Easier and cheaper to buy additional storage. Re-encoding the videos will take hours for each video especially at the higher quality levels.

20tb drives go on sale all the time and easily hold over 200 rips each.

And it depends - if you're watching on a SDTV you can probably crunch them down to a dvd or less. If you're watching on a 100" projector you probably can't reduce them at all.

 

Easier and cheaper to buy additional storage. Re-encoding the videos will take hours for each video especially at the higher quality levels.

20tb drives go on sale all the time and easily hold over 200 rips each.

And it depends - if you're watching on a SDTV you can probably crunch them down to a dvd or less. If you're watching on a 100" projector you probably can't reduce them at all.

I don't need to re-encode necessarily but can change my practice going forward which would have a big benefit. And I don't mind if my server re-encodes all day because I don't use the PC otherwise.

 

4K video is already compromised by compression... What's the point in investing in quality gear and 4K discs if you're just going to reduce them to streaming quality. Big hard drives aren't that expensive...I have 56 TB of storage space at the moment, with full quality rips of well over 600 movies plus TV shows and music.

 

This is exactly why I abandoned my original strategy of compressing rips. I’d rather spend a little more money on storage and have the peace of mind of not making my experience worse than playing the disc.

 

It doesn't work that way, there is no direct correlation between a specific number (or range) and quality or results. Different scenes and sources react differently to different settings and bitrate is just one of them. Storage is cheap.

 

Ok that's fine but let's assume a fairly stringent scene? And yes there are several variables but if we know the resolution and codec then the bitrate is by far the most important remaining factor.

And storage is not THAT cheap. If 1TB is 10 movies that's like 2$ per movie. If you've got hundreds of movies and you want to backup your storage solution you're going to be spending a decent amount of change.

 

Lossless is something far, far larger than any video file you've ever seen...

 

Yes I'm not looking to store lossless, I'm looking to compare.

 

Your not going to get an answer to this as there is no answer as it is subjective, depends on your content, depends on your display device, depends on the scene, depends on your encoder, depends on your codec, depends on the settings you chose, etc etc etc. Unless you are a professional with the skills to really optimize and encode for the type of content and the scenes, you are not going to an optimal job. You can do automated encoding with handbrake and create images you might be fine with as you aren't watching side by side so you won't know the difference. But you will know that you have reduce quality, just not how it manifests. Then, if there is a new encoder and/or new code, maybe you need to re-rip the original and reencode as it is better...
If you actually care about the best quality, get some HDD's, rip it and leave the video and audio track you want untouched. If you don't, just download some blu-ray encode or streaming DL that someone else already did and call it a day.

 

Just because it is challenging does not mean there is no reasonable answer. Every discipline has cost benefit analyses. We don't know the optimal dosage for a med but we figure it out. We can't estimate the exact wear on a stainless washer but we can guess. We don't know how many flavours of pepsi are optimal to maximize sales, but we can try to answer it.

I know 5mbps is not enough and I know 100mbps is plenty. There is a number that is lower than 100 that is indistinguishable from 100 in even the most challenging scenarios. I just want to find out how low we can go. If it hasn't been tested that's one thing, but it's another to say that it is an impossible question.

 

Pick a really large action movie and do a full rip in 4K. Then use Handbrake and rip it a the default setting and a few other settings. Watch the content. That's about the only way you're going to do it.

I used Handbrake to reduce the file size of all my Extras and Special Features content and it tied up my laptop for an obscene amount of time. I did free up almost 2TB doing that, but that was 360 movies and a lot of TV shows like Game of Thrones, etc. But I don't really care about the quality of that content.

There's no way I'd want to go that process again for the actual movie collection. Good luck if you want to go down that path, but there should be a point where you value your time over saving a few hundred $ on HDD purchases.

 

Yes but moving forward it will literally take no time. It is just a preset that I chose. I will do a lot of ripping and downloading in my lifetime! And yeah I will try this on my own I guess. I was hoping someone else had already tested it comprehensively in a stringent scenario. If you have any suggestions for particular movies or scenes that are quite demanding I'm all ears.

 

Remember also that if you’re planning on keeping this movie archive long term, your display equipment will likely evolve and improve, and what you may consider to be acceptable quality now might become unacceptable next year or five years from now.

Do you really want to do this over again? Is it really a good idea vs slapping another 20TB in every year or two?

