This. If you have the possibility to do this... then do not hesitate. I can guarantee you that in the future you are going to wish that you did not compress your original material so much. Imagine what size of TV you will have in 5 years. Which resolution it will have.
If you have the possibility to keep it unaltered, and make a device friendly version as well: Do it. Future you will thank you.
Hmmm . . . .I do have basically all my movies duplicated from my iTunes and handbrake days. I can do this, though my Drobo is at 90% so I am looking to increase storage so . . . . .
I guess I was "hoping" to read more into the GUARANTEE part then you had intended. Done went and got excited. :(
Regardless, I 100% agree with it non-the-less.
Sorry for giving you false excitement. What I meant is that it is possible that you will not use your XB1 as a mediacenter client the rest of your life. Or as an alternative situation: Maybe Microsoft starts relaxing their limitations. And when one of those things happens then it very likely that you are going to wish that you hadn't recompressed your files so much.
While I generally agree with this statement I myself put a "life" on my media and don't go overly crazy about worry of holding the "original". By this I mean I try and setup my media to last 3 years.
As an example, everyone always says to hold on to the original so you can use it in the future. By how many people actually do this? I can remember not that long ago people were saying this and keeping archives of their original DVDs. A long came dual layer DVDs with better quality, then came HD DVD. After DVDs came Blu Rays which quality wise blows DVDs away. Typically, even a highly compressed Blu Ray can be better then the RAW DVD.
So with that said if you compress your Blu Rays to 12 or 20 bitrates they will be pretty darn close quality wise to the originals. I try and use a high enough bitrate for my media that it's hard to tell from the original but at the same time compressed so I can stream easier and use less storage space. You can hold both the original and compressed version or just decide its life is 3 years and will be replaced by 4K/h265 media in that period of time.
Of course the potential flaw in that thinking is that all your media will be available in the next format. I have many movies that still aren't available on Blu Ray and still only available on DVD.
But the way I try and look at is (for me) is that if it looks crisp and detailed today on my 75" Samsung TV it will look just as good in 3,5 or 7 years. So sometimes good, is good enough.
Carlo
PS when I'm talking compressing the files above I'm talking about using reasonable compression and trying to stay indistinguishable or super close to the original and not like many of the "YIFI" compressed files which I think suck quality wise. I equate YIFI movies to something designed for a Smart Phone with at most stereo and very small screen.
Everyone should keep an open mind to what/how others do things (can always learn something) but ultimately make the decision for yourself based on your budget, your devices and your time, etc...
I see a lot of people talking about <20 in the quality to be able to direct play. In Handbrake, is the the “Constant Quality” and Average bit rate setting?
I see a lot of people talking about <20 in the quality to be able to direct play. In Handbrake, is the the "Constant Quality" and Average bit rate setting?
I set CQ to 18 and ALMOST all my BluRay rips come in under 20Mbps.. for some reason I've been unable to figure out, The Princess Bride was still like 22-23Mbps at CQ 18.. I had to redo it at CQ 20 to get it under 20Mbps.
Ok so, can someone explain something to me, how does plex handle having two versions? If I re-encode while keeping the Lossy versions, what is going to happen if say, the 20mb limit is lifted and I have the lossy and sub-20mb version available? Which does it pick? Higher version, as along as I don’t set a ceiling for it?
I think I want to do this since I want to let a friend and my parents stream from my server (less taxing this way to be in MP4 format, right?)
Ok so, can someone explain something to me, how does plex handle having two versions? If I re-encode while keeping the Lossy versions, what is going to happen if say, the 20mb limit is lifted and I have the lossy and sub-20mb version available? Which does it pick? Higher version, as along as I don't set a ceiling for it?
I think I want to do this since I want to let a friend and my parents stream from my server (less taxing this way to be in MP4 format, right?)
The XB1 client does not yet support the multi-version feature. That means it takes the first video it sees in the XML. This is something that will become much smarter in future releases (according to the devs).
The XB1 client does not yet support the multi-version feature. That means it takes the first video it sees in the XML. This is something that will become much smarter in future releases (according to the devs).
That's good info, I always assumed that decision was made by the server but that definitely makes sense with some of the behaviors I've seen. Thanks for the confirmation.
How do you change this order? Not that I want too. I’m cool with the blu Ray rips being transcoded, but I am adding lower but rate versions for sharing. How does this work with remote clients? That would be server side, right?
How do you change this order? Not that I want too. I'm cool with the blu Ray rips being transcoded, but I am adding lower but rate versions for sharing. How does this work with remote clients? That would be server side, right?
I am not 100% sure, but 75%: You can't change this order. It is random.
But if you really want to try and see if that is true or not, scan in one version first, then add the other and rescan. Maybe the first scanned in version is the one that will be first in the XML.
Ok so I think the real thing to do here is separate libraries. My personal and one for the streaming. Thinking through this, what is the best way to have segregated libraries like I’m proposing. If I share my content that is one thing, but I will see all the libraries, locally. Which I don’t want. This is seemingly leaning towards two servers. I do not have an extra computer yet, but I plan to in a few months or so, so that is not the end of the world.
I could set up plex home, but I am worried due to my ignorance on how it really works and the horror stories I’ve read. I’m gonna go read up on this.
OR
I could set a site to site VPN up worth my buddy and let him host the server and point to my storage, but that seems like an unnecessary.
