Posted on 02/28/2023 1:47:47 AM PST by CptnObvious
Handbrake has been the best hobby for this old geezer for many many years. At over 2200 videos and 1.5 Terra Bytes of data and growing, the hobby continues to amaze me.
First of all, it's been cheap. You would think I would have used top of the line gaming computers - not at all. Our of 4 computers I use, 2 are used at $200 for one and a bit over $300 for the second. My third was a old used HP G4 deskpro for $400 and wait for it, the fourth I bought new, for $700 - my pride and joy - my Beelink AMD GTR5 mini.
And you would think I would have maxed out main memory in all of these and overclocked it. Tried that on one - no help. And storage, the Beelink and HP came with NVMe storage. You would think that would speed things up a bit - again, very little help.
So, if more faster memory and storage didn't help (much) what did? CORES. The number of cores makes a big difference. The GTR5 has 8 cores (16 logical), The HP 6/12. The Acer laptop 4/8 and my Dell laptop 2/4.
And when I'm on a big project like today, I use all of the computers at the same time with Windows 11 shared folders. Yeah, folders for the raw data (from MakeMKV in this case) to a shared output folder.
My project for the day is to process Downton HD Blu-rays into best compressed high quality videos. Oh and the Bluray drives (4k capable) were cheap too (another story).
Now, if I was doing 4k, I wouldn't be doing it over Wi-Fi, but I'm not. And knowing that Handbrakes multiple handlers does not help (even though the input is SSD), I'm doing one HD episode at a time on each system.
Downton is 8 Blu Rays, about 48 episodes. So, dividing by 40 (16+12+8+4) logical cores, that's a 1.2 load over each logical core. So, the load ratio so the AMD will get 48% or 23 (used 24 episodes) and so forth to spread out the workload.
I Throttlestop the Laptops as laptops power and termally limit badly. On the AMD and HP systems, I have the Preformance Boost (Overclocking) OFF as I can't Throttlestop them. Why, you might ask, well these are all gaming computers, and they don't do well with these long term loads. Another reason, I didn't go with expensive systems.
At the time of this writing, all systems logical cores are at 98-99% utilization. The frame rate on the AMD system averages around 48FPS and the others are lower as expected.
I go back to bed while my 4 friends do the work.
And I wonder, will there come a day when I will be processing 4k Episodes? Golly, will I need a 48 core like systemx to do it? Will Handbrake spread the load over that many cores?
Well, those are questions for another day.
Happy Handbraking.
PS: And if your wondering how I handle subtitles, my answer to that is EMBY (free).
CO
I was just thinking that just a few short decades ago that entire post would not make any sense
I’ve used Handbrake mainly at my main gig I retired from. Got to use it more at home though. Been using DVD shrink and uploading the .vobs to my NAS using a DVD player with built in media server capabilities.
Everything is already digital and online.
What is it you use this for?
Just curious
Thanks
I did not understand all the technical jargon you used, but I have over 1000 DVDs I want to put on NAS and be able to stream anywhere. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
We did just that. About 1,200 DVDs to a server. I use cucusoft to rip the DVDs to files. Ripping Blu-ray was harder and the software expired and is not produced anymore
Here’s the thing, we tried using Plex as the server for hosting playback of all those files, but it never worked well. Plex is very interesting software as goes online and gets trailers and movie information, but it always had problems, and playback was frustrating. (I’m an engineer, so this is my world, yet, there was little I could do about the frustrations.)
So, we went back to just having the discs in several cabinets. It is kind of fun to say to her to pick a cabinet number, a shelf number and a disc number, and just watch whatever it is. We *think* we remember the movie, and it usually turns out we don’t. It’s like watching them for the first time sometimes. Ironically, she’s an Alzheimer’s expert, so this memory thing is interesting to her.
I use VLC to convert CDs to wav or mp3 files. It’s also good at retrieving audio from DVDs. Free download. Not sure if that will work for you.
Well, I’m not a gamer and speed of processing video has never been a priority for me.
Have been a Ham Op for 45 year, Old Hams were Cheap. Built my first PC from TRS-80 parts in 1982.
I’m 75 and still pretty up to date on how things work, but I most respect good clean design and simplicity.
Am not a programmer.
I’ve never bought a computer that was new. Have built some from scratch with new parts.
Ran almost every platform you can imagine (if you are old enough, smile.)
Started with NewDOS80, ran all MSDOS releases and all Windows releases up to Windows 11. In 1994 I installed my first Linux distribution.
For 5-1/2 years toward the end of my business career I ran a catalog department for one of 2 wholesale hardware distribution companies I worked for. Had a really large desk, was the owner of the company’s desk at some point before I got it. On one side of the desk was a Windows computer, opposite side I had a Redhat Linux computer and directly across the hall was the IT Department. I had more access to the system resources than anyone in the company except the IT Department.
Spent my days dragging flat file data from the AS400 onto my windows desktop machine and poking it into Excel (I remember when I used Lotus) and then with the help of ASAP Utilities I prepped the data for import into Quark. The process was a total hack, no body in the company knew how it was done except me. At early stage of that position a young guy had the job, he was a good graphics person, he liked fast computers, I was more efficiency oriented.
