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Don’t have a problem, just a question. I was wondering why Plex has to create a .ts video/audio file when it records OTA programs from my HDHomeRun device? These files are 4 to 5 times the size of a corresponding ,mp4 file that one usually finds when downloading programs. For example, a 30 minute ILoveLucy.ts from my antenna is 550megs when the standard 30 minute Cheers.mp4 is only 160megs. I find my 14tb drive is filling up 10x faster with OTA programs than it does with internet files of the same type, I assume. I even checked out a .ts to .mp4 converter program to bring the file size down but that’s just a hassle assuming you can get one free. Otherwise it is more expense that does not seem necessary. Just a thought…
The DVR writes the files as they’re being streamed – the size is not so much about the container (TS vs. mp4) but the individual components/streams of that program (e.g. video in MPEG2 vs. h.264/h.265…). I suppose this is to avoid things from buffering if a re-encode won’t happen in real-time (encoding time > actual duration). You can configure a script to automatically post-process your file.
As for how to process the files outside Plex: go with Handbrake… it’s free and powerful 
While you will achieve some file size reduction from simply re-muxing the file from a .ts (MPEG Transport Stream) container to an MP4 or MKV container, the difference isn’t as drastic as you would think. Here are a couple of files I recently recorded using the Plex DVR, and stored in the default .ts container:
Here are those same two files after having been re-muxed to an MKV container:
What will make a bigger difference is re-encoding the file to use a higher efficiency video codec. Most (all?) OTA broadcasts currently use MPEG-2 as the video codec. This is a relatively old and fairly inefficient codec. The files you’re downloading, and comparing to, likely use the H.264 video codec, which is much more efficient in its encoding.
You can tell Plex to transcode the video on the fly and it will encode using H.264 (though it will still use a .ts container). The setting is in Settings -> Live TV & DVR -> Device Settings. It will improve file storage sizes to an extent, but it requires a fairly powerful CPU to perform the transcoding.
I checked that setting and transcode was turned on so I guess we’re getting as small as possible. I have downloaded the Handbrake app but haven’t got around to checking it out, figured that probably was my only alternative at this time. Hard to accept that a 30 minute Cheers is literally half a gig in size. 50 episodes so far is more than 25 gig of hard disk space, going to have to move to a 24tb drive I guess. Thanks for the info…
Half a GB for a 30 minute episode is not excessive.
I get 720p h264 videos with the most basic stereo audio from a local tv station where a 45-50 minute episode averages around 1.2-1.5 GB (approx. 3.5-4.0 Mbps)
DVD quality content can easily reach an average bitrate around 6 Mbps. Blu-Ray quality content will have an even higher average bitrate (e.g. 20-30 Mbps). That being said… you can create a good optimized version that’ll have a much smaller footprint
Therefore… yes… video libraries take a lot of space.
Optimized versions are usually much smaller – but that’ll depend on from what source you start this optimization (and if it’s always worth the effort).
Agreed. The examples I posted above are from 1 hour shows, commercial-skipped, so roughly 43-44 minutes. They’re 480p, ~2.2 Mb/s.
Keep in mind that the examples I showed above of a simple re-multiplex from TS to MKV show a roughly 8.5% reduction in storage size. Not that you’re going to, but if you filled your 24 TB drive with TS recordings, this would represent a little over 2 TB in savings. Or, for the 25 GB you’ve already recorded, it would be a roughly 2.1 GB savings.
I use a simple script on my system to perform the re-mux, using mkvmerge from MKVToolNix. It simply copies the video and audio streams and stores them in a new container. Re-muxing is very fast (relative to re-encoding).
Thirded. Even a 30-minute show that has been re-encoded by Comcast to h264 is still just under 1GB in size on my system.
A recording off the antenna (MPEG2) is over 1.5 GB per 30 minutes.
These sizes are definitely normal for full-quality DVR recordings!
I posted the name of the shows to put the comments in context. Cheers is an old show that only shows up especially on OTA in SD. No 30 minutes program in SD should be over 150 to 170megs in mp4 or mkv. Clearly there is a lot of information in a ts file that is for something other than the show itself. Appreciate the comments, however.
But it’s being broadcast on an HD channel, right? That means they’ll send it at full HD bit rates if it’s on an HD channel. They don’t change bit-rates on a per-show basis. If Cheers is being broadcast on an SD subchannel like Antenna TV, it’ll be a smaller SD-sized bit rate.
BTW, something separate to be aware of: Cheers has been remastered in 4:3 HD, but I’m not sure if local networks have access to it.
I don’t think so.
Keep in mind… just because a show was initially recorded/available in SD (or pre-SD) doesn’t mean the cable provider isn’t currently streaming it in a higher resolution. That doesn’t need to mean they have a higher quality… they’ll just be bigger to meet the specification of today’s streaming/distribution standards (e.g. to follow DVB-T / DVB-C specifications if you’re on terrestrial or cable network).
Edit: in the US that might be ATSC instead of DVB
Even older content can stream at 2-3 Mb/s. From my own system, here’s a screenshot of my tuner status. This is taken from when the tuner was streaming an episode of Cheers (S05E02):
The bitrate is variable, but in this case it ranged from 2.2 to 3 Mb/s. If you assume an average of 2.5 Mb/s, that would come out to roughly 1.1 GB per hour. This is pretty close to what you’re seeing on your system.
You can see the bandwidth of the streams from your tuner by navigating to http://my.hdhomerun.com in your browser. Click on your tuner, then tuner status, and finally the tuner which in use. You’ll see a page similar to what I show above.
The upshot of all this is that what you’re seeing is not at all out of the ordinary. Since you’ve already install Handbrake, you can experiment with re-encoding the files to see what kind of trade-offs you can make between storage size and quality. And as I mentioned previously, you can save an immediate 8% or so just by re-multiplexing the file to an MKV.
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