What is the Best Encoder / Ripper?

General Discussions
1

Hi All,

I am gonna just share my experience with you on this issue.

Any other opinions are welcome.

I hear most folks tout Handbrake.
I have no user experience with this application.
But, Since I have heard so much about it, I thought I would investigate,.

I found several reviews and specs about it and the salient portions, to me, of what I read were these.

  1. It is incapable of ripping DRMed DVDs and Blu-Rays natively, requiring a program such as AnyDVD. (I Have a perpetual license for AnyDVD so not really an Issue for me.)
  2. However this item scared me… ** It was stated that Handbrake installs something that resembles Malware into your browser. (Can’t verify that since I am afraid to install it now).

I have been using an application called DVDFab. (I have a perpetual license for that as well.)
DVDFab requires NO external DRM removal program. It can natively rip ANYTHING. Also, as soon as a new copy protection scheme is developed they seem to have it installed immediately.
I have had absolutely NO DRM issues or Malware installed by these apps.

Additionally, it has extremely flexible and powerful encoding options. It can even re-master your DVDs or Blu-Rays to 3D or 4K. (You have complete control over encoding including which codecs to use, and bit rate used, along with a plethora or other settings and formats, including MKVs for all the video byteheads. ( LOL)

It also solves most subtitle issues (Unless you just love to grapple with all that). Not only can you select which subtitles to include, you can select “Only Forced Subtitles” and have them burned directly into the video. (It also allows you to select from all the different subtitle languages available on the disk.) It will support standard subtitles as well as external subtitle files if you are into all that. (Don’t know if it supports multiple MKV streams or multiple internal subtitles in MKV)

For me this is great and keeps it KISS. Since I only speak English and my media is primarily for my enjoyment and consumption, this makes everything simple and very functional for my needs as subtitles are already in the video image.

Well that is that for what it is worth

Cheers
John

BTW: I forgot to mention that DVDFab, when ripping a DVD or Blu-Ray and will show ALL the tracks on the disk. It will pre-select the main movies or videos to rip for you. You can select encoding type and parameters for each track separately.
You also can select / de-select any individual track, making it easy to rip TV series type disks with multiple main movies and also access all bonus tracks.

You can preview each video track within the app if you want to verify which track you have targeted.

Many, Many other features exist as well, Features like auto encode parameters for tons of devices built in and more than I can enumerate here.

2

Discussing DRM is not a good thing to do here. DRM or the methods of breaking it are against the rules of the forum. Just an FYI… So I’m going to avoid that aspect of your post completely… :slight_smile:

Having said that, now about Handbrake. I use it only for converting media that has already been ripped, and only when I have problem files that I can’t convert with other methods, or if I have some sort of “rush” conversion that I don’t want to wait on the cron job to kick over with the conversions scripts I use. I never got any Malware installs from the version of Handbrake from the official source. I would guess if you get it from some place else you may have some problems.

@cayars has a link in his signature to a post where he puts a lot of his tips and tricks. One on of them is a link to some conversion scripts he’s modified that take most of the different types of media and convert it to MP4 H264 with AAC stereo and other audio streams if there is a stream to support it.

I’ve modified his scripts to run on a Linux NAS by changing a few paths and getting the proper version of ffmpeg for the OS. It’s automatic, and called from Linux cron, which would be similar to a Windows scheduler…

Every file I get goes through this conversion script, except as noted above. Depending on the codecs it could take a while. XVid runs slowly, and VC-1 is measured in hours… Never converted Mpeg, so no idea how long an average 2 hour movie would take.

HTH!

3

Ok so U Recommend Handbrake and conversion scripts???
Sounds like a lot of fun!!!
Thanks
John

4

Yes, but that’s me, and my idea of always having the best Direct Play media I can have on the NAS. In some cases I have multiple versions of movies to help reduce the transcoding the NAS is forced to do.

Keep in mind, I ran on a really low end NAS for over a year. I HAD to do tricks like this to make sure that NAS worked for me with Plex. I had no options available for that time… Once I had the option to upgrade the NAS to a more capable box I did so, but the mind set is still there. Direct Play > Direct Stream > Transcode. Transcoding wasn’t an option with the old NAS at all, so even some Direct Streaming would cause issues…

I did similar to what you say you did a while back, but I took Plex’s own info to make up my mind. I looked at the most common denominator for media container and codecs supported on Plex Client apps. I then found the way to convert all of my media to that format. 1000 movies and 9000 TV episodes took me over 6 weeks to convert, copying files back and forth across the network or through USB drives, converting on various computers, then copying back again. I would start HandBrake on 2 or 3 devices at a time to get the media converted during the night, and hopefully it was all finished in the morning when I got ready for work.

