My current server is quickly maxing out my drive capacity and I’m looking for suggestions on how to reduce MKV file size while attempting to minimize reduction in quality of the videos. I currently have my NAS device filled up with 10 TB hard drives and expanding the array with larger drives would be very costly. I am currently using MKVToolNix to strip out foreign language audio & subtitles as well as all but the highest quality audio track. While this is helping to save quite a bit of space, I’m curious if anyone has done anything else to save space. I have heard others mention modifying the way the videos are encoded, but I haven’t yet learned how to re-encode the videos and I’m not certain what the effect of doing that would be. My media source is typically BluRay videos using MakeMKV. Any recommendations on how to improve my process and free up some storage would be greatly appreciated!
After creating the MKV, run it thought Handbreak (https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php) it has a good help file and extensive help on the site to tweak your videos for speed, compatibility, or size; with or without foreign language tracks and subtitles, Stereo, 5.1, or other sound. Save as another MKV, MPV, or MP4. It has a lot of presets as well.
I second using handbrake. With a good encode you can shrink the size quite a lot without sacrificing to much quality. You will always lose some quality but with good settings they can be barely noticeable.
If you’re gonna start building an encoded library from scratch I would take an extra look on using 265 instead of 264. 265 is much better if your hardware can handle it. And with “much better” I mean that the finished size can be even smaller while having the same quality.
Thank you both for the information. I have started reading up on how to use Handbrake and have my first trial encode running. I would really appreciate getting your thoughts on the settings I am using:
Preset: H.265 MKV 1080p30
Video Codec: H.265 (x265)
Framerate: Same as source
Constant Framerate
Optimize Video: Encoder Preset: VerySlow
Constant Quality: 20 RF
Audio: TrueHD Passthrough (The track name includes “TrueHD” so I’m assuming this is the correct option to prevent changes to the audio)
Subtitle track 1: Foreign Audio Scan, Forced Only, Default
Subtitle track 2: English (no options selected)
The few questions I have are 1) is there anything you would recommend changing knowing that I want to reasonably maintain video quality, maintain all audio and subtitles as they are, and reduce the size as much as possible, 2) do you think these settings are appropriate for both BluRay and DVD movies, and 3) my video only has 1 subtitle track, so I’m not certain what the Foregin Audio Scan track is for and I didn’t provide a name for either track so am not sure if that was needed. Any further input you may have is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Oh, also, I forgot to mention, there are several Video Codecs available and I wasn’t able to find a really good explanation of which to use. If anyone could provide some insight, that would be greatly appreciated also! The ones I have looked at using are:
H.265 (x265)
H.265 12-bit (x265)
H.265 10-bit (x265)
H.265 (Intel QSV)
H.265 10-bit (Intel QSV)
H.265 (Nvidia NVEnc)
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