I’m getting back into digital collecting after pretty much exhausting the local thriftstores of any movies I wanted to watch / own.
I was thinking of burning everything to DVD but then I came to my senses and just installed Jellyfin.
Question:
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What video file sizes do you guys download and why?
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And what is the correlation between video size and quality? I see some wild variations in file sizes even for the same res.
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Who are y’alls downloading 20+GB movies? Are you storing all that or are you downmixing? Are you stealing your harddrives out of the recycle bin?
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Any shortcuts for getting rich blacks for space scenes? Do I just need to suck it up eat the bytes? (I’m thinking of going this route for BSG and can’t remember if they go for video grain in space or true film black).
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What is the obvious thing I clearly don’t understand by asking these questions?
So for me, it seems for file size, about 700MB / 90 minutes is about as low as I can go, and arguably it’s too low because I’m sometimes distracted by the low quality.
I’m a little confused by what’s going on because I’ll often watch a DVD that’s being upscaled by the player and have no complaints, and I think that’s base 480 or lower, but a labelled 720p can have some distractingly low res.
For my high end, 2GB at 1080p is about as high as I care to go unless it’s some crazy high quality cinematographic shit like Lawrence or Dune.
I recommend nothing higher than 720p, maybe 1080p in exceptional cases where you like the content very much and you expect integer scaling (up or down) to do a good enough work on whatever player will be playing. 480p can be fine for some things, even 360p (which has the advantage of integer scaling readily to 720p but the effect is only worth it for something like older animated programmes). Audio is different and lighter and you can go with higher qualities (on the same number of channels) without much issue.
Remember the basic maths: halving the target resolution and scaling down the bitrate accordingly effectively opens up a reduction in size of up to 75% (each frame saves one rectangle instead of four), but beyond that it really depends on the codec and the visual structure of the content), and the result can be replayed on the original resolution simply by doing hardware integer scaling.
As for codecs, if you are already going with Jellyfin, just pick the most efficient codec you can find. If you need compatibility just go with the classics that play even on a 2000s “smart” TV.
I haven’t dug into upscaling; I know my bluray does it, not sure if my TV or Jellyfin do.
Audio isn’t an issue for me; don’t have the money or space for a proper set up, so, heresy: I’m rocking my TV speakers, which sound way better than they should.
I have several TB of storage, and occasionally I will just delete stuff that I haven’t revisited in a while. I really should convert to some sort of offline storage library instead of deleting, but I haven’t yet.
I actually don’t do that many movies, but I do a lot of TV. I do 1080p x265 because that’s really all the monitor I have for VLC. I have downloaded 4K in the past, and there is a 4K TV in the living room, but I don’t usually notice the quality difference and the file sizes are a lot bigger. I have a poor Internet connection (best available in my area), so smaller sizes help me keep my ratios up.
But, that’s just my preference. I have a friend that insists on 4K, but they notice quality issues and are distracted by them more easily.
Often quality blacks also depends on good encoder settings, so if you find an encoder / encoding team that does well, it might be worth seeking out their version(s), even if the file sizes are larger or their releases take longer.
I’ve thought a lot about it, and I think it’s a combination of what your sensitivity is and what you’re used to seeing. There’s a natural point where your brain stops caring (or even noticing) quality improvements, much to the dismay of TV panel manufacturers. But there’s also that you will notice a degradation of quality until you re-adapt (if its above your natural threshhold).
Also, most TV shows aren’t so much about the cinematography/visuals (with some notable exceptions); 1080 is higher than I’d want for most TV shows, especially given the sheer amount of hours. (I think most Star Trek’s crunch down to 20+gigs at 720).
I’ll try to keep an eye on encodings I like and see if I can’t build a fan list of encoders.
Who are y’alls downloading 20+GB movies?
Any shortcuts for getting rich blacks for space scenes?
The rich blacks are in the 20+GB movies.
This sentence is hilarious out of context.
Is the increased size entirely do to bitrate needed to carry all those fine details or is lack of color depth (?) A big factor as well? Like are there generally fewer shades of grade or is it just that they don’t update fast enough to be clear because of the lower bitrate?
By color depth I mean the range of colors/shades/whatever availbe to display.
@Eldritch@piefed.world’s comment covers it. Dark scenes are what are hit first and most by compression which is why dark scenes in YIFY encodes look like they’re made of MegaBloks.
Yes, to put it mildly technically. Blacks and dark bits are often the first things quantized to hell in modern codex. They’re one of the areas that the eye is generally least sensitive to. And they will be one of the first things to show if you over compressed too much.