On the 2nd try, I got us off of the custom built catalog prep software to put the data into Quark. The first database driven system was like playing a horrible on line game. Ounce you got the data into Quark, it could not be edited without destroying the work. Sucked. I found a programmer who wrote an import script that was lightning fast (it was text you were working with, but imported the image blocks too. Cannot remember whether it was Xscipt or Xdata that I used at the time.
We had 47,000 items in the catalog, 3,000 pages plus indexes and insert pages. It was like watching magic as I imported the processed Xcel file into Quark. I composed all the Catalog, a monthly promotion, 5 seasonal promotions that were hundreds of pages.
When I took us to our first online catalog it was another huge project. We did not have an image for every item. (sizes and colors etc were listed in column for below a single image) I found a way to open the catalog .pdf and extract data from the previous catalog section printing and then extended the images to the item level. The IT staff took care of the database work in the AS400, but I sized and formatted the images on a PC. I used Image Magic, text based software. I started a script running at 5:30 when we shut for the day, and when I came back to work the next morning it had created size transformation and format (.jpg .gif etc) transformation. Can you imagine creating 47,000 thumbnail images and item images in one night? It all worked. One of the biggest projects I ever accomplished.
I extracted data from the opened .pdf files (opened with pdftk) and used Quark to process the sequencing data which I put in a database to finish.
Had to really think hard to remember all that crap. It is funny how old minds work (sometimes).
Dave K.
Re: Plex,
I’ve been using Plex for a couple of years now and have never really had any problems with it. I’m curious what your experience is.
Been using Plex for years. Some stats:
1. NAS QNAP TS-453be, 32 TB of available storage. Currently have 13 TB used for videos, movies and TV shows.
2. A decent Celeron NAS will easily stream 7-10 blu rays transcoding to other resolutions at the same time original format encoded at 1080p H.264. My NAS has done 12 with no issues (Plex Pass a must to enable hardware encoding)
3. I have just over 800 movies, most Blu ray quality and over 2000 TV episodes using almost 13 TB of storage.
4. Plex work well for subtitles as long as they are not image formatted, use .srt and preferably for forced captions just burn in the text when you rip the video.
5. Handbrake is the best and free but can be hard to learn, there are several pay options that do well and easier, they sometimes can not rip certain encrypted formats, Handbrake with Reddox never fails!
6. Redfox is a must! just look it up, well worth the lifetime cost if you are into this stuff.
Reddox = redfox
I am not sure why you are having problems. I use Plex for family video, Blu Rays, DVDs TV shows, Audio Book and Music rips, been doing it for years.
Never had a problem and I stream close to 20 devices, sometimes 10+ at a time.
Blu Rays are easy to rip and now 4k encryption has been cracked, 4k is harder but can be ripped with a little more preparation now.
My Plex resides on a Raspberry Pi with two external drives connected.
Don't have any issues.
Yep, I have loaded the Plex server on a Cheap Seagate consumer NAS, a Windows PC and a Linux box (My current TS-453be) and ran it on all with no issues.
What brand / model DVD player is that?
I had a nice setup using a WD TV Live Hub but it croaked early last year. I lost the videos stored on the internal drive, but still have a few TB of additional videos.
“I was just thinking that just a few short decades ago that entire post would not make any sense”
I clicked on it thinking it was going to be about cars and drifting or something. I feel so old.
I’ll check up on Redfox.
EMBY is also well setup so you can do streaming across the internet well. I setup a NAT on my Internet Gateway and now a lot of different devices can play MY stuff.
But again, you know about licenses and DVDs etc, RIght. It's only for your families use. Be aware of license issues in the country etc. that you live.
Next, I would setup folders as EMBY recommends and use the file naming convention that they suggest. I've not seen any VIDEO Server service that allows a hierchichal sub folder scheme. But EMBY can filter on UNPLAYED videos so you can put complete box sets into one folder and it then presents you with the next in line instead of having to select it. EMBY can do this for your family members, so my grandaughter can enjoy Road Runner without having to select it from a list.
As for the files themselves. Handbrakes defaults are great except for quality. You will be surprised at how much quality is on those DVDs. We found out by accident when I lowered the Quality number (increases the quality). I know, it seems backwards. The colors and the sharpness increased.
You will want to get rid of the black bars, but we found out that the quality often gets badly diminished. When you take out the black bars, sometimes the density goes down say from 730P to 480P etc. This is most apparent on old BBC DVDs. Try to avoid playing with the black bars (Handbrake gets rid of those top and bottom ones very well.
And lastly, get yourself a USB 3.0 Powered HUB. You're going to want to put at least 4 DVD readers on it to do the work. Two DVD readers to be active at the same time and two to switch over once a DVD is finished. That way you can keep processing without interruptions. You might want to start with just 2 to see how it goes, but you will find the advantages of 4 per system along the way.
I have 12 Readers and you can figure that I eat box sets for breakfast :) Happy Trails, CO
For video storage? I don't watch enough video to nake it worthwhile.
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