 

My point is exactly that. Is there a bitrate at 4k that is indistinguishable from the real deal in the most stringent scenarios?

 

Uncompressed: the bare minimum is 6Gb/s for 4k 30fps
Hdmi 1.3 / 1.4. Just about 1TB for a 2hour movie
A bluray (today) is max 100G

Don't know what the next compression codec will do but its going really fast.
I see movies of 20G wich are watchable. But not as crisp as bluray.
I hope the next bluray version will increase PQ with the new compression codecs.

 

Most of my rips are x265/HEVC but they're still 50-100gb so take up a lot of space. I'm tempted to drop the bitrates a bit to reduce file sizes but I'm concerned about video quality.

I hear ya'. Storage is not that cheap. Lot's of storage still costs a pretty penny. I've been doing this a while so I've accumulated over the years. Presently I have (10) 8TB HDD's and an SSD housed locally inside my HTPC. I usually purchase new old stock because gig for gig, smaller than state-of-the-art is much less expensive and I look for the deals. As my storage demands grow larger, I retire the older smaller HDD's to backup storage in 8-bay enclosures. That consists of 1TB drives through 5TB drives - 40 of them equaling the local 80TB's . I don't care for RAID, NAS, or any other unnecessary baloney. Sacrificing a couple of the largest drives for these things to run is not in my best interest. JBOD is fine. However, I do use Windows Storage Spaces for pools of the smallest drives simply to save drive letters. Should a drive ever fail while in use, (and in 25yrs or so hasn't) I can simply replace the drive and retransfer the pool at about 150MB/s which is probably quicker or as fast as rebuilding a RAID array that also lost a drive.

As for saving space using lesser bitrate. Why not? Bitrate isn't everything. I used to think it was until I did real world comparisons. Consider x264 vs x265. These days, video can be drastically improved with the bitrate cut in half which in turn reduces the file size dramatically as well. It's called Ai enhancing (I suggest RIFE algorithm). Add some 60fps instead of 23.976 to enhance motion better (knowing full well 23.976 wasn't bad) and viola... you have just saved yourself storage space while increasing video quality better than the original studio processed disc. Did I mention you can also add Dolby Vision with further processing using DaVinci although personally this doesn't interest me.

Forget all the white paper science, the measuring meters, corporate greed propaganda, the mob mentality, etc. Just use your own eyes. Pixel peep if you desire. A really quick test - pause a frame on any popular mainstream retail disc. SDR, HDR, older title, newer title, it doesn't matter. Compare the same frame to an Ai enhanced frame. Yep, all the noise and any type of unwanted grain and artifacting is... GONE. And 60Hz instead of 23... more frames per second - more information - fluid unmatched motion provided your display is up to par and many are. I think Ai used for wholesome purposes is incredible.

Here's a comparison of 2160p UHD ATMOS RIP's from the same source. A 1:1 from the disc iso and the Ai enhanced mkv. Notice 44GB at 109 Mb/s vs 34.6GB at 40.6 Mb/s.

General
ID                                       : 0 (0x0)
Complete name                            : M:\BDMV\STREAM\00003.m2ts
CompleteName_Last                        : M:\BDMV\STREAM\00091.m2ts
Format                                   : BDAV
Format/Info                              : Blu-ray Video
File size                                : 44.0 GiB
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Maximum Overall bit rate                 : 109 Mb/s
Frame rate                               : 23.976 FPS

Video
ID                                       : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5.1@High
HDR format                               : SMPTE ST 2086, HDR10 compatible
Codec ID                                 : 36
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0 (Type 2)
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Writing library                          : ATEME Titan File 3.8.3 (4.8.3.0)      
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics                 : PQ
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries        : Display P3
Mastering display luminance              : min: 0.0050 cd/m2, max: 1000 cd/m2

Audio #1
ID                                       : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : MLP FBA AC-3 16-ch
Format/Info                              : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA with 16-channel presentation
Commercial name                          : Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos
Muxing mode                              : Stream extension
Codec ID                                 : 131
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 640 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 9 858 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 8 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs Lb Rb
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Delay relative to video                  : -1 ms
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Number of dynamic objects                : 13
Bed channel count                        : 1 channel
Bed channel configuration                : LFE

