How to reduce the size of Blu Ray movies?

[gilford]

I've started to put my blu Ray collection on my mini to play through the superb plex

My aim was to keep everything as is for quality reasons but I have circa 100 blu rays and didn't realise how much space one would take up!

Is anyone successfully getting the size of the movie reduced without any real impact on quality? I'm presuming handbrake would be the way to go but what settings to use?

Any help appreciated, I'm doing Iron Man 2 as we speak and it's 36gb

Cheers

 

[Hellhammer]

Encode them with HandBrake. Reduce the bitrate since that is taking so much space. Good quality BR can easily be 40-50Mb/s but there isn't noticeable loss in quality if you use 10-15Mb/s and that will easily reduce the size to <10GB.

 

[gilford]

Encode them with HandBrake. Reduce the bitrate since that is taking so much space. Good quality BR can easily be 40-50Mb/s but there isn't noticeable loss in quality if you use 10-15Mb/s and that will easily reduce the size to <10GB.

Thanks for the info

Could you please elaborate on the exact settings you are using in Handbrake, I am yet to use the programme bar doing a few films for my old AppleTV

Many thanks!

 

[tpg]

Out of interest, what utility are you using to extract the raw blu-ray data, and what format does it output to? Handbrake can deal with most stuff in my experience, but I haven't dealt with blu-ray encoding yet!

 

[Hellhammer]

Thanks for the info

Could you please elaborate on the exact settings you are using in Handbrake, I am yet to use the programme bar doing a few films for my old AppleTV

Many thanks!

I don't have any BRs that I encode but there is AppleTV setting in HandBrake, I would give it a try. See how good it is and then play with the settings if needed.

 

[gilford]

Out of interest, what utility are you using to extract the raw blu-ray data, and what format does it output to? Handbrake can deal with most stuff in my experience, but I haven't dealt with blu-ray encoding yet!

I use MakeMKV which produces a massive MKV file which Plex plays perfectly

I don't have any BRs that I encode but there is AppleTV setting in HandBrake, I would give it a try. See how good it is and then play with the settings if needed.

Thanks again for the info.

Hopefully someone will be along soon who is doing what I'm considering and can give some decent settings

 

[Cave Man]

Hopefully someone will be along soon who is doing what I'm considering and can give some decent settings

You should see the Blu-ray to Apple TV thread for a few tips, or better yet the Blu-ray guide over at the Plex forums.

 

[gilford]

Does anyone have any definitive HB setting for me to reduce the size of my 40gb Avatar rip to a more respectable 10gb whilst still keeping 1080p?

 

[Cave Man]

Does anyone have any definitive HB setting for me to reduce the size of my 40gb Avatar rip to a more respectable 10gb whilst still keeping 1080p?

You can do 14 MB/s average bit rate that will maintain video quality as good as the original source (to my eyes, anyway), but that may not get down to quite 10 gb. Also, bear in mind that probably 10-15 gb of that 40 gb is the DTS-HD audio track and all the other foreign language tracks (most of which are Dolby Digital). If you extract the DTS core (must be in an mkv container) for 5.1 or just have it as AAC, then you'll probably get really close to 10 gb final.

Make sure you use one of the nightly builds of Handbrake.

You'll also have problems with forced subtitles from Avatar. It's doable, but you have to find an srt file for Handbrake.

 

[gilford]

You can do 14 MB/s average bit rate that will maintain video quality as good as the original source (to my eyes, anyway), but that may not get down to quite 10 gb. Also, bear in mind that probably 10-15 gb of that 40 gb is the DTS-HD audio track and all the other foreign language tracks (most of which are Dolby Digital). If you extract the DTS core (must be in an mkv container) for 5.1 or just have it as AAC, then you'll probably get really close to 10 gb final.

Make sure you use one of the nightly builds of Handbrake.

You'll also have problems with forced subtitles from Avatar. It's doable, but you have to find an srt file for Handbrake.

Thanks for getting back to me

I'm using MakeMKV and stripping out the HD audio and ALL subtitles and the file is still 40gb, the same with Transformers, 38gb.

I need to try and get these down otherwise my house is going to be like a main frame once I've gone through all my BD's!

What are the exact settings you are using in HB if you dont mind me asking? Are you using the "nightly" build? I would be happy with 12-15gb @ 1080p

 

[roidy]

You'll also have problems with forced subtitles from Avatar. It's doable, but you have to find an srt file for Handbrake.

Depending on what the OP is going to use to playback the file his player may work with the original PGS sup subtitles. If not I wouldn't use a srt file, I would convert the PGS sup's to VOB subs that way they look exactly like the original subs.

 

[tbayrgs]

Thanks for getting back to me

I'm using MakeMKV and stripping out the HD audio and ALL subtitles and the file is still 40gb, the same with Transformers, 38gb.

I need to try and get these down otherwise my house is going to be like a main frame once I've gone through all my BD's!

What are the exact settings you are using in HB if you dont mind me asking? Are you using the "nightly" build? I would be happy with 12-15gb @ 1080p

I'm not positive since it's been awhile but i believe I started with the TV preset and just resized to 1080p in the picture settings window and let it go using the default RF of 20 (not sure, may have bumped it up to 21). The resulting file is 9.3 GB with a bit rate of just under 8000 kbit/sec and looks great in PLEX.

I went the .srt route for subtitles as IMO, it's much easier and I really don't care if they look exactly the same as the native BD. For my TV friendly version, i just added the .srt file via Subler. For PLEX, I just directed it the .srt file in my directory and PLEX took care of the rest. I believe I found the .srt file at sub scene.org.

