Has anybody purchased one and maxed it out? If so how many shows and films did you fit on it and at what general sizes? I currently have a 4tb and haven’t yet filled it but most of my stuff is 720p and I want to upgrade to 1080p versions… so i’ll need more space in future and obviously want to keep building my collection… thanks for any insight.
A couple of folders on my NAS:
400 Blu-ray rips use 11.4 TB. Rips range in size from 10 GB to 65 GB.
880 transcoded movies, sourced from DVDs & Blu-ray, take 3 TB. 45% (400/880) are 1080p, and range in size from 2 GB to 15 GB. Discs ripped w/ MakeMKV and then processed with Handbrake.
Wow. Those are HUGE. I do not have even one video that is within 10% of 65 gb. The largest I have is 4.2 gb.
I guess that full Blu-ray rips might approach that size but I cannot see the difference at that level. But I guess others can.
More than half of my BluRay rips have audio tracks as large, or larger than that!.. Let alone the video track!.. I’m guessing you don’t have a surround sound system?
EDIT: →
And for reference and to stay on topic, I have 10.9 TB of usable storage, which houses…
6.17 TB - 935 Movies
4.15 TB - 227 TV Shows
92 GB - 148 Music Albums
I have ‘this’ - all but C is involved in storage - one way or another
(I and J are WD My Book USB 3.0 Externals - K coming soonish):
5,116 Movies
350 or so TV Shows with God Knows how many epsiodes
Some music - MP3s - meh.
I can get about 40 movies in a empty 85G spot <—that’s hilarious, but you’ll be able to save a lot of space after you reach 60. You simply won’t see the difference (and probably can’t now - if you had a gun in your ear and were asked to ‘Choose Wisely’…lol).
Here are some bulletproof Handbrake Settings - adjust for now - then adjust for later - when later comes:
Those settings above are ‘My Now’ settings and work for me.
They may not work for ‘Whippernappers’, but do try some ‘Previews’ and see for yourself - then adjust as necessary.
I’m into The Breach - for the last time on this show and I absolutely can NOT see the difference in these and the BluRay they came from:
General
Unique ID : 314018783224858073013146757538225758833 (0xEC3DD159756683127E7D71466BC2A271)
Complete name : G:\TV - Sci-Fi\Star Trek Enterprise\Season 01\Star Trek Enterprise - S01E03 - Fight or Flight.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 519 MiB
Duration : 44 min 19 s
Overall bit rate : 1 638 kb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2020-06-29 23:32:31
Writing application : Lavf58.42.100
Writing library : Lavf58.42.100
ErrorDetectionType : Per level 1
Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main@L4@Main
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 44 min 19 s
Bit rate : 1 221 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Variable
Original frame rate : 23.976 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Stream size : 387 MiB (75%)
Writing library : x265 3.2.1+1-b5c86a64bbbe:[Windows][GCC 9.2.0][64 bit] 8bit+10bit+12bit
Encoding settings : cpuid=1064959 / frame-threads=3 / numa-pools=8 / wpp / no-pmode / no-pme / no-psnr / no-ssim / log-level=2 / input-csp=1 / input-res=1920x1080 / interlace=0 / total-frames=0 / level-idc=0 / high-tier=1 / uhd-bd=0 / ref=1 / no-allow-non-conformance / no-repeat-headers / annexb / no-aud / no-hrd / info / hash=0 / no-temporal-layers / open-gop / min-keyint=24 / keyint=240 / gop-lookahead=0 / bframes=3 / b-adapt=0 / b-pyramid / bframe-bias=0 / rc-lookahead=5 / lookahead-slices=6 / scenecut=0 / radl=0 / no-splice / no-intra-refresh / ctu=32 / min-cu-size=16 / no-rect / no-amp / max-tu-size=32 / tu-inter-depth=1 / tu-intra-depth=1 / limit-tu=0 / rdoq-level=0 / dynamic-rd=0.00 / no-ssim-rd / no-signhide / no-tskip / nr-intra=0 / nr-inter=0 / no-constrained-intra / strong-intra-smoothing / max-merge=2 / limit-refs=0 / no-limit-modes / me=0 / subme=0 / merange=57 / temporal-mvp / no-hme / no-weightp / no-weightb / no-analyze-src-pics / deblock=0:0 / no-sao / no-sao-non-deblock / rd=2 / selective-sao=0 / early-skip / rskip / fast-intra / no-tskip-fast / no-cu-lossless / no-b-intra / no-splitrd-skip / rdpenalty=0 / psy-rd=2.00 / psy-rdoq=0.00 / no-rd-refine / no-lossless / cbqpoffs=0 / crqpoffs=0 / rc=abr / bitrate=1250 / qcomp=0.60 / qpstep=4 / stats-write=0 / stats-read=2 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ipratio=1.40 / pbratio=1.30 / aq-mode=1 / aq-strength=0.00 / cutree / zone-count=0 / no-strict-cbr / qg-size=32 / no-rc-grain / qpmax=69 / qpmin=0 / no-const-vbv / sar=1 / overscan=0 / videoformat=5 / range=0 / colorprim=1 / transfer=1 / colormatrix=1 / chromaloc=0 / display-window=0 / cll=0,0 / min-luma=0 / max-luma=255 / log2-max-poc-lsb=8 / vui-timing-info / vui-hrd-info / slices=1 / no-opt-qp-pps / no-opt-ref-list-length-pps / no-multi-pass-opt-rps / scenecut-bias=0.05 / no-opt-cu-delta-qp / no-aq-motion / no-hdr / no-hdr-opt / no-dhdr10-opt / no-idr-recovery-sei / analysis-reuse-level=5 / scale-factor=0 / refine-intra=0 / refine-inter=0 / refine-mv=1 / refine-ctu-distortion=0 / no-limit-sao / ctu-info=0 / no-lowpass-dct / refine-analysis-type=0 / copy-pic=1 / max-ausize-factor=1.0 / no-dynamic-refine / no-single-sei / no-hevc-aq / no-svt / no-field / qp-adaptation-range=1.00
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : Identity
matrix_coefficients_Original : BT.709
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 44 min 19 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 122 MiB (23%)
Title : Surround
Writing library : Lavc58.77.101 ac3_fixed
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Menu
00:00:00.000 : :00:00:00.000
00:02:35.947 : :00:02:35.947
00:13:52.081 : :00:13:52.081
00:22:55.416 : :00:22:55.291
00:33:22.000 : :00:33:21.958
00:43:28.815 : :00:43:28.815
Lucky Me…
Distribution is probably like a bell curve. Median seems to be in the 30 GB range. To @axemanuk666’s point about audio, a TrueHD + Atmos track for a 2.5 hour movie is 4.5+ GB.
Using a Blu-ray rip makes my life easy. I can usually just rip the movie and load it into Plex. I’ll eventually run it through Handbrake, but there is no rush.
4K HDR movies are the ones that really eat up space. The ones I have run 40 - 80 GB. Those are the ones I have to think about keeping. Not all movies look good in 4K. Sometimes the source was bad or the transfer was bad (or the movie was just bad 
). I have to think, “how often will I watch this movie, is 4K that much better than HD, and is it worth the space?” There’s a lot that does not make the cut.
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I guess one other point to make is Video codec… You can potentially store almost twice the amount of videos if you were to use x265 / H.265, as you achieve more or less the same quality of video at half the bitrate.
Obviously do make sure your kit can handle x265 though, and also do bear in mind that this has no bearing on the size of the audio track.
So far I’ve spent the last year and a half converting my content from x264 to x265, running 2 dirty great big HP ProLiant servers at the same time, and I still have shed loads more to do!
Biggest advantage I find, is that more of my users can now Direct Play more content as a result.
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Yep, it certainly does when you have 504 of them.
But I have vowed that as they get replaced by Dolby Vision with Atmos variants I will be far more selective. 
This I am aware of… And it scares me S***less! lol
I haven’t even entered the world of 4K yet… TV and AV has to be replaced to get there, and then I will have to find out how well my HTPC with PMP handles it… And then after all that??? … The extra storage to accommodate! … Oh the £££££’s!! lol
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