Nothing cheap about it. It is one of the best if your goal is to maintain the full quality from the disc. It does also rip all subtitles and audio tracks, as well as preserving chapter markers.
Same as above.
It does have its quirks, though. I recommend making it a habit to never use the direct output of Handbrake in Plex. Always remux it using MKVtoolnixGUI. In the process strip away all the XML metatags that HB automatically inserts.
For optimum quality and minimum file size at the same time, you need to use software compression. Hardware compression is making compromises both in quality and storage efficiency. (Its main advantages are speed and low power consumption instead.)
The more you move the “Encoder Preset” [Speed] slider to the left, the faster your encode will be. But the resulting file will also be bigger and look worse. If you have a powerful CPU to do the encoding, I recommend leaving it at “Slow”.
Change the “Encoder Tune” only to “Animation” when the video is a traditional cel animation. (For computer-animated movies with photorealistic rendering like you get nowadays in e.g. Pixar and Disney movies, you should use a Tune of None.)
Refrain from using 10 bit color. 12 bit you shouldn’t even considering. With regular HD Blurays as source, it doesn’t make sense anyway.
H.265 is now in the “sweet spot” in its lifetime, where it is practically universally supported on any playback device, and also by Plex server if transcoding is needed. Which it will be, in many situation – particularly with remote/mobile playback devices.
Hence why I am recommending it over the older H.264, but also over the newer options H.266, AV1 etc.
If you don’t have a powerful CPU for your encoding, you should use H.264 instead. But you should keep in mind the increased storage requirements for this and also the inablity to store HDR and high-color. (Yes, theoretically it could store these, but in practice you only get a bunch of incompatible files which again require transcoding for playback in Plex. So that’s not a good option.)
Subtitles will be in the ripped files. But only in the original format of the disc. Which means either VOBSUB (DVD) or PGS (Bluray). Both are “picture” formats, which are less well supported by playback devices and are not configurable in terms of size and color. Subs from discs which were intended for the big television screen are often too small when viewed on a small screen device like a phone.
Hence my recommendation is to OCR the subs into text format: Introduction: convert image-based subtitles to SRT with Subtitle Edit
That is certainly an advanced topic and you can opt for postponing it. But of course you should retain the image-based subs from the discs, so you can later treat them.
For audio I personally try to pass-through all original tracks from the source.
If you never intend to use the highest quality audio standards like DTS-HD MA or TrueHD[Atmos], then you can also omit them.
Personally, I always prepare a stereo AAC version of the audio and insert it as the first stream of the video file. This ensures best compatibility and the least likelihood that transcoding is required.
If you also follow the best practice to normalize the volume of those stereo downmixes, you will hear practically never a complaint that the audio volume is too low. Can I convert lossless DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 to lossy DTS 5.1? - #2 by OttoKerner
