should be faster for 1080p (at least on an AVX2 system) than x264 --preset veryslow and look better.

[jkauff]

Any re-encoding is going to affect playback quality. Maybe you can see the difference on your system, maybe not, but why take the gamble?

I do what others have suggested. Rip the main movie with MakeMKV, and save to a single .mkv file including only the audio tracks and subtitles you need. You have all the extras on the original discs, and I haven't found many worth backing up. You'll preserve the original video quality and save a ton of space on your drives. Also, the process takes minutes per title, not hours like re-encoding.

[Sharc]

Any re-encoding is going to affect playback quality. Maybe you can see the difference on your system, maybe not, but why take the gamble?

I do what others have suggested. Rip the main movie with MakeMKV, and save to a single .mkv file including only the audio tracks and subtitles you need. You have all the extras on the original discs, and I haven't found many worth backing up. You'll preserve the original video quality and save a ton of space on your drives. Also, the process takes minutes per title, not hours like re-encoding.
How about 3D sources and player/playback compatibility?

[foxyshadis]

x265 has gotten a lot faster post 1.7, particularly if you think of it as "what speed do I get substantially better encoding efficiency than x264 at the same speed."

x265--preset medium --limit-refs 3 should be faster for 1080p (at least on an AVX2 system) than x264 --preset veryslow and look better.

Testing has shown that on some movies, slower profiles help noticeably. I really, really hope limit-refs is soon extended to slower profiles, because it helps enormously.

Gopu fixed the analysis load problems, so it'd time to get back to serious qp comparisons.

P.S.: Fixedsys? I don't even have that. :p

[smegolas]

x265 has gotten a lot faster post 1.7, particularly if you think of it as "what speed do I get substantially better encoding efficiency than x264 at the same speed."


Except he wants to get very high quality, almost the same as the source BD. In these scenarios x265 does not offer a worthwhile bitrate saving over x264 in my experience. Sometimes it looks worse even at the same bitrate.

[benwaggoner]

Except he wants to get very high quality, almost the same as the source BD. In these scenarios x265 does not offer a worthwhile bitrate saving over x264 in my experience. Sometimes it looks worse even at the same bitrate.
I'm not sure how true that is anymore. The addition of --qg-strength has helped quite a bit.

Of course, any recompression is lossy. Best quality and fastest processing will always come with repacking, which should be the preferred solution if sizes can go small enough.

Has anyone looked into lossless recompression of H.264? I suspect there's a theoretical way to take a 4-slice encode and combine into a single slice for CABAC. That could save a few percent from the typical Blu-ray.

[Selur]

'qg-strength' ?=? 'aq-strength', or did I miss something?

[benwaggoner]

'qg-strength' ?=? 'aq-strength', or did I miss something?
Doh. I meant --qg-size. Fine grain adaptive quantization.
--qg-size <64|32|16> (http://x265.readthedocs.org/en/default/cli.html?highlight=#cmdoption--qg-size)
Enable adaptive quantization for sub-CTUs. This parameter specifies the minimum CU size at which QP can be adjusted, ie. Quantization Group size. Allowed range of values are 64, 32, 16 provided this falls within the inclusive range [maxCUSize, minCUSize]. Experimental. Default: same as maxCUSize

I've been having good success lately with the combination of:

--qg-size 32 --aq-mode 2 --aq-strength 2.0

Although I've mainly be doing 10-bit lately, and nothing from Blu-ray rips or other interframe compressed sources.

[Morte66]

A bit late to the party, but for what it's worth...

I'd just weed out material and remux to mkv, using MkvMergeGUI. Mount the ISO, open it in explorer, find the biggest .m2ts file in \BDMV\Stream, drag and drop that to MkvMergeGUI and uncheck any audio streams you don't want.

I wouldn't re-encode unless you want to do AviSynth work on the video (e.g. grain removal), and need to store the result. But good Avisynth processing makes video encoders look fast...

[stax76]

A bit late to the party, but for what it's worth...

I'd just weed out material and remux to mkv, using MkvMergeGUI. Mount the ISO, open it in explorer, find the biggest .m2ts file in \BDMV\Stream, drag and drop that to MkvMergeGUI and uncheck any audio streams you don't want.

I wouldn't re-encode unless you want to do AviSynth work on the video (e.g. grain removal), and need to store the result. But good Avisynth processing makes video encoders look fast...

Do you get the languages set this way? Why not use MakeMKV instead?

[Lyris]

If quality is your goal, don't recompress *at all*.

[SuLyMaN]

If I have the original Blue Ray as OP states(which I can enjoy when I want), I'd go for a lower quality/setting and just save my HDD space. This can be used by family or anyone to stream and watch while saving my HDD space AND having the original disc to play WHEN I need to. The 1 -2 times you play the disc will unlikely render it unreadable.

[Ghitulescu]

If I have the original Blue Ray as OP states(which I can enjoy when I want), I'd go for a lower quality/setting and just save my HDD space. This can be used by family or anyone to stream and watch while saving my HDD space AND having the original disc to play WHEN I need to. The 1 -2 times you play the disc will unlikely render it unreadable.

