I am looking to free up some space as I’ve reached the 40TB library mark and I am not in a position to invest in new drives currently.
What I can leverage is a server supplied by my employer.
It is a Video AI appliance server that I only use a few times per day for testing.
I can certainly add another SSD for Dual boot.
This server has 2x Xeon Gold 6230Rs, 256GB of RAM and 2x Quadro RTX 5000 cards.
It also has a few 2TB SSDs
All of my data is on a Synology 920+ NAS.
How can I use this hardware to quickly re-encode my library to h.265, possibly using HVEC with as little loss as possible?
Any tools or scripts that would automatically rename my files back to original and put them in the folders they belong to?
Before you do this, there are a few things to consider.
Client support for h264 is still better than h265. For instance, Plex Web won’t Direct Play h265 in most web browsers. Slightly older set-top boxes and streaming sticks can’t play h265. Even some recent 1080p TVs can’t play h265. Test and verify your players work as expected - or consider giving out modern players for Christmas . Obviously Plex can transcode at playback or Sync time, but the experience is better if it isn’t necessary.
I’m sure you’re aware that quality will be impacted. The more aggressively you reduce file size, the more impact to quality. (If anybody tells you “h265 is half the size” that’s half the truth.) If you have access to the original disks, you will have better quality AND smaller files if you encode from them, instead of re-encoding your already-encoded files.
For batch processing thousands of movies, take a look at these. I like Tdarr because you can build recipes and rules.
Whatever you choose, think about audio quality also. Some batch processing utilities are focused on size or portable playback, and convert audio to low bitrate stereo. You might prefer to keep the original audio. There are some “safe” middle options that may also save space.
A nice strategy in Plex is to add another directory to your current Library. As you re-encode media, add the new files to that directory. Plex discovers the media files, and adds them as a second Version to the existing movies. Remove old files after the new ones are associated with your movies. (The Duplicate and Unmatched filters come in handy.)
This preserves the Date Added, Watch History, and User Ratings for your media.
I use MCEbuddy. Works well for me
Automatically converts to h265 and removes commercials as well
Quality vs size can be adjusted
Ideally start from an original file (DVD, TS) don’t try and compress an mp4
. Obviously Plex can transcode at playback or Sync time, but the experience is better if it isn’t necessary.