Thoughts on 4K Blu-Rays? Anyone collect?

[SilverspoonGaming | 336]

I collect 4k's because I am able to enjoy them in my basement theater.  I have always had to pay full price for them so I dont have too many, but if you want the ultimate viewing experience, they are the best way to go, even over standard blu-ray.

[fox | 1,694]

22 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

Bought a 4k TV just to watch Dawn of the Dead in 4k.  Thats it and all I care about owning.

Heard great things about that Dawn of the Dead disc.  It’s on my want list for sure.

[guitarzombie | 929]

46 minutes ago, fox said:

Heard great things about that Dawn of the Dead disc.  It’s on my want list for sure.

Might be hard to get because there was a limited amount made IIRC.  Also the 4k one is region free but the blu rays are locked to the UK region.  I just had a friend of mine ask me why that movie is always so expensive and basically you cant find it streaming anywhere and when they print copies, its always in small doses or something wacky because of the people who hold the rights to it are stringent about it (Richard Rubenstein).  You CAN watch it on youtube from time to time pretty easily.

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

On 2/14/2021 at 5:13 AM, Andy_Bogomil said:

I love 4K movies because now regular blurays are like $5-10 a pop if not cheaper at the local pawn shops.

Yeah, I've been building up a media server over the past year, and getting bargain bin deals on DVDs and Blu Ray because of the push for 4k UHD has been nice.

A Blu Ray movie is already going to take 36 GB on my server -- don't want to deal with what UHD would required, if I even had a drive that could rip them.

[Andy_Bogomil | 816]

I've really been diggin' just relaxing and watching movies without interruption lately. I've been focusing on livin' easy these days. 

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

8 hours ago, arch_8ngel said:

Yeah, I've been building up a media server over the past year, and getting bargain bin deals on DVDs and Blu Ray because of the push for 4k UHD has been nice.

A Blu Ray movie is already going to take 36 GB on my server -- don't want to deal with what UHD would required, if I even had a drive that could rip them.

You can knock down Blu-Ray file size significantly with essentially no loss in quality using free compression programs. I did this prior to deployment so I could take more movies with me. I think I got most of them down to about 10% of their original size. I'd be happy to look into it more if you're interested.

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

2 hours ago, DoctorEncore said:

You can knock down Blu-Ray file size significantly with essentially no loss in quality using free compression programs. I did this prior to deployment so I could take more movies with me. I think I got most of them down to about 10% of their original size. I'd be happy to look into it more if you're interested.

Would be interested in your suggestions on what free compression programs to use, setting, etc.

Because 10% of a Blu Ray is down to DVD size.

I've recently come within a couple hundred gigs of maxing out my 4TB RAID configuration -- and I have a couple of 14 TB externals I plan to shuck to replace them.

 

But cutting Blu Ray size with actually no losses would be awesome.  Sounds a little too good to be true.

[BlackVega | 583]

Am I the only one that still watches movies in 720p max on computer monitor??

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

41 minutes ago, VegaVegas said:

Am I the only one that still watches movies in 720p max on computer monitor??

Possibly?

It has been extremely easy, for multiple computer generations at this point, to just plug your computer into a decent sized TV for a better viewing experience.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

58 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

Would be interested in your suggestions on what free compression programs to use, setting, etc.

Because 10% of a Blu Ray is down to DVD size.

I've recently come within a couple hundred gigs of maxing out my 4TB RAID configuration -- and I have a couple of 14 TB externals I plan to shuck to replace them.

 

But cutting Blu Ray size with actually no losses would be awesome.  Sounds a little too good to be true.

I'll dig out my portable hard drives and check out file sizes tonight. I'll also throw them up on the big screen to make sure I'm not selling you on a dream. I'm VERY picky about video quality and I remember them looking great after compression. I tried a ton of different algorithms and compression ratios until I found what worked best for me.

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

1 hour ago, DoctorEncore said:

I'll dig out my portable hard drives and check out file sizes tonight. I'll also throw them up on the big screen to make sure I'm not selling you on a dream. I'm VERY picky about video quality and I remember them looking great after compression. I tried a ton of different algorithms and compression ratios until I found what worked best for me.

