Rip Blu-Ray Quality vs Space/Bandwidth

[consultant]

I am backing up my Blu-Ray collection and am interested to hear from seasoned veterans with experience.

My main reason for backup is minimizing wear and tear on the discs caused by my kids and giving the kids an easy way to watch movies multiple times. I've watched 1080P and 720P sources and determined for my needs 720P resolution is adequate.

Regarding the video transcoding, I first have a total newbie side question. How is it people are getting 1080p movies on DVD9 media? What is the average size of a 1080p movie? 20GB? So is the way people achieve this is to re-encode in the same 1080p resolution but at a higher compression rate thereby introducing more artifacts?

I have a 1080P display. In general will I be better off resizing to 720p with a very high-quality encode (low compression) such as a cRF of 18, or, retaining the 1080p resolution and just re-encoding with a higher cRF? While I don't plan to burn and DVDs, I may occasionally want to do so, so my aim would be to rip the main movie so it fits on DVD9 if necessary. That sort of spawns another question. To insure it fits on DVD9, I would need to lock the filesize, in that case cRF becomes irrelevant doesn't it? So maybe the question is really, which is better, locking size to fit DVD and resizing to 720P or leaving at 1080P. Which produces better results?

[nurbs]

If you are going for DVD9 you are probably better off keeping the resolution at 1080p. It's a good idea to do a 2 pass encode since with crf you can't guarantee that you won't overshoot the target size or end up with a small file and have lots of space left. You should look at BDRebuilder for the reencoding.

[setarip_old]

@consultant So is the way people achieve this is to re-encode in the same 1080p resolution but at a higher compression rate thereby introducing more artifacts?No - Thanks to the phenomenal capability of x264 (an integral component of virtually all BluRay conversion/compression programs you'll find here at the Doom9 Forums), with a little practice you'll be hardpressed to distinguish between the video of your original, purchased BluRay disc and the DVD9 version created with "BD-Rebuilder" or one of the several other programs that deal with BluRay compression...

[Dark Shikari]

And also note that most Blu-ray disks use far more bitrate than is necessary for reasonable quality HD, not merely due to bad encoders, but also just because there's really nothing better to do with 50 gigs of Blu-ray disk.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Well stated.

BD Rebuilder is an excellent place to start.

Note that you'll probably want to purchase a copy of Slysoft's excellent AnyDVD HD, which is roughly $129 last I checked. This will transparently handle full decryption of the BluRay disc, so it will appear totally unencrypted to your operating system. This is a fantastic tool. There are some other free ways to do this, but they aren't fully compatible with all BluRay discs. This is money very well spent!

Indeed when targeting DVD9 bitrates, 1080p should be quite doable. You should use 2 pass in this case, since you do have a specific target file size. x264 is the only way to go!! For audio, I'd suggest using Nero's excellent AAC codec which can be transparent to HD audio sources at 300-600kbps.

If you want the disc to be compatible with standalone BluRay players, you should look into creating an "AVCHD" disc or a "BD9" disc. Both are these are essentially a BluRay file structure with reduced bitrates, stored on a DVD9 disc.

If you just plant to play the movie on a PC (or one of those whiz-bang media extenders like the WD TV), then you can simply create an MP4 or MKV file with any of the popular encoding tools. In this case, I suggest using CRF encoding mode, which only requires a single pass and while it can't hit a given file-size, it will ensure consistent quality and managable file sizes, provided you use an appropriate CRF number that makes your eyes happy.

In either case, you will be quite surprised just how well a good video encoder like x264 can do at DVD bitrates for 1080p ;)

~MiSfit