Quote:
Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay
Hoping a few of you Plex users can help me out. Got a good rig up and running with Plex but have some questions regarding software you use for ripping Blu-Rays:
Make MKV:
What are you guys copying off of this? I watched a tutorial where the guy basically said to deselect everything in the list and just select the one that has the largest file. When you open the tree on that, there are a ton of other languages and subtitles in there that I don't think I need?
Handbrake:
What settings are you guys using? Hoping it's one of the available pre-selects? I tried one of them out and it reduced at 34 Gig file down to 4. Quality has to take a massive hit being reduced that much?
Lastly, and I think this is a common issue. Sound volume is very low on the first couple of movies I've ripped. I realize with mixed equipment, this may be a bit hit and miss. Primarily I'm watching shows on a TV with no HDMI ARC. Only digital optical feeding a Vizio soundbar. One TV upstairs does have HDMI ARC but don't have a media extender to stream to yet.
Is there anyway to fix this? I don't have a true quality receiver in my house as of yet.
Any tips/tricks for the above?
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For MKV, I have been doing what you mentioned to minimize file size and keep things simple. for movies it is pretty cut and dry and you pick the largest file. The smaller ones are generally previews, extras, or commentaries. In addition to raw file size, you can keep an eye on the number of chapters. Rarely will a full length movie only have 5 chapters, so that helps. As DiF mentions, with series it gets a bit more complicated. I haven't done a ton because of the headache of it all, but in addition to single episodes, the discs will often include files that have multiple, if not all, of the discs episodes as a single file. My understanding from reading online is that if you name the files properly "s1-ep01-04" that plex will still figure out what the files are and can find specific episodes. But have not tried that too thoroughly yet.
With handbrake I have not yet settled on final settings. DVDs were easy as the quality was limited to begin with. But I have been struggling to find the best combination of file size and quality. I was doing some tests with Saving Private Ryan and when I had my file size down to the range you describe, I could see noticeable difference than the original MKV file. This was using a chromecast on my 10 year old TV that has nothing fancy like 4k. It is 60" so that does give a lot of real estate to see potential issues. If you happen to find anything that works post back as I would be happy to try. (also it could be my TV is the problem in that it can't handle this new fangled technology!)