OK.

Yeah, even a normal DVD rip is larger than 1/10 of a normal Blu Ray rip in my experience and there is a noticeable quality difference, even at 1080p.

Gaining an additional 10TB whenever I get my new drives will stave off issues for awhile (since chewing through 4 TB in a year was a lot of "playing catchup" of ripping an existing collection onto the server -- so I hope my pace will slow down :P)

But being able to selectively go back and shrink certain things - like kids movies and shows, where LONG TERM, I will be less unhappy about quality loss -- is probably in my future.

 

Would also be interested in the conversion time required to do it so I can plan to gradually whittle through the project.

Edited February 16, 2021 by arch_8ngel

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

On 2/16/2021 at 1:24 PM, arch_8ngel said:

OK.

Yeah, even a normal DVD rip is larger than 1/10 of a normal Blu Ray rip in my experience and there is a noticeable quality difference, even at 1080p.

Gaining an additional 10TB whenever I get my new drives will stave off issues for awhile (since chewing through 4 TB in a year was a lot of "playing catchup" of ripping an existing collection onto the server -- so I hope my pace will slow down :P)

But being able to selectively go back and shrink certain things - like kids movies and shows, where LONG TERM, I will be less unhappy about quality loss -- is probably in my future.

 

Would also be interested in the conversion time required to do it so I can plan to gradually whittle through the project.

I got a bit sidetracked this week, but finally pulled out my hard drives and hooked them directly up to my 65" 4K OLED today. A picture can only show you so much and my phone camera loves to blow out reds, but I took a couple pics for you. I had almost forgotten, but you'd be amazed at how good some of this stuff looks based on the file sizes. Almost everything falls to less than 10GB and many to less than 5GB. That being said, the compression methods I used work better on some films than others. Movies with a lot of film grain simply do not compress well and often hover in the 15-20GB range. Films with a lot of dark action scenes also struggle (although compression artifacts are usually obvious on the Blu Ray to start with). It's been a while but I think compression time was somewhere around 1.5x the length of the movie.

Here is the link for pics.

http://imgur.com/a/lrPUmB8

I'll get the compression info for you this weekend. I'm pretty sure I used MakeMKV and Handbrake, both free.

EDIT: Here is the basic tutorial I started with. I'm not sure if my settings are saved on my computer but I will look for you at some point. https://www.howtogeek.com/161498/how-to-backup-your-dvd-and-blu-ray-movie-collection/#:~:text=To rip your movie%2C put,hand panel of the app.

Edited February 20, 2021 by DoctorEncore

[fox | 1,694]

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

On 2/19/2021 at 8:52 PM, DoctorEncore said:

Here is the link for pics.

http://imgur.com/a/lrPUmB8

I'll get the compression info for you this weekend. I'm pretty sure I used MakeMKV and Handbrake, both free.

EDIT: Here is the basic tutorial I started with. I'm not sure if my settings are saved on my computer but I will look for you at some point. https://www.howtogeek.com/161498/how-to-backup-your-dvd-and-blu-ray-movie-collection/#:~:text=To rip your movie%2C put,hand panel of the app.

Those are great looking pics -- very promising.

I use MakeMKV for the rips, so right now all of my stuff is whatever is natively on the disc containerized in mkv files.

I've dabbled in Handbrake (at one point trying to make tablet-suitable files for trips, but never spend much time on it)

I'll follow the link and do some more reading on Handbrake settings.  But I would definitely be interested in the exact settings you were using to get such a good looking result.

Especially interested in the results on the big 4k screen, since once some updated media furniture arrives, I'll be upgrading the old 42" 1080p to something in the 65"-75" range at 4k.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

2 hours ago, arch_8ngel said:

Those are great looking pics -- very promising.

I use MakeMKV for the rips, so right now all of my stuff is whatever is natively on the disc containerized in mkv files.