What video file sizes do you guys download and why? I don’t know about sizes, but I stick to 1080p remuxes, because I have brain damage that makes my anus itch just by knowing if and when the video has been re-encoded to save space. Also the blacks. :)
And what is the correlation between video size and quality?
The only correlation might be the size to objective quality, which isn’t what you as a consumer is after anyway, unless you’re a data hoarder or the likes. You’re after the subjective quality: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_qualityWho are y’alls downloading 20+GB movies? Are you storing all that or are you downmixing? Are you stealing your harddrives out of the recycle bin? Nope, I’m just lucky to have an extremely narrow field of interest (no, it’s not Human Centipede). I’m financially hard locked to the 15TB that I spent four years aggregating before LLM data centers f*cked us.
Thanks for the wikipedia link. I guess it makes sense that that’s where the information would be.
The good news for me is that I download everything on my mobile phone and it kills my battery, so I’m limited to how quickly I can fill up my hard drive. I can probably pull about 5-20G/night.
I really wish we still had long-term storage options like Zip drives or cassettes.
Depends on your TV, taste, budget.
A good movie at 480p can be watchable. A good movie at 720p is usually very fine for me.
1080p is my upper limit.
I have a small TV. Resolution doesn’t matter all that much if your TV isn’t 2 meters wide.
Small files with high resolution are very strongly compressed. Some devices might struggle with playing them causing lags or difficult to fast forward or backward etc. That would be more annoying to me than a lowish resolution.
Also depends who ripped it (did they know what they were doing?) and from which source. Webdl or DVD sourced are normally very watchable in lower resolutions if ripped by skilled people.
Maxing out most consumer TV’s days would probably fill your hard drive very quickly… I think my tv is technically 4K, but it really doesn’t need to be–my bluray doesn’t even play 4k.
I’m at 55" about 8 ft away. It’s not too big, not too small…
Jellyfin’s been rock solid, no problems, but I haven’t dived into a 50gb Solaris yet or anything.
37" :')
Filesize itself usually isn’t relevant. A high resolution video in a very large file size will rarely cause playback issues on most devices. In my experience the bottleneck of a setup is almost always first encountered with highly compressed video with a large resolution.
Also, not everyone hoards. Some people look for 4k, watch once and delete. They don’t even seed.
Anyhow, the main thing to me is content quality. I can watch a solid movie in poor quality, but I couldn’t watch certain crappy movies in super duper high resolution quality even I would be paid for it
I care more about file type than file size, but an average movie for me is about 5-6G. I tend to prefer 720p. I don’t need 1080p, since I’m just watching on my computer.
What are you getting for that 3-5 extra gigs at 720P? 720 files seem to go from between 700MB and 2 gigs usually.
File size doesn’t equal quality e.g. h265 encoded titles usually take less space than h264 encoded titles and the quality is imho better. For example from my own collection (ripped from my own discs) Dune 2021 Part 1 1080p 5.2 GB h265 re-encoded + original soundtrack + subtitles.
The 20+ GB files are typically not re-encoded bluray (AVC/VC-1) or 4k releases.
For a proper 1080p release with bluray audio expect anything from ~5GB up.
Yes, size doesn’t necessarily mean quality, but I see people using it for shorthand calculations, and maybe poorly encoded files get moved down the list. I’m watching a lot of older movies, though, so I probably need to pay more attention.
I have a handful of quality levels I target, for most movies I target 1080p, with a size no more than 2.5gb/hour, as I don’t really need super HD4K Mr.Bean, but then I also have quality profiles ranging all the way up to. 4k 20gb/hour for movies that are worth the storage space.
Since storage is so expensive, and I’m basically hardlocked at 24TB of storage for the foreseeable future, I may even decrease my “standard” quality profile to save space going forward.
Profiles, as in you’re remixing HQ files down yourself, or you just know what you’re looking for?
Oh, sorry I should have explained further. I use Radarr/Sonarr to automatically find and download torrents, and the quality profiles are what the software uses to grade whether a torrent is acceptable.
Ah, the *arrs are the first thing on my list if I ever get broadband again…
I moved a few months ago, and went from 100mb with a 1.2tb monthly cap to 1gb with no cap. Its been glorious, I had added 2tb of media in the first 48 hours.
I’m thinking about Blu ray legal versions of the stuff I want in 4k… if I can get it though. It’s a short list. The downside is that apparently the releases aren’t always done the right way so film buffs say “well ackshully the audio on the LaserDisc version is better” and it can be hard to get, especially legit versions instead of pirated rips (technology connections had a video about DVDs.)