 

[roidy]

I went the .srt route for subtitles as IMO, it's much easier and I really don't care if they look exactly the same as the native BD. For my TV friendly version, i just added the .srt file via Subler. For PLEX, I just directed it the .srt file in my directory and PLEX took care of the rest. I believe I found the .srt file at sub scene.org.

You see that would bug me, you take all this time and care to preserve as much of the original Blu-Ray quality as you can during your encode only to stamp an ugly ass srt subtitle all over it It takes no more than 10 minutes to convert the original subs to VOB subs and add them back into the file, giving you a subtitle track that looks just like the original creator intended it to look.

 

[tbayrgs]

You see that would bug me, you take all this time and care to preserve as much of the original Blu-Ray quality as you can during your encode only to stamp an ugly ass srt subtitle all over it It takes no more than 10 minutes to convert the original subs to VOB subs and add them back into the file, giving you a subtitle track that looks just like the original creator intended it to look.

To each their own--bad picture quality bothers me, font style doesn't. It also probably has something to do with my many prior failed efforts to integrate subs and this just worked. And I'm not working that hard doing these conversions--between rip/encode/tag, probably involves 2-3 minutes of actual input.

If you have a link to some concise instructions for your sub conversions, I'm willing to give it a go again.

 

[roidy]

Yep, to each his own, but I think having the original font style and placement for the subs looks much better. This link has a detailed tutorial, it's geared towards Windows software but there is nothing that shouldn't be doable on a Mac:-

http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=16784

Basically I do the following:-

1. Use MakeMKV on the Blu-Ray
2. Use MKVToolnix on the resulting mkv file to extract the PGS sup subs.
3. Use BDSup2Sub to convert the sup subs to VOB subs (making sure to select Swap Cr/Cb in BDSup2Sub so the colours don't screw-up)
4. Use MKVToolnix to re-mux the new VOB subs back into the mkv.
5. Encode like normal using Handbrake but selecting the new VOB sub track as my burned-in subs.

Like I said it probably adds about 10 minutes to the process. Just one thing to note, the ATV dosn't support selectable VOB subs so it's only useful for forced subs that you want to burn-in to the file.

 

[tbayrgs]

Yep, to each his own, but I think having the original font style and placement for the subs looks much better. This link has a detailed tutorial, it's geared towards Windows software but there is nothing that shouldn't be doable on a Mac:-

http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=16784

Basically I do the following:-

1. Use MakeMKV on the Blu-Ray
2. Use MKVToolnix on the resulting mkv file to extract the PGS sup subs.
3. Use BDSup2Sub to convert the sup subs to VOB subs (making sure to select Swap Cr/Cb in BDSup2Sub so the colours don't screw-up)
4. Use MKVToolnix to re-mux the new VOB subs back into the mkv.
5. Encode like normal using Handbrake but selecting the new VOB sub track as my burned-in subs.

Like I said it probably adds about 10 minutes to the process. Just one thing to note, the ATV dosn't support selectable VOB subs so it's only useful for forced subs that you want to burn-in to the file.

Thanks for the concise summary and link--I'll give it another shot next blu-ray I have with foreign language subs. And since I only include subtitles for spoken foreign language parts of films, having them burned in is not a problem.

 

[roidy]

Yep same here, the only subs I need are forced foreign language ones, so burning them in isn't a problem as I need them anyway. If you need selectable subs on the ATV then your only real option is srt text subs.

 

[mike457]

I've aimed to make a slight reduction in the size of the files. What I'm doing is converting HD-DVDs to a format that can be played on my LG BD-590. What I do is use Makemkv to rip the disk (or AnyDVD-HD on the PC for difficult cases). I then demux the sound and video files, and convert the soundtrack to AC-3 (they're usually in Dolby Digital +). I then remux them and feed them into Handbrake to create a 1080P MKV.

The settings I use are to start with the Regular/High profile, set the format to MKV, choose AC-3 passthru, and take the constant quality setting to 18. This cuts the HD file by about 1/3, sometimes more, and still looks excellent to me.

Have to say the encoding process is quite slow (I'm on a 2.66 i5 iMac with 8GB of RAM), but it's converting VC1 to H-264 in most cases. Apollo 13, for example, went from 21GB to 15GB. On the more drastic side, Sky Captain went from 20Gb to 5GB.

 

[tbayrgs]

Yep, to each his own, but I think having the original font style and placement for the subs looks much better. This link has a detailed tutorial, it's geared towards Windows software but there is nothing that shouldn't be doable on a Mac:-

http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=16784

Basically I do the following:-

1. Use MakeMKV on the Blu-Ray
2. Use MKVToolnix on the resulting mkv file to extract the PGS sup subs.
3. Use BDSup2Sub to convert the sup subs to VOB subs (making sure to select Swap Cr/Cb in BDSup2Sub so the colours don't screw-up)
4. Use MKVToolnix to re-mux the new VOB subs back into the mkv.
5. Encode like normal using Handbrake but selecting the new VOB sub track as my burned-in subs.

Like I said it probably adds about 10 minutes to the process. Just one thing to note, the ATV dosn't support selectable VOB subs so it's only useful for forced subs that you want to burn-in to the file.

After trying to gather the appropriate programs, I now recall why I went the .srt route--BDSup2Sub is Windows only. Until this can be done Mac only, looks like I'll be sticking with .srt subs. Thanks anyway.