I've dabbled in Handbrake (at one point trying to make tablet-suitable files for trips, but never spend much time on it)

I'll follow the link and do some more reading on Handbrake settings.  But I would definitely be interested in the exact settings you were using to get such a good looking result.

Especially interested in the results on the big 4k screen, since once some updated media furniture arrives, I'll be upgrading the old 42" 1080p to something in the 65"-75" range at 4k.

I will definitely let you know if I can scrounge up the settings. There is also apparently an entire subreddit devoted to Handbrake where people have trialed pretty much every variation in settings possible. I haven't explored it, but I've heard good things.

[Nes Freak | 584]

i like them when there actually 4k and not upscaled from 1080p

[Brickman | 4,073]

I recently started getting into buying BluRay but I’m going to try and strictly stick to buying movies from the Criterion collection because they do an amazing job with restoration and extras.

[acromite53 | 338]

How important is it to have a HIGH SPEED HDMI cable for 4k blu ray players? I know it can transfer more data quicker, but is it essential? We got the Lord of the Rings Trilogy box set.

[Tulpa | 3,569]

Yeah, for 4K you'll probably want high speed HDMI. But you don't need to spend a fortune:

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=3992

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

On 2/22/2021 at 9:56 AM, arch_8ngel said:

Those are great looking pics -- very promising.

I use MakeMKV for the rips, so right now all of my stuff is whatever is natively on the disc containerized in mkv files.

I've dabbled in Handbrake (at one point trying to make tablet-suitable files for trips, but never spend much time on it)

I'll follow the link and do some more reading on Handbrake settings.  But I would definitely be interested in the exact settings you were using to get such a good looking result.

Especially interested in the results on the big 4k screen, since once some updated media furniture arrives, I'll be upgrading the old 42" 1080p to something in the 65"-75" range at 4k.

It's a bit much to type all settings out, but here is a Handbrake json file with my settings. Download link is only good for 48 hours, so if you miss it, just let me know and I'll post a new link.

https://www.dropbox.com/t/Iw4VGce6nM8JEKfq

If I remember correctly, I had to make some changes to disable some CPU cores to stop Handbrake from crashing my PC due to overheating. I think compression time was like 1.5x the length of the video. I was (and still am) using an i7-4790K @4ghz, so I suspect newer CPUs can complete the task faster and with less heat.

Hopefully this gives you a start and you can find something that works for you. I highly recommend messing around with settings and looking on Reddit for more detailed instructions.

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

@DoctorEncore Thanks, I've downloaded it and will try it out when I have a chance.

The 14TB externals I got on sale are STILL on back-order from Adorama...hopefully they still turn out to be what I expect (at least IronWolfs if not the server-grade drives, which some of this series were -- but evidently NONE of the externals in that SKU are barracudas, at least)

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

My twin 14 TB drives finally showed up -- and it will take 26 hours EACH to run the full scans on them with SeaTools.

So I guess I'm not shucking them until next weekend.

 

On the upside, the video I saw for shucking the "Seagate Expansion" branded drives looks really easy -- but until I do, I won't find out exactly what kind of drive is in there.

 

 

[Estil | 1,268]

21 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

My twin 14 TB drives finally showed up -- and it will take 26 hours EACH to run the full scans on them with SeaTools.

It's about time we start having drives that size...I finally managed to get a 8TB one several months back...PERFECT for backing up my game roms as well as my favorite TV shows!

[Estil | 1,268]

On 2/16/2021 at 9:58 AM, VegaVegas said:

Am I the only one that still watches movies in 720p max on computer monitor??

Well sometimes I have something playing on the right side of my screen (and most of my favorite shows were from long before 720p days) while I'm reading/doing something else on the left side of my screen...does that count?

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

My 14TB drives are both finally scanned (took almost 27 hours PER DRIVE to do the "long scans").

Shucked them today -- both are Exos drives!  (enterprise-grade server drives)

I'll call that a win.

Now just a couple of days worth of stuff copying on the NAS to swap these in for the previous 4TB drives -- and then whenever I manage to fill THESE up, it will be time to update to 4-bay system...

Edited March 28, 2021 by arch_8ngel