It was slow, tedious and I screwed up and lost some media in the process. Media I had to re-rip or re-download if I couldn’t put my hands on the disks at the time. (I was in Alaska for a lot of this time and the hard media was in the lower 48…)

Then I found these scripts of @cayars and started doing the conversions on 3-4 machines at a time. Now I run everything through the scripts as it’s ripped just as a matter of course. Even if it’s an mp4 and H264, I still let the script run against it. Just gives me a warm fuzzy… :slight_smile:

5

As another data point, I like MakeMKV and XMedia Recode. They’re free and easy to use.

6

@drinehart said:
As another data point, I like MakeMKV and XMedia Recode. They’re free and easy to use.
That gets my vote too. Fyi, Xmedia Recode is windows only. Easy interface and does pretty much what handbrake can. It uses ffmpeg so the results are basically identical to handbrake.

7

Try dmMediaConverter, allot of features and its free.
MakeMKV is great for single files but dmMediaConverter does so much more.

8

@MovieFan.Plex

The magic and quality of ffmpeg output is created by the command string parameters supplied to it.
“Not all transcodes in ffmpeg are created equal” (LOL).

The output of ffmpeg can also be determined by the developer who created the ffmpeg profiles, possibly making one encoder’s output different than an other’s interpretation.

Cheers
John

9

Can the original poster confirm that he is no way associated with DVD FAB?

10

@Malcolm Clark said:
Can the original poster confirm that he is no way associated with DVD FAB?

I would suppose you are asking this because the OP’s comments are bit suspicious:

@jjrjr1 said:
I hear most folks tout Handbrake.
I have no user experience with this application.
But, Since I have heard so much about it, I thought I would investigate,.

I found several reviews and specs about it and the salient portions, to me, of what I read were these.

  1. It is incapable of ripping DRMed DVDs and Blu-Rays natively, requiring a program such as AnyDVD. (I Have a perpetual license for AnyDVD so not really an Issue for me.)
    Partially right, mostly wrong. Per the forum rules, I’ll not speak further on it.
    @jjrjr1 said:
  2. However this item scared me… ** It was stated that Handbrake installs something that resembles Malware into your browser. (Can’t verify that since I am afraid to install it now).
    [Citation needed]. I’ve never heard anything even closely resembling this and I’ve used Handbrake for years; this strikes me as FUD.
11

@Malcolm Clark said:
Can the original poster confirm that he is no way associated with DVD FAB?

I’m sure John will answer himself but I’ve been chatting with him for days through PMs and Skype and have been helping him via TeamViewer remotely. All I can say is from my observation the answer would be NO WAY. :slight_smile:

BTW, lot’s of people really love DVDFab and swear by it. Just like people swear by Plex. > @gbooker02 said:

@gbooker02
[Citation needed]. I’ve never heard anything even closely resembling this and I’ve used Handbrake for years; this strikes me as FUD.

I too have never seen or heard of this before. However if you download many programs from some sites like CNET you can get tricked into installing other programs besides what you think. Other sites “rebundle” the installs. It could be he got one of these “bogus” copies which happens.

12

OK, I’m sorry if I misjudged the original post - it seemed to be a bit anti Handbrake (which I use and think is great) and equally full of praise for a competitor. But if the post is unbiased, then I fully accept it for the recommendation it is.

13

@All

LOL
No I am not associated with DVDFab at all!
A pretty ridiculous assertion, if you ask me.
I just have been using DVDFab for about 5 years now. It is my favorite.
I just happen to like it very much and I genuinely thought I would share my experience to all. Bottom line, take it or leave it.

I am not anti handbrake. I did read a post regarding malware in handbrake. Can’t find the link again. If I do I will post it here. (The malware review I saw could be a result of something like @cayars mentioned or (LOL) a employee of DVDFab) Just, for me, it is not worth the risk if there are alternatives, having been burned before with freeware.