General
Unique ID                                :
Complete name                            :
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 34.6 GiB
Duration                                 : 2 h 2 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 40.6 Mb/s
Frame rate                               : 59.940 FPS
Movie name                               :
Encoded date                             : 2024-07-04 07:08:36 UTC
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v85.0 ('Shame For You') 64-bit
Writing library                          : libebml v1.4.5 + libmatroska v1.7.1 / Lavf61.3.103
VIDEOAI                                  : Enhanced using amq-13

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5.1@Main
HDR format                               : Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, Profile 8.1, dvhe.08.08, BL+RPU, no metadata compression, HDR10 compatible / SMPTE ST 2086, Version HDR10, HDR10 compatible / SMPTE ST 2094 App 4, Version HDR10+ Profile A, HDR10+ Profile A compatible
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration                                 : 2 h 2 min
Bit rate                                 : 25.5 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 1 600 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 2.40:1
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
Original frame rate                      : 59.524 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.069
Stream size                              : 21.7 GiB (63%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics                 : PQ
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries        : Display P3
Mastering display luminance              : min: 0.0001 cd/m2, max: 1000 cd/m2
Maximum Content Light Level              : 1030
Maximum Frame-Average Light Level        : 146

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
ID in the original source medium         : 4352 (0x1100)
Format                                   : MLP FBA 16-ch
Format/Info                              : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA with 16-channel presentation
Commercial name                          : Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos
Codec ID                                 : A_TRUEHD
Duration                                 : 2 h 2 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 5 713 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 9 858 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 8 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs Lb Rb
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 1 200.000 FPS (40 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 4.87 GiB (14%)
Title                                    : TrueHD 7.1 Atmos
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray
Number of dynamic objects                : 13
Bed channel count                        : 1 channel
Bed channel configuration                : LFE

 

I hear ya'. Storage is not that cheap. Lot's of storage still costs a pretty penny. I've been doing this a while so I've accumulated over the years. Presently I have (10) 8TB HDD's and an SSD housed locally inside my HTPC. I usually purchase new old stock because gig for gig, smaller than state-of-the-art is much less expensive and I look for the deals. As my storage demands grow larger, I retire the older smaller HDD's to backup storage in 8-bay enclosures. That consists of 1TB drives through 5TB drives - 40 of them equaling the local 80TB's . I don't care for RAID, NAS, or any other unnecessary baloney. Sacrificing a couple of the largest drives for these things to run is not in my best interest. JBOD is fine. However, I do use Windows Storage Spaces for pools of the smallest drives simply to save drive letters. Should a drive ever fail while in use, (and in 25yrs or so hasn't) I can simply replace the drive and retransfer the pool at about 150MB/s which is probably quicker or as fast as rebuilding a RAID array that also lost a drive.

As for saving space using lesser bitrate. Why not? Bitrate isn't everything. I used to think it was until I did real world comparisons. Consider x264 vs x265. These days, video can be drastically improved with the bitrate cut in half which in turn reduces the file size dramatically as well. It's called Ai enhancing (I suggest RIFE algorithm). Add some 60fps instead of 23.976 to enhance motion better (knowing full well 23.976 wasn't bad) and viola... you have just saved yourself storage space while increasing video quality better than the original studio processed disc. Did I mention you can also add Dolby Vision with further processing using DaVinci although personally this doesn't interest me.

Forget all the white paper science, the measuring meters, corporate greed propaganda, the mob mentality, etc. Just use your own eyes. Pixel peep if you desire. A really quick test - pause a frame on any popular mainstream retail disc. SDR, HDR, older title, newer title, it doesn't matter. Compare the same frame to an Ai enhanced frame. Yep, all the noise and any type of unwanted grain and artifacting is... GONE. And 60Hz instead of 23... more frames per second - more information - fluid unmatched motion provided your display is up to par and many are. I think Ai used for wholesome purposes is incredible.

Here's a comparison of 2160p UHD ATMOS RIP's from the same source. A 1:1 from the disc iso and the Ai enhanced mkv. Notice 44GB at 109 Mb/s vs 34.6GB at 40.6 Mb/s.