I have a solution that will need 0MB of your HDD space. And of course 0 hours of your time.
Don't rip it at all. You can simply play back the DVDs/BDs whenever you like.

[Blinky7]

just to update this thread, I decided to convert them all with MakeMKV and skip encoding, only keeping the main movie, the english HD audio and all the subs.

The only thing I don't understand is why people convert the HD audio to flac. Except for the very few movies that are LPCM, the gains in data size are negligible and you can never reconstruct it in bluray form to play in a desktop player. Not to mention I got an HD audio capable AV receiver so I prefer to bitstream the original audio...

[smegolas]

The only thing I don't understand is why people convert the HD audio to flac. Except for the very few movies that are LPCM, the gains in data size are negligible and you can never reconstruct it in bluray form to play in a desktop player. Not to mention I got an HD audio capable AV receiver so I prefer to bitstream the original audio...

I specifically said consider converting to FLAC if the only high quality audio track on the disc is PCM. There is no reason to do it otherwise.

[Ghitulescu]

just to update this thread, I decided to convert them all with MakeMKV and skip encoding, only keeping the main movie, the english HD audio and all the subs.

The only thing I don't understand is why people convert the HD audio to flac. Except for the very few movies that are LPCM, the gains in data size are negligible and you can never reconstruct it in bluray form to play in a desktop player. Not to mention I got an HD audio capable AV receiver so I prefer to bitstream the original audio...

IMHO it's a very wise decision. Keeping the chaptering may be also a good idea.

[Blinky7]

I specifically said consider converting to FLAC if the only high quality audio track on the disc is PCM. There is no reason to do it otherwise.

I was not quoting you, I just saw in hdbits.org they have this rule as far as remuxes go that you MUST convert audio to flac, and it seemed stupid to me, that's all...

[netsky123]

The only thing I don't understand is why people convert the HD audio to flac. Except for the very few movies that are LPCM, the gains in data size are negligible and you can never reconstruct it in bluray form to play in a desktop player. Not to mention I got an HD audio capable AV receiver so I prefer to bitstream the original audio...

Because FLAC have better compression ratio than DTS-HD or TrueHD，and it's lossless.

[benwaggoner]

Because FLAC have better compression ratio than DTS-HD or TrueHD，and it's lossless.


How much better? Not surprising as the BD's TrueHD requires a DD+ fallback stream., and DTS lossless is basically a diff from the DTS core.

A TrueHD stripped of the DD+ fallback would be smaller, but I don't have data of how it would compare to FLAC.

Of course, lossless audio is placebo anyway. Dolby Atmos provides a better experience than 7.1 24-bit 96 KHz lossless at just 384 Kbps with a compatible, calibrated reciever.


-Ben Waggoner (via TapaTalk)

[ndjamena]

Until recently there were no decent legitimate DTS-HD decoders available without buying a receiver to pass it through.

That was the whole point of MakeMKV adding audio encoding abilities in the first place.

-edit- I started using flac so my DLNA software could transcode from the lossless source to whatever was needed.

http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9310

[netsky123]

How much better? Not surprising as the BD's TrueHD requires a DD+ fallback stream., and DTS lossless is basically a diff from the DTS core.

A TrueHD stripped of the DD+ fallback would be smaller, but I don't have data of how it would compare to FLAC.

Of course, lossless audio is placebo anyway. Dolby Atmos provides a better experience than 7.1 24-bit 96 KHz lossless at just 384 Kbps with a compatible, calibrated reciever.


-Ben Waggoner (via TapaTalk)

Well,here is a sample,a 24bit 48khz 7.1 audio track comes from The Hobbit 3:
DTS MA 4.76GB
FLAC 4.14GB
~13% smaller.

[benwaggoner]

Well,here is a sample,a 24bit 48khz 7.1 audio track comes from The Hobbit 3:
DTS MA 4.76GB
FLAC 4.14GB
~13% smaller.
Not bad. And not surprising given the overhead of the DTS Core + diff approach.

Still, totally placebo. But placebos do make some people feel better, by definition :).

Particularly 24-bit. Because 16-bit was only 1/256th of perceptually lossless dynamic range..?

[blublub]

Hi

I again have a couple if blurays to encode.

I used to do encodes with CRF 17 under x264 which were satisfyingly good enough for me in terms of quality - sizes between 10-20gb per movie depending in length and material.

Is x265 good enough to make the switch now? Encoding time isn't that of an issue.
From the file sizes it looks attractive, 13-14gb with x264 and crf 17 vs 9,6 with crf 19 and x265


I am asking because I have read that x265 looses on detail in most film content on usual bluray movies in high bitrates - is that still the case?

Thx

[~ VEGETA ~]

Use x264 10-bit for now. like x264-10bit.exe --preset slower --crf 16 --aq-mode 3 --aq-strength 0.8 --bframes 10 --ref 10 --psy-rd 0.8 << this is typically good choices for nearly all sources by using x264 tmod which is the best now. You should alter the settings for each source but these are "generally" fine.

I didn't use HEVC yet but I guess x264 10-bit is still better than it.