(And BTW: Why would I care if anyone uses handbrake or not?? Why would anyone think I would rag on them for their input if I was not, or others were interested in the info… I hear everyone clamoring to defend hand brake. I thought it ok for me to tout what I know. ( Actually none of this “Means **it to a Tree!!”).

I do have problems with most freeware. Mainly because of support quality, code integrity, future releases, bug fixes. et. al. (Occupational hazard for me due to my Production Systems experience) So I hope no one is offended by my opinion on that topic

Also, I come from the core of experience where, in any game, you gotta pay to play.
So many folks just wanna use free software without considering the potential consequences. (One effect could be malware bundled in different distros as @cayars commented above.)

(A “My Experience Moment”, I have received nothing but timely, accurate, and stellar customer support from the folks at DVDFab.)

I use VERY LITTLE free software.

One piece of freeware I do use and have deployed on my server (And many client’s servers as well) is ffmpeg. We all have heard of that, I see.

Sorry for sharing my opinion and experience with you all. I only thought someone would be interested or helped and certainly did not expect an attack. But, these days, nobody listens to old men anymore… (LOL) MY MISTAKE!!!

I think this is about the last attack I need to listen too.

And anyway, what forum rules have I broken that have not been broached by anyone else even just in this thread not to mention this entire board??

Cheers
John

14

Handbrake is the way to go

15

Alright already!

Handbrake is the best. I now understand.

Can anyone site specific feature it has???

I tried to do that with DVDfab… Now it’s the Handbraker’s turn to enumerate on some features they like. I think!!

Cheers

16

@jjrjr1 said:
Alright already!

Handbrake is the best. I now understand.

Personally not a big fan of handbrake myself. Almost religiously, I install it every 2 or 3 months, give it my best shot with default settings, recommended settings (from posts I’ve found on this website), etc and then uninstall. On the other hand, I have recommended it to a few people, because it’s easy to use, it’s free, and even the default settings are probably acceptable to most.

There is probably nothing wrong with the encodings it produces, but I simply don’t like the program. I don’t believe I could justify my problems with it to most of the crowd here, and won’t even try. I use a couple of other programs (all free) and a couple of scripts I’ve put together using ffmpeg to convert my videos for streaming on Plex.

17

@leelynds

If you are interested, I have some ffmpeg profiles I created in the old days to encode HD videos, Not sure if they are acceptable in your case and it has been so long ago I am not sure myself if they are friendly for the PLEX world.

The work I developed using ffmpeg, was to create hi-effieciency, hi-def, web friendly FLVs for serving up on a RED 5 FMS, Adobe FMS, or Wowza FMS.

The encoding probably is gold but the container is not, I just can’t remember off hand.

If you would like to know more I will dig through my archives for you.Let me know.

Here is a link to my server that demonstrates that functionality live.
http://realsites.biz/RSTheatre.php

This server is running RED 5 and all transcoding is done in the background by the server using ffmpeg. At that site, you can upload a video and see the results as soon as the server is done transcoding it. Very much like YouTube does it and I built this site long before YouTube was around LOL.

That was a VERY fun project for me and I used it as a proof of concept as a demonstration for potential clients.

Oh and BTW: Not sure how it works in Windows but in Linux, years ago (ffmpeg might have fixed this in modern distros) you had to find all the codecs for ffmpeg wherever you could (Not included with ffmpeg) , compile them using c++, and try them out and hope they worked, if you could get them installed at all.

If it is still like this, then you are limited in your encoding/decoding to only the codecs you found, downloaded, compiled, and installed.

Cheers
John

18

ffmpeg isn’t like that any more. I downloaded the package for Ubuntu, installed it on my NAS and have full codec support out of the package with my NAS. Otherwise @cayars scripts would probably not be working as well as they do for me. I haven’t compiled code in 30+ years…

19

@jjrjr1 said:
@anon18523487

The magic and quality of ffmpeg output is created by the command string parameters supplied to it.
“Not all transcodes in ffmpeg are created equal” (LOL).

The output of ffmpeg can also be determined by the developer who created the ffmpeg profiles, possibly making one encoder’s output different than an other’s interpretation.

Cheers
John
Right, but I find Handbrake is too advanced for most people and adds it’s own parameters that people probably don’t understand. I like XMediaRecode because it doesn’t add additional parameters. Only those I tell it. The results may not be identical but are close enough for most cases and I know exactly what it is doing. I also like the UI in XMediaRecode better for doing batch jobs. I find Handbrake cumbersome for that.