General
ID                                       : 0 (0x0)
Complete name                            : M:\BDMV\STREAM\00003.m2ts
CompleteName_Last                        : M:\BDMV\STREAM\00091.m2ts
Format                                   : BDAV
Format/Info                              : Blu-ray Video
File size                                : 44.0 GiB
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Maximum Overall bit rate                 : 109 Mb/s
Frame rate                               : 23.976 FPS

Video
ID                                       : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5.1@High
HDR format                               : SMPTE ST 2086, HDR10 compatible
Codec ID                                 : 36
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0 (Type 2)
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Writing library                          : ATEME Titan File 3.8.3 (4.8.3.0)     
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics                 : PQ
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries        : Display P3
Mastering display luminance              : min: 0.0050 cd/m2, max: 1000 cd/m2

Audio #1
ID                                       : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : MLP FBA AC-3 16-ch
Format/Info                              : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA with 16-channel presentation
Commercial name                          : Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos
Muxing mode                              : Stream extension
Codec ID                                 : 131
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 640 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 9 858 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 8 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs Lb Rb
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Delay relative to video                  : -1 ms
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Number of dynamic objects                : 13
Bed channel count                        : 1 channel
Bed channel configuration                : LFE

General
Unique ID                                :
Complete name                            :
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 34.6 GiB
Duration                                 : 2 h 2 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 40.6 Mb/s
Frame rate                               : 59.940 FPS
Movie name                               :
Encoded date                             : 2024-07-04 07:08:36 UTC
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v85.0 ('Shame For You') 64-bit
Writing library                          : libebml v1.4.5 + libmatroska v1.7.1 / Lavf61.3.103
VIDEOAI                                  : Enhanced using amq-13

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5.1@Main
HDR format                               : Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, Profile 8.1, dvhe.08.08, BL+RPU, no metadata compression, HDR10 compatible / SMPTE ST 2086, Version HDR10, HDR10 compatible / SMPTE ST 2094 App 4, Version HDR10+ Profile A, HDR10+ Profile A compatible
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration                                 : 2 h 2 min
Bit rate                                 : 25.5 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 1 600 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 2.40:1
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
Original frame rate                      : 59.524 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.069
Stream size                              : 21.7 GiB (63%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics                 : PQ
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries        : Display P3
Mastering display luminance              : min: 0.0001 cd/m2, max: 1000 cd/m2
Maximum Content Light Level              : 1030
Maximum Frame-Average Light Level        : 146

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
ID in the original source medium         : 4352 (0x1100)
Format                                   : MLP FBA 16-ch
Format/Info                              : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA with 16-channel presentation
Commercial name                          : Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos
Codec ID                                 : A_TRUEHD
Duration                                 : 2 h 2 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 5 713 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 9 858 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 8 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs Lb Rb
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 1 200.000 FPS (40 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 4.87 GiB (14%)
Title                                    : TrueHD 7.1 Atmos
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray
Number of dynamic objects                : 13
Bed channel count                        : 1 channel
Bed channel configuration                : LFE

Interesting. Do you have actual videos I could use to compare? So just so I understand, you've been ripping blurays/downloading movies and using AI enhancements?

 

Changing the frame rate and removing grain is an entirely different rabbit hole.

 

Do people usually re-rip files to add frames, or do they interpolate frames on the fly? I wouldn't mind doing the later sometimes for anime.

 

I don't, but that's because I like watching movies in 24fps.

 

Also, remember that disc bit rates are variable, depending on the complexity of the scene. The bit rate reported by tools like MediaInfo are average bit rates.

 

It also depends how you're gonna watch it. If you're watching it on a 19" SDTV then 5Mbps is plenty. If you're watching on a 100"+ screen, then re-encoding even at the same bitrate will lower the quality. Remember every time you re-encode you will lose quality.

If you can stand Netflix, their bitrates are around 18Mbps. Maybe you have a 42" screen, that would be acceptable.

It really depends how you're going to view the content.

 

This entire thread is nonsense...you can't just apply a blanket third-party compression rate to a movie without loss of picture quality. The picture quality on disc is already compromised from the scan. Period. End of story. The bit rate on disc varies by scene, due to how much data is needed to maintain the desired quality in that particular scene - applying a universal lowered rate to every scene is going to produce compression artifacts in scenes that require more data. Like I and others have already said, storage space is cheap (a 20TB drive holds about 300 4K movies), which currently comes to about $1.20 per movie. What's the point of buying quality gear and feeding it lower quality sources? Just rip 1080p Blu-Rays if you want to save space, at least you won't be adding 3rd party universal compression to the content.

Or just compress your 4K content and stop trying to get people here to tell you it will be OK.

 

Exactly