PLEX

Sweet. It gets addictive and soon you’ll be sweating needing more space. I’m around 4.5k movies now and have been pushing through a pile of TV show Blu-ray’s.

 

I'm in to it I just am selective about what I try to collect. I think doing DVD and blu-Ray TV series sets is the hardest.
The first one I did a few years ago was the Star Trek TOS blu-ray set. Finding all the episodes isn't bad. The trouble is I like to keep the special features, extras and behind the scenes stuff. TVDB.com and TMDB.com have some good listings and descriptions of what is on the collections with series and episode numbers so Plex can index it. Problem with the Star Trek one was there were several releases of the same collections on blu-ray and dvd sometimes they have different extras included that aren't listed or in the same order. I'm having issues matching up special features titles for the season 1-4 Dr Who Blu-Ray set because TVDB lists it for the DVD release only, so some content I can't find a S00Exx designation for. the things I may want to keep and encode in HEVC I'll just dump in the specials folder so I can watch it on a PC but not Plex.

 

If you are using MakeMKV to do this then check their user forums for your set of discs. They have a section for dvds and one for Blu-ray’s. If it’s been on disc for at least a month then odds are that there’s a conversation about it including variant releases.

https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/

 

I do use MakeMKV to pull the videos off the discs. And handbrake to encode the files down to store better

Ill check the forums out again. Not been there since i had to get help with down grading the firmware of my blu ray drive to read UHD discs

 

Some of us have raidZs .. lol. Gotta wait until drives get bigger then it'll get an upgrade.

 

I'm looking in to building a NAS system for myself TrueNAS Scale. When I actually build one and put it in to production use at home it will have some of raid setup. For now I'm just getting some old computer parts from work together so I can experiment with the software and learn how it works and get comfortable with it.

 

PlexAmp has me shaking my head today. “Reflective Radio” loads up with Frank Sinatra immediately followed by Rick James. Hilarious

 

Not sure what Reflective radio is but that sounds "Super Freaky"

 

One of the heaps of algorithm stations it offers to mix up and play your music.

 

I see.... I never used those. I have used the mixes it will create built around an artist and similar artists. I suppose that's close to the same thing. it will offer me stuff like Luke Combs or George Strait mixes.

 

I saw a few weeks ago that PLEX supports HEVC (H.265) so I finally took some time to do some experimenting.

My default settings for Handbrake are H.264 (NVEnc) in an MP4 wrapper, constant frame rate (same as source), video at a constant quality of 20, passthru for whatever format the audio is and subtitles set as default.

I ran Venom: The Last Dance through Handbrake then did it again, only changing the H.264 (NVEnc) to H.265 (NVEnc).

Statistics:



There is still some artifacting in the dark areas but no worse than what I was getting with H.264.

Statistically there's not really much of a difference but also no reason to not change my defaults, if for no other reason the smaller file size. At least based on this one sample.

Edit: I suppose I should try the H.265 10-bit (NVEnc), too.

 

H.264:



H.265:



H.265 10-bit:



I think I have a pretty clear winner with the 10-bit.

 

I been using h.265 for while now. I never tried 10 bit.
I rip most blu ray disc's with that setting in the mp4 container. I just did the Dr Who seasons 1-4 with it. It should direct play with most devices that support Hevc like my firestick 4k Max's
Plex will trans code for devices that don't support it.
It definitely does take longer to encode but saves space.

 

265 taking longer than 264 didn't surprise me but 265 10 bit taking the least amount of time of the 3 was unexpected. Especially as it looks the best and is the smallest file size.

 

I have the Animaniacs cartoons to rip from DVD next. Wonder how small I can get the files with 256 10bit.

 

For those using Handbrake to encode DVD and Blu-ray rips there is a new update available to version 1.9.1 It includes improvements with AV1 decoding, haldeling of SRT files and some bug fixes for the windows platform.

 

Seeing dashboard activity that PLEX is analyzing voices on silent movies is kind of amusing.

 

I don’t think the public is ready for what some of those actors are actually saying.

 

I had to get a new BD drive for my rig. Was ripping a Dr Who box set. Down to the last 2 disc's. Stopped there to make dinner the other day went back and it wouldn't load blue rays disc's anymore. Still would read CD and DVD.
Turns out the LG drives are known to not last long. The blue laser fails. Mine was about 2 years old.
I got a Pioneer BDR 212v to replace it last night. Got it flashed to read UHD now. According to the geeks on MakeMKV forum Pioneer is way better. All I know is for now its working great and the drive is library quiet too.

 

Thinking about grabbing a pair of these but wanted to see what TW thinks of them.