Hello All,
I’m new to the Plex scene and am enjoying the program very much. I have already started digitizing my library and am encountering an issue that quite a few of my Blu-ray’s are VC-1 which my TVs cannot direct play and if I need to add subtitles as I do for a family member - my NAS918 cannot seem to keep up.
My questions are as such:
Does HW transcoding work with VC-1 to help with this issue? I was gonna buy the pass anyways but want to know if this will be a benefit in this area.
I have looked at handbrake to convert all of my mkv rips (ugh) but will do it if that’s what is needed. What are the issues with this method? I want to keep my quality as high as possible - storage size isn’t an issue at all. I tried one at Constant RF 18 very slow speed and it looks great but only comes in at 8.5mbps - where as the original was like 24mbps. I don’t know enough about that to know if it’s a worry. My fear is that I do all this and then in a couple of years I get a better tv or something and then I can see it’s bad quality.
Do your eyeballs cry when you watch it? No? It’s probably fine, but if you really need that 24GB file - match bit rates with the original using these settings:
You could encode the VC-1 rips and leave the others alone, if that’s what you want. I encode everything to those settings, but VC-1 has an express elevator ticket to the grinder as soon as it’s identified.
I rip everything with MakeMKV - then drop those on Handbrake.
You could do that with some bit rates that please you with VC-1 and let the others go unmolested.
I have Skiptrace (2016) in the grinder right now for an a 265 encode at 1650Kbps. I like the small file and great quality, but I don’t much care for the 4 hour encode I’m halfway through as we speak…lol
Juice, thanks for the reply. VC1 is all that will be getting this treatment as space isn’t an issue and all the others direct play And let’s face it handbrake takes forever.
I guess my issue is not knowing enough about the encoding /compression scene. My file sizzle and bitrate dropped by 60% (size is irrelevant either way for me - large oh well, small - great). I just didn’t know if only 8.5mbps on the stream was an indication of poor quality that I’d regret later. It did pass the eyeball test as you said so that’s promising but then again it wasn’t on a monstrous tv - 43 inch 4K screen is all. I say that because one day I hope it’ll be on something bigger lol
You’ll probably never know the difference - and if more people used their eyeballs instead of the ‘numbers’ they’re seeing - there wouldn’t be as many storage devices sold, but… it’s up to you.
I need everything to Direct Play and be easily transported across state lines and the internet in Coal Country, so easily transported boxes of Moonshine is what we’re used to hauling - so that’s what we haul over Plex as well… I can get more 3750s in the trunk than I can 24,000s, everyone enjoys what they’re watching on whatever they’re watching it on and I can handle it and move on.
I also kick the snot out of TV Shows right down to 480p at those settings you’ll see above - 'cause we just don’t need TV Shows at 5G each. When you’ve got a million of something - it adds up - and there isn’t any of us in the Geriatric Plexers I serve that can see much difference in 480 and 720 anyway… at least I’m making ‘good’ 480…
You stated that you always convert your vc1 files - is there a simple way in plex to tell you which movies are vc1? Aside from looking at each one individually? I’m new and haven’t found anything like that yet.
Among other things, it displays media info for a selected library. It looks a lot like List View in Plex Web. It has additional columns for video codec, audio codec, container, and other fields.
So, one source of this disparity is the fact that the original came from a BD disk. BDs have strict requirements which can increase bitrate (without increasing quality) that you are not replicating in your handbrake encode. For example, BDs do have a requirement of an IDR frame at set intervals which will dramatically increase bitrate but your handbrake encode is not doing this.
RF is a pretty good bitrate selection method for this use-case and 18 is a pretty high quality setting. You should be fine sticking with this.
… and if you really are going for ‘Quality’, aim an Average Bit Rate at that 8.5 meg file size and encode those VC-1 in 265 Main 10. <—you don’t need 8.5 Megs.
HEVC encodes differently. It maps images differently. It thinks differently. That’s why one of those encodes is probably going to take 10 hours (VC-1 - make that 16), but in the end, you won’t mind.
HEVC Main 10 Bit Rate?
3750Kbps is going to be some ballsy video.
(and more than that is just going to be Placebo)
8 bit source into a 10 bit destination? Why not just Main (8-bit)?
I’ve remote users with 1080p, non-HDR TVs. Wouldn’t Plex transcode Main10 back to H.264 8-bit? Plex clients are a mix - FireTV sticks, AppleTV (not 4K), other AndroidTV devices.
I’m still in the experimental stage with encoding to H.265. Still trying to get a feel for it with Handbrake, how clients handle it, etc.
I bought a round of Roku Ultras for family and friends - and billed 'em…lol
No, wouldn’t make much sense to encode 10 with an 8 source, but a Main ‘regular’ would do a superb job (and shave at least 4 hours off that encode) - for something that would Direct Play it, of course.
Handbrake does a nice job of it - apart from being a costly investment of CPU time required to get it done - I’m impressed.
When I see one ‘in the wild’ - it’s mine.
They are usually awesome and I didn’t have to sit through it…
I did sit through Skiptrace (2016) 'cause a BluRay showed up in the mail and I needed it for the ‘Jackie’ Collection. I used 1650Kbps (2 pass/w turbo), 265 Main Auto/Auto and passed through a non-MA DTS track and an AC3 2.0 Commentary track - ran those thru Xmedia Recode at the end to convert the DTS to AC3 5.1 with an 86db normalization - and mux in some subs - and it only took 4.5 hours!