[blublub]

Use x264 10-bit for now. like x264-10bit.exe --preset slower --crf 16 --aq-mode 3 --aq-strength 0.8 --bframes 10 --ref 10 --psy-rd 0.8 << this is typically good choices for nearly all sources by using x264 tmod which is the best now. You should alter the settings for each source but these are "generally" fine.

I didn't use HEVC yet but I guess x264 10-bit is still better than it.

Phew bummer :-(

My testfile is 22GB vs 11 with CRF17 in x264 and x265 - original file is 24GB, so x264 it's not really helping here (preset was slow)

Is there any GUI that uses this x264 tmod version?

[foxyshadis]

blublub, if time is no object, give x265 a whirl. If you've read this thread, you know that it's mostly film grain that softens up under x265 compared to x264, but if you accept that, especially if you prefer to remove some yourself before encoding, then you can absolutely save quite a bit of bitrate. If you absolutely must have all the grain, you should stick to x264, because while x265 can be tweaked to match it, you get zero size benefit. The only reason to use x265 in that case is for future-proof 10-bit encoding; aside from that, you'll waste time for no reason.

Use x264 10-bit for now. like x264-10bit.exe --preset slower --crf 16 --aq-mode 3 --aq-strength 0.8 --bframes 10 --ref 10 --psy-rd 0.8 << this is typically good choices for nearly all sources by using x264 tmod which is the best now. You should alter the settings for each source but these are "generally" fine.

I didn't use HEVC yet but I guess x264 10-bit is still better than it.

You should never recommend x264 10-bit without knowing the use case. No hardware player will ever be able to play it, and if that's ever needed, they have to re-encode all over again.

[blublub]

blublub, if time is no object, give x265 a whirl. If you've read this thread, you know that it's mostly film grain that softens up under x265 compared to x264, but if you accept that, especially if you prefer to remove some yourself before encoding, then you can absolutely save quite a bit of bitrate. If you absolutely must have all the grain, you should stick to x264, because while x265 can be tweaked to match it, you get zero size benefit. The only reason to use x265 in that case is for future-proof 10-bit encoding; aside from that, you'll waste time for no reason.
.



Yep I read the thread and parts of another where the grain/film option was discussed for x265 - and that scared me because after a quick check my x265 encoding looked very good and had quite some grain retained - with a reduction of file size around 40%! - which is kinda contra dictionary to what the guys around here say!


As for quality - I do not need to retain all the grain, I am fine with loosing some.
My goal is to get a decent encode where it should for a normal eye not be possible to see a difference/artifacts and the encode should look "transparent" on screens up to 75".

Because of that goal I settled at CRF 17 or 18 with x264 and 19 or 20 for testing x265 which gave me the mentioned results (is that equivalent to my x264 setting or should I move to 18?)

In my experience even x264 struggles with grainy content in setting slow (the one I mostly used) ending up in file sizes posted above - just short of original, so no real point to waste 4h of encoding time to save 2GB of HD space - in those cases its better to just make a stream copy and get rid of audio tracks I don't need.

So Encoding time is a relative issue: the relation of encoding time, quality and file size has somehow to match each other. With x265 I settled with 9-10fps on the preset "faster" which is 4-6h per encoded movie.


So I am really torn between x264 and x265

[~ VEGETA ~]

Phew bummer :-(

My testfile is 22GB vs 11 with CRF17 in x264 and x265 - original file is 24GB, so x264 it's not really helping here (preset was slow)

Is there any GUI that uses this x264 tmod version?

you got 22gb out of 24 gb by using x264 10-bit? you are doing it wrong for sure, regardless of the settings... you must get way more smaller file than 22gb. you have to try.

Still using a GUI? maybe that is why you don't know a bit about encoding settings. you have to read encoding settings and try them, you will surely get a smaller size with good quality.

putting only crf and preset is not enough. just read the commands.


You should never recommend x264 10-bit without knowing the use case. No hardware player will ever be able to play it, and if that's ever needed, they have to re-encode all over again.

you are right, but I assumed it is for watching using pc via software codecs like CCCP. If someone wants to target certain hardware, he has to say it clearly right? otherwise it is for pc xD.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Use x264 10-bit for now...If you intend to play your encodes using a hardware playback device (such as a Blu-ray player or TV with mkv file playback support), then it may be worth pointing out that very few (if any) support 10-bit encodes ;)

[~ VEGETA ~]

If you intend to play your encodes using a hardware playback device (such as a Blu-ray player or TV with mkv file playback support), then it may be worth pointing out that very few (if any) support 10-bit encodes ;)

my post was for playing it on the pc. He didn't say he targets hardware players.... if he needs it, he must clarify it.

thanks

[Sharc]

.... if he needs it, he must clarify it.
Either he clarifies it or we warn him as he might not have thought of this pitfall ;)

[~ VEGETA ~]

Either he clarifies it or we warn him as he might not have thought of this pitfall ;)

well, you are correct. I will take that into consideration in the future.

[vrpatilisl]

hi
better to use "makemkv" and discard unnecessary trailers and extras. And you get single mkv file with all bell and whistle from original BD