I tried getting some 4k stuff and between the audio format and HDR and whatever else, i gave up. I need new hardware to really make use of it and it takes up SO MUCH SPACE.
Bigger size is usually better. Unfortunately an encoding is only as good as the person who did it. There’s any number of filtering or higher quality settings that can be used. But people often avoid to save time.
So you’re better off to find groups or individuals who’s work you like. And sticking with that. On Modern CPUs you can rip through high def video faster than real-time speed if you set the quality low enough. And the bitrate High enough. But an experienced encoder knows the combination of filtering and settings to use to bring out the maximum visual quality with minimal file size.
And when it comes to that I tend to do all my own encodings.
You mean you download a massive file and shrink it down yourself?
Do you have an recommended encorders for B&W film? Seems like an easy place to pick up some space savings while retaining or improving over a general full color codec.
If it’s something I really want. Absolutely.
These days handbrake is pretty much all you need. We’ve come a long way since my days moderating over on the Doom 9 Forum way back in the early 2000s.
Codec wise there really isn’t anything that would be more recommended for black and white. Black and white are colors. 16 million Shades of Black and White are still 16 million colors if that makes any sense. So a color encoder is generally going to do just as well. You’re not really going to save that much just because something is black and white.
The codec that you might want to choose will generally depend more on the resolution of your content, and the hardware you intend to play it back on. Older Hardware might only support h264. Also DVDs, anything newer than h264 doesn’t really save you a lot of space. And takes more time to encode. H264 also uses smaller macro blocks which are generally preferable for lower resolution. When it comes to HD or 4K sources. Then h265 or AV1 should probably be your go-to’s. Unless again you are limited by playback hardware.
The settings again depend a lot on your content. If it’s largely static scenes with Talking Heads. You can get by with some pretty insanely low bit rates. If it’s an action movie with lots of motion all over the place explosions etc etc etc. You’re going to need every bit of bitrate you can get.
When it comes to basic settings? Under the video dialogue in handbrake. Whenever you select and encoder towards the bottom left there is a slider labeled preset. Which is sort of misleading. It is the motion estimation quality. You would generally never want it set to anything higher than medium and preferably closer to slower. As the name implies slower is slower. But it performs much better motion estimation. Which will create less blocking and artifacts when constrained for bitrate. Leaving more for those blacks which are often the first thing sacrificed.
Bitrate wise. And easy rule of thumb is previous generations bit rate. Ripping DVD in h264 a VCD bitrate of 1–2 Mbps is pretty solid. 1080p? DVD bitrates of 5-9 Mbps in h265 or AV1 will save lots of space and keep excellent video quality. 4k, 20 to 35 Mbps h265 or AV1. A bit wasteful but generally visually lossless. If you take the time and do 2 pass you can go lower still.
I’ve used these setting for re-encoding and the quality is very good. Even DVDs look better in many cases. Haven’t done any B&W though. Be warned h.265 encoding is very cpu intensive e.g. with my Ryzen 7 7700x re-encoding a bluray movie takes about 90-120 mins at 1080p. Down scaling will reduce that time.
I’m pirating video because they won’t let me legally download a bluray without tons of drm. I don’t want to lose any quality and even with these ridiculously inflated prices hard drives are cheaper than buying all the blurays (which I’d also need to find a place to store) so I generally try and get remuxes or untouched streams. That said I got my drives from shucked external drives which are now going for over double what I bought them for.
HDR should help with the rich blacks if you have a monitor that supports it, I think it might with tonemapping too but it obviously will depend on how it was mastered in addition to what anyone does to encode it afterwards.
Where do you source your harddrives from? And I guess you have some redundancies if you’re using used drives.
Your standards are undoubtedly higher than mine. HDR might be overkill (?), but I just find it very jarring when a scene that should be uniformly dark or black turns into bunches of little squares dancing around the screen. Do I need HDR to avoid that? I mean, yes, I do love the theater blacks enough that when Rogue One went from video outer space to film outerspace it melted my brain a little, so maybe I should look into that. But, overall, I think regular BluRay is the highest I’d want to target.
The system has really fucked itself with all the controls it has, especially for high quality streaming which they absolutely cannot guarantee AND they put a lot of restrictions on it as well.
I will speak up for having a physical library. It’s nice for guests to have something to pick up and hold. Of course, most of my guests these days are future and imaginary.