20

Well for anybody who cares or is interested I finally have completed my tests on this subject.

Be advised, these test efforts were to meet my needs using PMS to stream VERY Hi-Def HD and UHD streams to my 2 ROKU 4 boxes with minimal impact on my PMS box. In other words get these movies to perform with superior quality and to direct play to ROKU 4.

Your requirements might be different, (LOL like MKV et. al which always get direct streamed no matter what you do since I do not know many target platforms that support that container natively)

So here we go
I use hi-bit rates around 9-15mbps.

Originally I was encoding like this
For 1080p movies
mp4 / mpeg4/ AAC 5.1
This format would be transcoded, causing my PMS to consume nearly 100% CPU and ROKU/Plex Channel would buffer about every 5 to 10 minutes.

For 4K movies
mp4 / h.265 / AAC 5.1
This format would consume 100% CPU and need more
These files would buffer about every 5 - 10 seconds.

Hence my “Holy Grail” ( There are a few posts around describing all the technical stuff associated with this issue on ROKU et. al.)

After re-encoding one of my existing 1080p movie files and re-mastering a 4K movie. I was able to prove a formula for ROKU 4. (Have not tested on any other platforms yet).

That Recipe is:
Again, Hi Bit rates between 8-15mbps.
For 1080p
mp4 / h.264 / AC3 5.1
For 4K
mp4 / h.265 / AC3 5.1

Both the above recipes work GREAT. ABSOLUTLY NO PMS transcoding (Either Direct Play or Direct Stream).
A much happier and cooler CPU and many more streams can run concurrently.

Additionally, the re-encoded 1080p file quality did not seem to suffer because of the second re-encoding.

They both looked amazing on my 4K TV even though ROKU 4 will not play 4K but only 1080p. There is another post discussing this major mess up by ROKU.

I will probably bite the bullet and re-encode, at least my 1080p files, to this new formula so as to improve performance and usability across the board, I am hoping.

Why oh Why would one use MKV or any of those other things like FLAC… etc.? (No Lossy vs Non-Lossy debate please)

Hope this helps the performance byteheads like me LOL

Again that is what I know now, resulting from rigorous empirical testing. As always, there is more than one way to skin a cat. So I still do solicit any and would like to hear any other ideas on this subject.

Cheers
John

I would like to THANK @ljunkie and other wizards in this great community for teaching me enough to, hopefully, have figured this out. With the above recipe, I am able to run 7 streams concurrently on my local network, consuming only around 50% CPU utilization on my PMS box.
LOL should I try for 14??

Testing Updates:
*Just tested using Plex Web Local Network - Direct Steam for these it seems, Transcode files created but only an increase of 1-2% CUP Usage. When I get out of the house (LOL) I will test Plex Web externally and report findings.
Have not tested any portable devices yet. Need to try iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets both Local and External.

**NEW UPDATE:
Just completed some cross platform and stress testing on my local network. This is what I observed
All these tests were run on a 7500kbps files encoded mp4 / h.265 ./ AC3 5.1 (File Size aprox. 5.2gig)
All devices,except the ROKU 4s, exhibited some sort of transcoding (Either Direct Stream, Partial Transcode, or full transcode. Are we still discussing the meaning of those terms??? LOL. Let’s not start that again, sorry.), But the impact was minor in the scheme of thing and feel I accomplished pretty much what I was trying for and learned a lot to boot.

Results of local network tests:

  1. With an Android tablet Transcode files are created CPU Impact 0%-24% utilization
  2. With Android Tablet + iPhone Transcode files created CPU Impact 1%-39%
  3. With an Android Phone, Android Tablet + iPhone Transcode files created CPU Impact 1%-43%
  4. With Android Phone, Android Tablet + iPhone + iPad Transcode files created CPU Impact 1%-53%
  5. All the above + 1 Roku 4 No additional Transcode files created CPU Impact 1% - 56%
  6. Same as above + 2 Roku 4 No additional Transcode files created CPU Impact 1% - 69%
  7. With all that running + Plex Web Transcode files created CPU Impact 1%-69%

Again: these tests were all run on my local network.

Close but no cigar till I do the same tests from and external network. I will get to that when I finally get out of this house… LOL.

btw: I would like to thank all of you who provided help, insight, and education that helped me greatly in this holy quest.